specially created for countries as backward and helpless as Persia was
assumed to be, and that the only agency qualified to apply it was either
the Supreme Council or the League of Nations. The British press answered
that no such humiliating assumption about the Shah's people was being
made, that the Foreign Office had distinctly disclaimed the intention of
establishing a protectorate over Persia, who is, and will remain, a
sovereign and independent state. But these explanations failed to
convince our indignant Allies. They argued, from experience, that no
trust was to be placed in those official assurances and euphemistic
phrases which are generally belied by subsequent acts.[317] They further
lamented that the long and secret negotiations which were going forward
in Teheran while the Persian delegation was wearily and vainly waiting
in Paris to be allowed to plead its country's cause before the great
world-dictators was not a good example of loyalty to the new cosmic
legislation. Had not Mr. Wilson proclaimed that peoples were no longer
to be bartered and swapped as chattels? Here the Italians and Rumanians
chimed in, reminding their kinsmen that it was the same American
statesmen who in the peace conditions first presented to Count
Brockdorff-Rantzau made over the German population of the Saar Valley to
France at the end of fifteen years as the fair equivalent of a sum of
money payable in gold, and that France at any rate had raised no
objection to the barter nor to the principle at the root of it. They
reasoned that if the principle might be applied to one case it should be
deemed equally applicable to the other, and that the only persons or
states that could with propriety demur to the Anglo-Persian arrangements
were those who themselves were not benefiting by similar transactions.
At last the Paris press, laying due weight on the alliance with Britain,
struck a new note. "It seems that these last Persian bargainings offer a
theme for conversations between our government and that of the Allies,"
one influential journal wrote.[318] At once the amicable suggestion was
taken up by the British press. The idea was to join the Syrian with the
Persian transactions and make French concessions on the other. This
compromise would compose an ugly quarrel and settle everything for the
best. For France's intentions toward the people of Syria were, it was
credibly asserted, to the full as disinterested and generous as those of
Britain toward Persia, and if the Syrians desired an English-speaking
nation rather than the French to be their mentor, it was equally true
that the Persians wanted Americans rather than British to superintend
and accelerate their progress in civilization. But instead of harkening
to the wishes of only one it would be better to ignore those of both. By
this prudent compromise all the demands of right and justice, for which
both governments were earnest sticklers, would thus be amply satisfied.
Our American associates were less easily appeased. In sooth there was
nothing left wherewith to appease them. Their press condemned the
"protectorate" as a breach of the Covenant. Secretary Lansing let it be
known[319] that the United States delegation had striven to obtain a
hearing for the Persians at the Conference, but had "lost its fight." A
Persian, when apprized of this utterance, said: "When the United States
delegation strove to hinder Italy from annexing Fiume and obtaining the
territories promised her by a secret treaty, they accomplished their aim
because they refused to give way. Then they took care not to lose their
fight. When they accepted a brief for the Jews and imposed a Jewish
semi-state on Rumania and Poland, they were firm as the granite rock,
and no amount of opposition, no future deterrents, made any impression
on their will. Accordingly, they had their way. But in the cause of
Persia they lost the fight, although logic, humanity, justice, and the
ordinances solemnly accepted by the Great Powers were all on their
side." ... One American press organ termed the Anglo-Persian accord "a
coup which is a greater violation of the Wilsonian Fourteen Points than
the Shantung award to Japan, as it makes the whole of Persia a mere
protectorate for Britain."[320]
Generally speaking, illustrations of the meaning of non-intervention in
the home affairs of other nations were numerous and somewhat perplexing.
Were it not that Mr. Wilson had come to Europe for the express purpose
of interpreting as well as enforcing his own doctrine, one would have
been warranted in assuming that the Supreme Council was frequently
travestying it. But as the President was himself one of the leading
members of that Council, whose decisions were unanimous, the utmost
that one can take for granted is that he strove to impose his tenets on
his intractable colleagues and "lost the fight."
Here is a striking instance of what would look to the average man very
like intervention in the domestic politics of another nation--well-meant
and, it may be, beneficent intervention--were it not that we are assured
on the highest authority that it is nothing of the sort. It was devised
as an expedient for getting outside help for the capture of Petrograd by
the anti-Bolshevists. The end, therefore, was good, and the means seemed
effectual to those who employed them. The Kolchak-Denikin party could,
it was believed, have taken possession of that capital long before, by
obtaining the military co-operation of the Esthonians. But the price
asked by these was the recognition of their complete independence by the
non-Bolshevist government in the name of all Russia. Kolchak, to his
credit, refused to pay this price, seeing that he had no powers to do
so, and only a dictator would sign away the territory by usurping the
requisite authority. Consequently the combined attack on Petrograd was
not undertaken. The Admiral's refusal was justified by the circumstances
that he was the spokesman only of a large section of the Russian people,
and that a thoroughly representative assembly must be consulted on the
subject previous to action being taken. The military stagnation that
ensued lasted for months. Then one day the press brought the tidings
that the difficulty was ingeniously overcome. This is the shape in which
the intelligence was communicated to the world: "Colonel Marsh, of the
British army, who is representing General Gough, organized a republic in
northwest Russia at Reval, August 12th, _within forty-five minutes_,
General Yudenitch being nominally the head of the new government, which
is affiliated with the Kolchak government. Northwest Russia opposes the
Esthonian government only in principle because it wants guaranties that
the Esthonians will not be the stepping-stone for some big Power like
Germany to control the Russian outlet through the Baltic. If the
Esthonians give such guaranties, the northwestern Russians are perfectly
willing to let them become an independent state."[321]
Here then was a "British colonel" who, in addition to his military
duties, was, according to this account, willing and able to create an
independent republic without any Supreme Council to assist him, whereas
professional diplomatists and military men of other nations had been
trying for months to found a Rhine republic under Dorten and had failed.
Nor did he, if the newspaper report be correct, waste much time at the
business. From the moment of its inception until northwestern Russia
stood forth an independent state, promulgating and executing grave
decisions in the sphere of international politics, only forty-five
minutes are said to have elapsed. Forty-five minutes by the clock. It
was almost as quick a feat as the drafting of the Covenant of Nations.
Further, the resourceful statemaker forged a republic which was
qualified to transfer sovereignly Russian territory to unrecognized
states without consulting the nation or obtaining authority from any
one. More marvelous than any other detail, however, is the circumstance
that he did his work so well that it never amounted to
intervention.[322]
One cannot affect surprise if the distinction between this amazing
exploit of diplomatico-military prestidigitation and intermeddling in
the internal affairs of another nation prove too subtle for the mental
grasp of the average unpolitical individual.
It is practices like these which ultimately determine the worth of the
treaties and the Covenant which Mr. Wilson was content to take back with
him to Washington as the final outcome of what was to have been the most
superb achievement of historic man. Of the new ethical principles, of
the generous renunciation of privileges, of the righting of secular
wrongs, of the respect that was to be shown for the weak, which were to
have cemented the union of peoples into one pacific if not blissful
family, there remained but the memory. No such bitter draught of
disappointment was swallowed by the nations since the world first had a
political history. Many of the resounding phrases that once foretokened
a new era of peace, right, and equity were not merely emptied of their
contents, but made to connote their opposites. Freedom of the seas
became supremacy of the seas, which may possibly turn out to be a
blessed consummation for all concerned, but should not have been
smuggled in under a gross misnomer. The abolition of war means, as
British and American and French generals and admirals have since told
their respective fellow-citizens, thorough preparations for the next
war, which are not to be confined, as heretofore, to the so-called
military states, but are to extend over all Anglo-Saxondom.[323] "Open
covenants openly arrived at" signify secret conclaves and conspirative
deliberations carried on in impenetrable secrecy which cannot be
dispensed with even after the whole business has passed into
history.[324] The self-determination of peoples finds its limit in the
rights of every Great Power to hold its subject nationalities in thrall
on the ground that their reciprocal relations appertain to the domestic
policy of the state. It means, further, the privilege of those who wield
superior force to put irresistible pressure upon those who are weak, and
the lever which it places in their hands for the purpose is to be known
under the attractive name of the protection of minorities. Abstention
from interference in the home affairs of a neighboring community is made
to cover intermeddling of the most irksome and humiliating character in
matters which have no nexus with international law, for if they had, the
rule would be applicable to all nations. The lesser peoples must harken
to injunctions of the greater states respecting their mode of treating
alien immigrants and must submit to the control of foreign bodies which
are ignorant of the situation and its requirements. Nor is it enough
that those states should accord to the members of the Jewish and other
races all the rights which their own citizens enjoy--they must go
farther and invest them with special privileges, and for this purpose
renounce a portion of their sovereignty. They must likewise allow their
more powerful allies to dictate to them their legislation on matters of
transit and foreign commerce.[325] For the Great Powers, however, this
law of minorities was not written. They are above the law. Their warrant
is force. In a word, force is the trump card in the political game of
the future as it was in that of the past. And M. Clemenceau's reminder
to the petty states at the opening of the Conference that the wielders
of twelve million troops are the masters of the situation was
appropriate. Thus the war which was provoked by the transformation of a
solemn treaty into a scrap of paper was concluded by the presentation of
two scraps of paper as a treaty and a covenant for the moral renovation
of the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[288] _The Daily Telegraph_, March 28, 1919.
[289] In a speech delivered at a dinner given in Paris on April 19,
1919, by the Commonwealth of Australia to Australian soldiers.
[290] In March, 1919.
[291] August 19, 1919.
[292] Cf. _Corriere delta Sera_, August 20, 1919.
[293] _Ibidem_ (_Corriere della Sera_, August 20, 1919).
[294] _L'Humanité,_ May 21, 1919.
[295] _The Nation_, August 23, 1919.
[296] Chief of the Austrian police at Vienna Congress in the years
1814-15.
[297] In _L'Echo de Paris_, March 2,1919. Cf. _The Daily Telegraph_,
March 4th.
[298] _Le Gaulois_, March 8, 1919. Cf. _The Daily Telegraph_, March
10th.
[299] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 21, 1919.
[300] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 23, 1919
[301] Report of Dr. Jacques Bertillon. Cf. _L'Information_, January 20,
1919.
[302] Cf. _Le Matin_, August 13, 1919.
30
3: Excess of births over deaths (yearly average).--Cf.
_L'Information,_ January 20, 1919:
Germany Great Britain Italy France
1861-70 408,333 365,499 183,196 93,515
1871-80 511,034 431,436 191,538 64,063
1881-90 551,308 442,112 307,082 66,982
1891-1900 730,265 430,000 339,409 23,961
1901-10 866,338 484,822 369,959 46,524
[304] Professor L. Marchand. Cf. _La Démocratie Nouvelle_, April 26,
1919.
[305] Dr. Walter Rathenau, in a book entitled _The Death of France_. I
have not been able to procure a copy of this book. The extracts given
above are taken from a statement published by M. Brudenne in the _Matin_
of February 16, 1919.
[306] _Germania_, August 11, 1919. Cf. _Le Temps_, September 9, 1919.
[307] M. André Tardieu in a speech delivered on August 17, 1919. Cf.
Paris newspapers of following two days, and in particular _New York
Herald_, August 19th.
[308] Cf. speech delivered by M. André Tardieu on August 17, 1919.
[309] On this subject of reparations the _Journal de Genève_ published
several interesting articles at various times, as, for example, on May
15, 1919.
[310] Speech of M. Klotz in the Chamber on September 5, 1919. Cf.
_L'Echo de Paris_, September 6, 1919.
[311] D'Estournelles de Constant. _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_, May
15, 1919.
[312] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.
[313] Issued on November 9, 1918.
[314] See _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 30, 1919.
[315] An American Senator uncharitably conjectured that she received
this honorable distinction in order to contribute an additional vote to
the British.
[316] Cf. interview with a Persian official, published in the Paris
edition of _The Chicago Tribune_, August 19, 1919.
[317] "Unfortunately, Mr. Lloyd George, who has stripped the Foreign
Office of real power, has frequently given assurances of this nature,
and his acts have always contradicted them. As a proof, his last
interview with M. Clemenceau will serve." Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August
15, 1919, article by Pertinax.
[318] _Le Journal des Débats_, August 15, 1919.
[319] In Washington on August 16, 1919.
[320] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 19, 1919.
[321] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.
[322] After the above was written, a French journal, the _Echo de Paris_
of September 19, 1919, announced that General Marsh declares that his
agents acted without his instructions, but none the less it holds him
responsible for this Baltic policy.
[323] Marshal Douglas Haig, Lord French, the American pacifist, Sydney
Baker, Senator Chamberlain, Representative Kahn, and a host of others
have been preaching universal military training. The press, too, with
considerable exceptions, favors the movement. "We want a democratized
army, which represents all the nation, and it can be found only in
universal service.... Universal service is our best guaranty of peace."
Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.
[324] President Wilson, when at the close of his conference with the
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations--at the White House--asked how the
United States had voted on the Japanese resolution in favor of race
equality, replied: "I am not sure of being free to answer the question,
because it affects a large number of points that were discussed in
Paris, and in the interest of international harmony I think I had better
not reply."--_The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.
[325] In virtue of Article LX of the Treaty with Austria.
XIV
THE TREATY WITH GERMANY
To discuss in detail the peace terms which after many months' desultory
talk were finally presented to Count Brockdorff-Rantzau would transcend
the scope of these pages. Like every other act of the Supreme Council,
they may be viewed from one of two widely sundered angles of
survey--either as the exercise by a victorious state of the power
derived from victory over the vanquished enemy, or as one of the
measures by which the peace of the world is to be enforced in the
present and consolidated in the future. And from neither point of view
can it command the approval of unbiased political students. At first the
Germans, and not they alone, expected that the conditions would be based
on the Fourteen Points, while many of the Allies took it for granted
that they would be inspired by the resolve to cripple Teutondom for all
time. And for each of these anticipations there were good formal
grounds.
The only legitimate motive for interweaving the Covenant with the Treaty
was to make of the latter a sort of corollary of the former and to
moderate the instincts of vengeance by the promptings of higher
interests. On this ground, and only on this, did the friends of
far-ranging reform support Mr. Wilson in his contention that the two
documents should be rendered mutually interdependent. Reparation for the
damage done in violation of international law and sound guaranties
against its recurrence are of the essence of every peace treaty that
follows a decisive victory. But reparation is seldom this and nothing
more. The lower instincts of human nature, when dominant as they are
during a bloody war and in the hour of victory, generally outweigh
considerations not only of right, but also of enlightened egotism,
leaving justice to merge into vengeance. And the fruits are treasured
wrath and a secret resolve on the part of the vanquished to pay out his
victor at the first opportunity. The war-loser of to-day aims at
becoming the war-winner of to-morrow. And this frame of mind is
incompatible with the temper needed for an era of moral fellowship such
as Mr. Wilson was supposed to be intent on establishing. Consequently, a
peace treaty unmodified by the principles underlying the Covenant is
necessarily a negation of the main possibilities of a society of nations
based upon right and a decisive argument against joining together the
two instruments.
