The Geneva Protocol Part 5

The fact is, as any realist will admit, that every frontier, no matter how absurd originally or even now, contains, in the very fact of its existence, elements of stability and of reason which to _some extent_ justify its existence. The ordinary individual near a {30} frontier, as distinguished from the agitator, becomes used to it. Business transactions adjust themselves to it and in a very short time after its creation any proposed change implies inherently a certain amount of undesirability. It is impossible, perhaps, to imagine or to draw a more absurd frontier than that between Switzerland and France in the region of Geneva.[5] It is a monstrosity, geographically and economically, and yet every one is contented with it or at least more contented with it than with the idea of changing it. Naturally there are certain attendant annoyances, as in a motor ride out of Geneva which involves two or more Customs frontier examinations within a few kilometres; and there are certain absurdities involved in catching Swiss fish and French fish in different parts of Lake Leman; and one is amused in reading Customs regulations which permit cows to pasture in one country and be milked in the other without duty; but still every one has gotten used to these matters and gets along with them.

So on the whole these two maligned words represent a rather peaceful condition.

Before the World War the irritation produced in the minds of many by the then existing _status quo_ largely related to the frontiers in Eastern Europe and the somewhat similar irritation now existing among alleged liberal thinkers is due to the frontiers created by the Peace Treaties in general which are so usually and inaccurately referred to as the Treaty of Versailles.

Here, I think it is fair to make a certain distinction regarding the causes internationally of a given _status quo_ at any particular time and of the existing situation in particular. These causes are two, generally speaking--agreement and war. The instances in modern history of changes in frontiers reached by free agreement are innumerable. I do not see how any one who recognizes the existing state system can object to them or believe that force should be used to change them. Of course there are critics who object to the existing state system and from {31} a theoretical point of view there is something to be said for these objections. The real answer to them at this time is, that whether they are good or bad, the present state system is one that, so far as any human being can see now, is certain to exist for some more centuries at least; and accordingly, outside of dreamland, we must take this system as it is. Given that state system, agreements between states as to their frontiers should be sacred. If a state can make an agreement about its frontier, and then, because it made a bad agreement or a stupid agreement or because circ.u.mstances changed after the agreement was made, may go to war to set aside the agreement, the result would only be international anarchy--the state system and everything else would have disappeared together.

The other source of changes in the _status quo_ is war or strictly speaking the treaties of peace that result from war. I pa.s.s by the legal position, which is theoretically correct, that a treaty of peace made by a vanquished Power with a victor is supposedly a free agreement. This is true enough from the technical point of view but has no bearing here. The fact is that when one side wins a war and the other loses it, the treaty of peace is made under compulsion and constraint.

The argument that is made by those who criticize the _status quo_ of the Peace Treaties of 1919 and 1920 runs about as follows;

1. In certain respects the frontiers and arrangements created by the Peace Treaties are unjust.

2. The setting up by the Peace Treaties of an international organization against war is an attempt to sanctify the wickednesses of the _status quo_.

3. Both the Treaties and the international organization which they set up should at least be denounced and probably rejected.

This conclusion in various minds is different and uncertain, but I think that I have stated it fairly.

Let us take these points up in their order.

As a preliminary, let me say that the Treaties of Peace in this connection cannot include the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey.

Certainly at the time that that Treaty was negotiated there was {32} no imposed peace on Turkey; as a matter of fact the Turkish negotiators had things pretty much their own way with the Allies. So that we are considering merely the Treaties with Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria.

In the first place, the question in many cases as to whether or not there is any such thing as a "just" frontier is at least a very doubtful one. I put it this way. If you have a situation where reasonable, impartial and informed minds can differ, you do not have a situation where it can be arbitrarily said by any one that any one frontier is _the_ just frontier. Of course I am not talking of the type of mind which insists that the particular line that he would draw is the one and only line, despite the views of anybody else, because to admit such a theory would mean the admission of the existence of perhaps fifty different frontiers between the same two countries at the same time.

Now as to the Peace Treaties, we certainly have that situation to a very large extent. I do not see how any one could contend that the existence of the Polish corridor is a perfect solution, nor do I see how any one could contend that the absence of the Polish corridor would be a perfect solution. One of the Polish Delegation said to me in Paris in December, 1918, in substance, that it would be impossible to draw a frontier between Germany and Poland which would not do an injustice to one country or to the other or to both, and I believe that his observation is perfectly sound.

The same thing is true as between Roumania and Hungary, and perhaps more true.

My sympathies as to Vilna are rather with the Lithuanians than with the Poles, but no one can read the doc.u.ments without seeing that the Poles have a case.

My own view has always been that the frontier between Poland and Russia is too far to the East, but none the less the Russians, after a fashion, agreed to it.

Most of those whose opinions I respect believe that it was wrong to give the Austrian Tyrol to Italy. Despite those views, I have always believed that the decision was defensible.

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Different American experts of the highest qualifications, of the utmost sincerity and of complete impartiality took different views as to Fiume and the Italian-Yugo-Slav frontier generally. In such circ.u.mstances, who could say, what tribunal could decide, the "just" frontier?

I am willing to admit that this uncertainty on the question of justice may not exist in every case. I have always believed that some of the cessions of territory forced on Bulgaria were utterly indefensible from any point of view whatsoever. I refer, not to Macedonia, that impossible jumble of contradictions, but more particularly to Western Thrace.

My own view is that, on the whole and taken by and large, the existing frontiers in Europe are more near to justice than ever before in modern history.

But I am going to a.s.sume for the rest of this discussion that some of these frontiers are wrong and should be changed. What is our answer to that situation?

Let me point out in the first place that the mere fact that a frontier was imposed by force resulting in a peace treaty is not necessarily anything against it. Take the case of Alsace-Lorraine, for example; or take a still more striking case, the case of Germany and Denmark.

Admittedly, in and out of Germany, the result as to Slesvig was just and should continue.

Furthermore, it is necessary to point out that the _imposed_ origin of a situation may not continue as the cause of that situation. It _may_ become accepted and voluntary, a full agreement. An instance here is the reparations question. The _status quo_ as to reparations (a very uncertain one) imposed by the Treaty of Versailles upon Germany, has now, under that very Treaty, become an agreed _status quo_ by reason of the voluntary adoption by Germany of the Dawes Report; for in reality as well as in strictness of law that plan could not have been adopted, much less be carried out, without the voluntary a.s.sent of Germany to its provisions.

However, taking the frontier _status quo_ of the Peace Treaties at its worst, that is to say at its alleged worst, admitting, in other {34} words, that parts of it are unjust and are the result only of force, what are we to say as to the future?

The possibility of change which, under the supposition that I have made, would in itself be admittedly desirable, is along two lines, the line of agreement or the line of war. The so-called fixation or consecration of this _status quo_ under the League of Nations in no way precludes a change by agreement, _the utmost that it can do is to preclude a change by war_.

Accordingly, we are confronted at the outset with the question as to whether the continuance of this _status quo_ is, or is not, a worse evil than war. Even those who a.s.sume or who believe that war is the preferable of the two must, in order to reach that belief, hold that change by agreement is impossible. Such an a.s.sumption is contrary to the facts of history, but for the sake of this discussion it may be admitted.

In other words, I am willing to a.s.sume that a particular part of the frontier _status quo_ is wrong, is unjust, and was brought about by force, and should be changed, and that it cannot be changed by agreement, and come directly to the question if, in these circ.u.mstances, it should or should not be changed by war. My answer to this question is: No. And I do not think it is necessary to put this answer merely on the ground of the evil of the war itself, the death, the destruction and so on. It is sufficient to support a negative answer to point out that the effect of the war could not be limited.

War never is limited, it goes to lengths that have nothing to do with the supposed injustice for which it is commenced.

Let me give an instance as a concrete supposition. Take the Bulgarian-Greek frontier and suppose, as I do, that it ought to be changed, and suppose further, as the advocates of war a.s.sert, that it should be changed by war between Bulgaria and Greece; one of two things would happen in all human probability. Either Greece would be the victor and then not only would the boundary be as unjust to Bulgaria as it is now, but much more so. Or else Bulgaria would be the victor, in which case the injustice would simply be reversed; the frontier would not move to any {35} theoretical point of justice, but would move to the point dictated by the new Peace treaty.

In other words, war is not like a litigation which ends in the settlement of a particular dispute. Any war, in its settlement, goes far beyond the dispute which brought it about; every war opens up every possible ambition and desire of the victor.[6] Did the World War end merely in deciding the question about the rights of Austria and Serbia in connection with the murder of the Archduke? Where was the fate of the German colonies decided--in East Africa and in the Pacific, or on the Western Front?

This whole question is of vital importance in connection with the Protocol of Geneva. If that Protocol comes into force and is accepted by Germany, by Austria, by Hungary and by Bulgaria, it will have this effect at least; it will change what I may call the status of the _status quo_ in regard to these countries to this extent, that in lieu of that _status quo_ being one imposed by force, it will have become one agreed to, at least to the point that it is agreed that the _status quo_ may not be changed by war but only by agreement.[7] As a practical example, it will mean, as we now see, that the German effort to regain some of her lost colonies under the mandate system, will again be an effort of negotiation[8] and not an effort of force.

All that the Covenant or the Protocol of Geneva attempts to do about the _status quo_ is to say that frontiers shall not be changed _as a result of aggression_. Indeed, the Protocol[9] protects even an aggressor against loss of territory or of independence as a penalty for its aggression; discussion, leading up perhaps to peaceful agreement but to nothing else, is permitted by Articles 11 and 19 of the Covenant, but that is all.

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My view is that these provisions are sound and that they should not be extended.

In saying, as I did, that the possibility of change in the _status quo_ is along only two lines, the line of agreement and the line of war, I did not lose sight of the proposals made in various forms that there should be some method under the League of Nations or otherwise by which a tribunal of some sort would be empowered to make such changes from time to time. Most of these proposals envisage plebiscites in one form or another.

These proposals by their advocates are thought to have the advantage of adaptability to changing conditions and to be more conformable to the theory of the consent of the governed as a basis of Government.[10]

Of course, changes of frontiers made by any form of tribunal would in a sense be changes of frontiers made by agreement among the parties; for there would be necessarily an agreement in advance setting up such a tribunal and engaging to conform to its conclusions.

It may perhaps be imagined that as between two particular countries some such arrangement is possible along limited lines and relating to a particular area or areas. I doubt even this possibility; but certainly no general agreement in accord with such theories is possible and in my judgment it would be highly undesirable if it were possible.

A tribunal which was charged with the duty of determining changes in frontiers would clearly be a superstate, full-fledged, and in any sense of that much abused term. Obviously, a change of frontier, if it went far enough, might result in the substantial, or even the literal, disappearance of one state by its incorporation within the territories of another. It is inconceivable that any country would agree to such a proposition. Even if it were limited very strictly, it would present enormous difficulties and would certainly arouse fierce pa.s.sions, as is well ill.u.s.trated by {37} discussion regarding the tribunal which is now sitting to consider the frontier between Northern and Southern Ireland.

Nor would the matter be resolved by the suggested idea of plebiscites.

Anyone who will consider this question of plebiscites will realize that the determining factor is not wholly the vote itself but to a large extent the terms in which the plebiscite paper is written. He who drafts the agreement for the plebiscite has much to do with what the plebiscite will determine.[11] The questions are: Is the area to vote as a whole or by districts, and where is the line of the voting area to be drawn? The first of these was one of the great questions in the Upper Silesia case. To apply the idea to an existing episode, let us again refer to the case of Ireland. If the plebiscite were in the whole of Ireland, it would go for Dublin; if it were in Ulster, it would go for Belfast; if it were in Tyrone or Fermanagh, the result would perhaps depend on the exact date when it was taken, as recent elections indicate.

Another difficulty about plebiscites is this: Is their effect perpetual or not, and if not how long does it last? If Tyrone votes for Dublin today, is it an eternal decision or only till another vote in 1930, or till when? There must be some time limit at least; plebiscites cannot be held every year or even every five years, a fact which ill.u.s.trates the quiet advantages of some kind of a _status quo_.

Another question about a plebiscite is this: Let us concede that an overwhelming vote such as took place in the regions of East Prussia under the Peace Treaties is to be decisive forever. But suppose the vote is very close; how about a vote where a little over half of the population go one way and a trifle under half go the other? Is this conclusive? Does it have the same moral effect as a larger vote? Is a majority of one vote just as good as a majority of ninety per cent.?

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In reality, the truth about these proposals for changing frontiers by some sort of international procedure is that those who advocate them do not believe in them as a general proposition. An Englishman who believes in this sort of thing, for example, believes in it as regards Macedonia or some such region; he does not for a moment think that such a procedure should enable the people of British Columbia, say, to become part of the United States. I do not mean to intimate that the people of British Columbia have any such idea; but how is it going to be possible to give the privilege (if it be a privilege) to people along a few selected frontiers?

Another point, a fatal objection to such a scheme, is the inevitable uncertainty which it would set up.

It may be a better thing to live in Manitoba than in North Dakota, or to live in North Dakota than in Manitoba; but worse than almost any conceivable place of residence would be a status which might change in the future, so that one could not tell say five years ahead in what country he was going to live. A frontier is not merely a line drawn on a map or demarcated on the ground; a frontier means a _nexus_ of customs, of laws, of traditions and of innumerable other things that directly affect the daily life and conduct of every inhabitant. Any lawyer who has had any experience in the matter will realize the enormous difficulties that surround any transfer of territory merely in connection with the drafting of the necessary papers[12]; and any student who wishes to see how far-reaching the practical difficulties may be need only consider the present situation in Alsace-Lorraine in its bearing upon the relations between France and the Vatican.

The impossibility and the undesirability of setting up any system for changing frontiers, such as has been discussed, are equally evident.