The American Empire Part 22

2. The lesser capitalist states.

3. Enemy nations.

4. Undeveloped territories.

5. The socialist states.

The great capitalist states were five in number--Great Britain, France, Italy, j.a.pan and the United States. These five states dominated the armistice commission and the Peace Conference and they were expected to dominate the League of Nations. The position of these five powers was clearly set forth in the regulations governing procedure at the Peace Conference. Rule I reads: "The belligerent powers with general interests--the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy and j.a.pan--shall take part in all meetings and commissions." (_New York Times_, January 20, 1919.) Under this rule the Big Five were the Peace Conference, and throughout the subsequent negotiations they continued to act the part.

The same concentration of authority was read into the revised covenant of the League of Nations. Article 4 provides that the Executive Council of the League "shall consist of the representatives of the United States of America, of the British Empire, of France, of Italy and of j.a.pan, together with four other members of the League." The authority of the Big Five was to be maintained by giving them five votes out of nine on the executive council of the League, no matter how many other nations might become members.

It was among the Big Five, furthermore, that the spoils of victory were divided. The Big Five enjoyed a full meal; the lesser capitalist states had the crumbs.

The enemy nations were stripped bare. Their colonies were taken, their foreign investments were confiscated, their merchant ships were appropriated, they were loaded down with enormous indemnities, they were dismembered. In short, they were rendered incapable of future economic compet.i.tion. The thoroughgoing way in which this stripping was accomplished is discussed in detail by J. M. Keynes in "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" (chapters 4 and 5).

The undeveloped territories--the economic opportunities upon which the Big Five were relying for the disposal of their surplus products and surplus capital, were carved and handed about as a butcher carves a carca.s.s. Shantung, which Germany had taken from China, was turned over to j.a.pan under circ.u.mstances which made it impossible for China to sign the Treaty--thus leaving her territory open for further aggression. The Near East was divided between Great Britain, France and Italy. Mexico was not invited to sign the treaty and her name was omitted from the list of those eligible to join the League. The German possessions in Africa and in the Pacific were distributed in the form of "mandates" to the Great Powers. The principle underlying this distribution was that all of the unexploited territory should go to the capitalist victors for exploitation. The proportions of the division had been established, previously, in a series of secret treaties that had been entered into during the earlier years of the war.

With the Big Five in control, with the lesser capitalist states silenced; with the border states made or in the making; with the enemy reduced to economic impotence, and the unexploited portions of the world a.s.signed for exploitation, the conference was compelled to face still another problem--the Socialist Republic of Russia.

Russia, Czar ridden and oppressed, had entered the war as an ally of France and Great Britain. Russia, unshackled and attempting self-government on an economic basis, was an "enemy of civilization."

The Allies therefore supported counter-revolution, organized and encouraged warfare by the border states, established and maintained a blockade, the purpose of which was the starvation of the Russian people into submission, and did all that money, munitions, supplies, battleships and army divisions could do to destroy the results of the Russian Revolution.

The Big Five--a.s.suming to speak for all of the twenty-three nations that had declared war on Germany--manipulated the geography of Europe, reduced their enemies to penury, disposed of millions of square miles of territory and tens of millions of human beings as a gardener disposes of his produce, and then turned their united strength to the task of crushing the only thing approaching self-government that Russia has had for centuries.

A more shameless exhibition of imperial l.u.s.t is not recorded in history.

Never before were five nations in a position to sit down at one table and decide the political fate of the world. The opportunity was unique, and yet the statesmen of the world played the old, savage game of imperial aggression and domination.

This brutal policy of dealing with the world and its people was accepted by the United States. Throughout the Conference her representatives occupied a commanding position; at any time they would have been able to speak with a voice of almost conclusive authority; they chose, nevertheless, to play their part in this imperial spectacle. To be sure the Senate refused to ratify the Treaty,--not because of its imperial iniquities, but rather because there was nothing in it for the United States.

3. _Italy, France and j.a.pan_

The shares of spoil falling to Italy and France as a result of the treaty are comparatively small although both countries--and particularly France--carried a terrific war burden. j.a.pan, the least active of any of the leading partic.i.p.ants in the war, received territory of vast importance to her future development.

Italy,--under the secret treaty of London, signed April 26, 1915, by the representatives of Russia, France, Great Britain and Italy,--was to receive that part of Austria known as the Trentine, the entire southern Tyrol, the city and suburbs of Trieste, the Istrian Islands and the province of Dalmatia with various adjacent islands. Furthermore, Article IX of the Treaty stipulated that, in the division of Turkey, Italy should be ent.i.tled to an equal share in the basin of the Mediterranean, and specifically to the province of Adalia. Under Article XIII, "In the event of the expansion of French and English colonial domains in Africa at the expense of Germany, France and Great Britain recognize in principle the Italian right to demand for herself certain compensations in the sense of expansions of her lands in Erithria, Somaliland, in Lybia and colonial districts lying on the boundary, with the colonies of France and England." Substantially, this plan was followed in the Peace Treaty.

The territorial claims of France were simple. The secret treaties include a note from the French Minister of Foreign Affairs to the French Amba.s.sador at Petrograd, dated February 1-14, 1917, which stated that under the Peace Treaty:

"(1) Alsace and Lorraine to be returned to France.

"(2) The boundaries will be extended at least to the limits of the former princ.i.p.ality of Lorraine, and will be fixed under the direction of the French Government. At the same time strategic demands must be taken into consideration, so as to include within the French territory the whole of the industrial iron basin of Lorraine and the whole of the industrial coal-basin of the Saar."

The Peace Treaty confirmed these provisions, with the exception of the Saar Valley, which is to go to France for 15 years under conditions which will ultimately cause its annexation to France if she desires it.