The other kind of peace which Mr. Wilson was believed to have had at
heart consisted not merely in the liquidation of the war, but in the
uprooting of its permanent causes, in the renunciation by the various
nations of sanguinary conflicts as a means of determining rival claims,
and in such an amicable rearrangement of international relations as
would keep such disputes from growing into dangerous quarrels. Right, or
as near an approximation to it as is attainable, would then take the
place of violence, whereby military guaranties would become not only
superfluous, but indicative of a spirit irreconcilable with the main
purpose of the League. Each nation would be entitled to equal
opportunity within the limits assigned to it by nature and widened by
its own mental and moral capacities. Thus permanently to forbid a
numerous, growing, and territorially cramped nation to possess overseas
colonies for its superfluous population while overburdening others with
possessions which they are unable to utilize, would constitute a
negation of one of the basic principles of the new ordering.
Those were the grounds which seemed to warrant the belief that the
Treaty would be not only formally, but substantially and in its spirit
an integral, part of the general settlement based on the Fourteen
Points.
This anticipation turned out to be a delusion. Wilsonianism proved to be
a very different system from that of the Fourteen Points, and its author
played the part not only of an interpreter of his tenets, but also of a
sort of political pope alone competent to annul the force of laws
binding on all those whom he should refuse to dispense from their
observance. He had to do with patriotic politicians permeated with the
old ideas, desirous of providing in the peace terms for the next war and
striving to secure the maximum of advantage over the foe presumptive, by
dismembering his territory, depriving him of colonies, making him
dependent on others for his supplies of raw stuffs, and artificially
checking his natural growth. Nearly all of them had principles to invoke
in favor of their claims and some had nothing else. And it was these
tendencies which Mr. Wilson sought to combine with the ethical ideals to
be incarnated in the Society of Nations. Now this was an impossible
synthesis. The spirit of vindictiveness--for that was well represented
at the Conference--was to merge and lose itself in an outflow of
magnanimity; precautions against a hated enemy were to be interwoven
with implicit confidence in his generosity; a military occupation would
provide against a sudden onslaught, while an approach to disarmament
would bear witness to the absence of suspicion. Thus Poland would
discharge the function of France's ally against the Teutons in the east,
but her frontiers were to leave her inefficiently protected against
their future attacks from the west. Germany was dismembered, yet she
was credited with self-discipline and generosity enough to steel her
against the temptation to profit by the opportunity of joining together
again what France had dissevered. The League of Nations was to be based
upon mutual confidence and good fellowship, yet one of its most powerful
future members was so distrusted as to be declared permanently unworthy
to possess any overseas colonies. Germany's territory in the Saar Valley
is admittedly inhabited by Germans, yet for fifteen years there is to be
a foreign administration there, and at the end of it the people are to
be asked whether they would like to cut the bonds that link them with
their own state and place themselves under French sway, so that a
premium is offered for French immigration into the Saar Valley.
Those are a few of the consequences of the mixture of the two
irreconcilable principles.
That Germany richly deserved her punishment cannot be gainsaid. Her
crime was without precedent. Some of its most sinister consequences are
irremediable. Whole sections of her people are still unconscious not
only of the magnitude, but of the criminal character, of their misdeeds.
None the less there is a future to be provided for, and one of the
safest provisions is to influence the potential enemy's will for evil if
his power cannot be paralyzed. And this the Treaty failed to do.
The Germans, when they learned the conditions, discussed them angrily,
and the keynote was refusal to sign the document. The financial clauses
were stigmatized as masked slavery. The press urged that during the war
less than one-tenth of France's territory had been occupied by their
countrymen and that even of this only a fragment was in the zone of
combat. The entire wealth of France, they alleged, had been estimated
before the war at from three hundred and fifty milliard to four hundred
milliard francs, consequently for the devastated provinces hardly more
than one-twentieth of that sum could fairly be demanded as reparation,
whereas the claim set forth was incomparably more. They objected to the
loss of their colonies because the justification alleged--that they were
disqualified to administer them because of their former cruelties toward
the natives--was groundless, as the Allies themselves had admitted
implicitly by offering them the right of pre-emption in the case of the
Portuguese and other overseas possessions on the very eve of the war.