Peaceless Europe Part 8

The Note suggests that the territorial conditions laid down for Germany in Europe shall be moderate in order that she may not feel deeply embittered after peace.

The method would be sound if the recent War had been nothing but a European war for Germany; but that is not the case.

Previous to the War Germany was a great world Power whose _future was on the sea_. This was the power of which she was so inordinately proud. For the loss of this world power she will never be consoled.

The Allies have taken from her--or are going to take from her--without being deterred by fear of her resentment, all her colonies, all her ships of war, a great part of her commercial fleet (as reparations), the foreign markets which she controlled.

That is the worst blow that could be inflicted on her, and it is suggested that she can be pacified by some improvements in territorial conditions. That is a pure illusion. The remedy is not big enough for the thing it is to cure.

If there is any desire, for general reasons, to give Germany some satisfaction, it must not be sought in Europe. Such help will be vain as long as Germany has lost her world policy.

To pacify her (if there is any interest in so doing) she must have satisfaction given her in colonies, in ships, in commercial expansion.

The Note of March 26 thinks of nothing but satisfaction in European territory.

III

Mr. Lloyd George fears that unduly severe territorial conditions imposed on Germany will play into the hands of Bolshevism. Is there not cause for fear, on the other hand, that the method he suggests will have that very result?

The Conference has decided to call into being a certain number of new States. Is it possible without being unjust to them to impose on them inacceptable frontiers towards Germany? If these people--Poland and Bohemia above all--have resisted Bolshevism up to now it is through national sentiment. If this sentiment is violated Bolshevism will find an easy prey in them, and the only existing barrier between Russian and German Bolshevism will be broken.

The result will be either a Confederation of Eastern and Central Europe under the direction of a Bolshevik Germany or the enslavery of those countries to a Germany become reactionary again, thanks to the general anarchy. In either case the Allies will have lost the War.

The policy of the French Government, on the other hand, is to give the fullest aid to those young peoples with the support of everything liberal in Europe, and not to try to introduce at their expense abatements--which in any case would be useless--of the colonial, naval and commercial disaster which the peace imposes on Germany.

If it is necessary, in giving these young peoples frontiers without which they cannot live, to transfer under their sovereignty some Germans, sons of the men who enslaved them, we may regret the necessity, and we should do it with moderation, but it cannot be avoided.

Further, when all the German colonies are taken from her entirely and definitely, because she ill-treated the natives, what right is there to refuse normal frontiers to Poland and Bohemia because Germans installed themselves in those countries as precursors of the tyrant Pan-Germanism?

IV

The Note of March 26 insists on the necessity of a peace which will appear to Germany as a just peace, and the French Government agrees.

It may be observed, however, that, given the German mentality, their conception of justice may not be the same as that of the Allies.

And, also, surely the Allies as well as Germany, even before Germany, should feel this impression of justice. The Allies who fought together should conclude the War with a peace equal for all.

Now, following the method suggested in the Note of March 26, what will be the result?

A certain number of total and definite guarantees will be given to maritime nations whose countries were not invaded.

Total and definite, the surrender of the German colonies.

Total and definite, the surrender of the German war fleet.

Total and definite, the surrender of a large part of the German commercial fleet.

Total and lasting, if not definite, the exclusion of Germany from foreign markets.

For the Continental countries, on the other hand--that is to say, for the countries which have suffered most from the War--would be reserved partial and transitory solutions:

Partial solution, the modified frontiers suggested for Poland and Bohemia.

Transitory solution, the defensive pledge offered France for the protection of her territory.

Transitory solution, the regime proposed for the Saar coal.

There is an evident inequality which might have a bad influence on the after-war relations among the Allies, more important than the after-war relations of Germany with them.

It has been shown in Paragraph I that it would be an illusion to hope that territorial satisfaction offered to Germany would compensate her sufficiently for the world disaster she has suffered. And it may surely be added that it would be an injustice to lay the burden of such compensation on the shoulders of those countries among the Allies which have had to bear the heaviest burden of the War.

After the burdens of the War, these countries cannot bear the burdens of the peace. It is essential that they should feel that the peace is just and equal for all.

And unless that be a.s.sured it is not only in Central Europe that there will be fear of Bolshevism, for nowhere does it propagate so easily, as has been seen, as amid national disillusionment.

V

The French Government desires to limit itself for the moment to these observations of a general character. It pays full homage to the intentions which inspired Mr. Lloyd George's memorandum. But it considers that the inductions that can be drawn from the present Note are in consonance with justice and the general interests.

And those are the considerations by which the French Government will be inspired in the coming exchange of ideas for the discussion of conditions suggested by the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

These two doc.u.ments are of more than usual interest.

The British Prime Minister, with his remarkable insight, at once notes the seriousness of the situation. He sees the danger to the peace of the world in German depression. Germany oppressed does not mean Germany subjected. Every year France becomes numerically weaker, Germany stronger. The horrors of war will be forgotten and the maintenance of peace will depend on the creation of a situation which makes life possible, does not cause exasperation to come into public feeling or into the just claims of Germans desirous of independence.

Injustice in the hour of triumph will never be pardoned, can never be atoned.

So the idea of handing over to other States numbers of Germans is not only an injustice, but a cause of future wars, and what can be said of Germans is also true of Magyars. No cause of future wars must be allowed to remain. Putting millions of Germans under Polish rule--that is, under an inferior people which has never shown any capacity for stable self-government--must lead to a new war sooner or later. If Germany in exasperation became a country of revolution, what would happen to Europe? You can impose severe conditions, but that does not mean that you can enforce them; the conditions to be imposed must be such that a responsible German Government can in good faith a.s.sume the obligation of carrying them out.

Neither Great Britain nor the United States of America can a.s.sume the obligation of occupying Germany if it does not carry out the excessively severe conditions which it is desired to impose. Can France occupy Germany alone?

From that moment Lloyd George saw the necessity of admitting Germany into the League of Nations _at once_, and proposed a scheme of treaty containing conditions which, while very severe, were in part tolerable for the German people.

Clemenceau's reply, issued a few days later, contains the French point of view, and has an ironical note when it touches on the weak points in Lloyd George's argument. The War, says the French note, was not a European war; Germany's eyes were fixed on world power, and she saw that her future was on the sea. There is no necessity to show consideration regarding territorial conditions in Europe. By taking away her commercial fleet, her colonies and her foreign markets more harm is done to Germany than by taking European territory. To pacify her (if there is any occasion for doing so) she must be offered commercial satisfaction. At this point the note, in considering questions of justice and of mere utility, becomes distinctly ironical.

Having decided to bring to life new States, especially Poland and Czeko-Slovakia, why not give them safe frontiers even if some Germans or Magyars have to be sacrificed?

One of Clemenceau's fixed ideas is that criterions of justice must not be applied to Germans. The note says explicitly that, given the German mentality, it is by no means sure that the conception of justice of Germany will be the same as that of the Allies.

On another occasion, after the signing of the treaty, when Lloyd George pointed out the wisdom of not claiming from Germany the absurdity of handing over thousands of officers accused of cruelty for judgment by their late enemies, and recognized frankly the impossibility of carrying out such a stipulation in England, Clemenceau replied simply that the Germans are not like the English.

The delicate point in Clemenceau's note is the contradiction in which he tries to involve the British Prime Minister between the clauses of the treaty concerning Germany outside Europe, in which no moderation had been shown, and those regarding Germany in Europe, in which he himself did not consider moderation either necessary or opportune.

There was an evident divergence of views, clearing the way for a calm review of the conditions to be imposed, and here two countries could have exercised decisive action: the United States and Italy.

But the United States was represented by Wilson, who was already in a difficult situation. By successive concessions, the gravity of which he had not realized, he found himself confronted by drafts of treaties which in the end were contradictions of all his proposals, the absolute ant.i.thesis of the pledges he had given. It is quite possible that he had not seen where he was going, but his frequent irritation was the sign of his distress. Still, in the ship-wreck of his whole programme, he had succeeded in saving one thing, the Statute of the League of Nations which was to be prefaced to all the treaties.

He wanted to go back to America and meet the Senate with at least something to show as a record of the great undertaking, and he hoped and believed in good faith that the Covenant of the League of Nations would sooner or later have brought about agreement and modified the worst of the mistakes made. His conception of things was academic, and he had not realized that there was need to const.i.tute the nations before laying down rules for the League; he trusted that bringing them together with mutual pledges would further most efficiently the cause of peace among the peoples. On the other hand, there was diffidence, shared by both, between Wilson and Lloyd George, and there was little likelihood of the British Prime Minister's move checking the course the Conference had taken.

Italy might have done a great work if its representatives had had a clear policy. But, as M. Tardieu says, they had no share in the effective doings of the Conference, and their activity was almost entirely absorbed in the question of Fiume. The Conference was a three-sided conversation between Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George, and the latter had hostility and diffidence on each side of him, with Italy--as earlier stated--for the most part absent. Also, it was just then that the divergence between Wilson and the Italian representatives reached its acute stage. The essential parts of the treaty were decided in April and the beginning of May, on April 22 the question of the right bank of the Rhine, on the 23rd or 24th the agreement about reparations. Italy was absent, and when the Italian delegates returned to Paris without being asked on May 6, the text of the treaty was complete, in print. In actual fact, only one person did really effective work and directed the trend of the Conference, and that person was Clemenceau.