France also gained some slight territorial concessions in Africa. Her real advantage--as a result of the peace--lies in the control of the three provinces with their valuable mineral deposits.

The territorial ambitions of j.a.pan were confined to the Far East. The former Russian Amba.s.sador to Tokio, under date of February 8, 1917, makes the statement that j.a.pan was desirous of securing "the succession to all the rights and privileges possessed by Germany in the Shantung province and for the acquisition of the islands north of the Equator."

In a secret treaty with Great Britain, j.a.pan secured a guarantee covering such a division of the German holdings in the Pacific.

These concessions are of great importance to j.a.pan. By the terms of the Treaty one of her rivals for the trade of the East (Germany) is eliminated, and the territory of that rival goes to j.a.pan. With the control of Port Arthur and Korea and Shantung, j.a.pan holds the gateway to the heart of Northern China. The islands gained by j.a.pan as a result of the Treaty give her a barrier extending from the Kurile Islands, near Kamchatka, through the Empire of j.a.pan proper, to Formosa. Farther out in the Pacific, there are the Ladrones, the Carolines and the Pelew Islands, which, in combination, make a series of submarine bases that render attack by sea difficult or impossible, and that lie, incidentally, between the United States and the Philippine Islands.

j.a.pan came away from the Peace Conference with the key to the East in her pocket.

4. _The Lion's Share_

The lion's share of the Peace Conference spoil went to Great Britain. To each of the other partic.i.p.ants, certain concessions, agreed upon beforehand, were made. The remainder of the war-spoil was added to the British Empire. This "remainder" comprised at least a million and half square miles of territory, and included some of the most important resources in the world.

The territorial gains of Great Britain cover four areas--the Near East, the Far East, Africa, and the South Pacific.

The gains of Great Britain in the Near East include Hedjez and Yemen, the control of which gives the British possession of virtually all of the territory bordering on the Red Sea. The Persian Gulf is likewise placed under British control, through her holding of Mesopotamia and her control over Persia and Oman. The eastern end of the Mediterranean is held by the British through their control of Palestine.

Thus the gateway to the East,--both by land and by sea, the eastern sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates and the basin of the Red Sea all fall into the hands of the British, who now hold the heart of the Near East. The gains of Great Britain in Africa include Togoland, German Southwest Africa and German East Africa.

With these accessions of territory, Great Britain holds a continuous stretch of country from the Cape to Cairo. A British subject can therefore travel on British soil from Cape Town via the Isthmus of Suez, to Siam, covering a distance as the crow flies of something like 10,000 miles.

The British gains in the South Pacific include Kaiser Wilhelm Land and the German islands south of the Equator.

What these territorial gains mean in the way of additional resources for the industries of the home country, only the future can decide. Certain it is, that outside of the Americas, Central Europe, Russia, China and j.a.pan, Great Britain succeeded in annexing most of the important territory of the world.

The _Chicago Tribune_, in one of its charmingly frank editorials, thus describes the gains to the British Empire as a result of the war. "The British mopped up. They opened up their highway from Cairo to the Cape.

They reached out from India and took the rich lands of the Euphrates.

They won Mesopotamia and Syria in the war. They won Persia in diplomacy.

They won the east coast of the Red Sea. They put protecting territory about Egypt and gave India bulwarks. They made the eastern dream of the Germans a British reality.

"The British never had their trade routes so guarded as now. They never had their supremacy of the sea so firmly established. Their naval compet.i.tor, Germany, is gone. No navy threatens them. No empire approximates their size, power, and influence.

"This is the golden age of the British Empire, its Augustan age. Any imperialistic nation would have fought any war at any time to obtain such results, and as imperialistic nations count costs, the British cost, in spite of its great sums in men and money was small." (January 4, 1920.)

5. _Half the World--Without a Struggle_

Two significant facts stand out in this record of spoils distribution.

One is that Great Britain received the lion's share of them in Asia and Africa. The other, that there is no mention of the Americas. Outside of the Western Hemisphere, Great Britain is mistress. In the Americas, with the exception of Canada, the United States is supreme.

There are two reasons for this. One is that Germany's ambitions and possessions included Asia and Africa primarily--and not America. The other is that the Peace Conference recognized the right of the United States to dominate the Western Hemisphere.

The representatives of the United States declared that their country was asking for nothing from the Peace Conference. Nevertheless, the insistent clamor from across the water led the American delegation to secure the insertion in the revised League Covenant of Article XXI which read: "Nothing in this covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of international engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine for securing the maintenance of peace." This article coupled with the first portion of Article X, "The members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League," guarantees to the United States complete authority over Latin America, reserving to her political suzerainty and economic priority.

The half of the earth reserved to the United States under these provisions contains some of the richest mineral deposits, some of the largest timber areas, and some of the best agricultural territory in the world. Thus at the opening of the new era, the United States, at the cost of a comparatively small outlay in men and money, has guaranteed to her by all of the leading capitalist powers practically an exclusive privilege for the exploitation of the Western Hemisphere.

XV. PAN-AMERICANISM

1. _America for the Americans_

In the part.i.tion of the earth, one-half was left under the control of the United States. Among the great nations, parties to the war and the peace, the United States alone asked for nothing--save the acceptance by the world of the Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine, as generally understood, makes her mistress of the Western Hemisphere.

The Monroe Doctrine originated in the efforts of Latin America to establish its independence of imperial Europe, and the counter efforts of imperial Europe to fasten its authority on the newly created Latin American Republics. President Monroe, aroused by the European crusade against popular government, wrote a message to Congress (1823) in which he stated the position of the United States as follows: