The Inside Story of the Peace Conference Part 24

There were scores of thousands of Russian troops in France. Most of them fought valiantly, others half-heartedly, and a few refused to fight at all. But instead of making distinctions the French authorities, moved by the instinct of self-preservation, and preferring prevention to cure, tarred them all with the same brush. "Give a dog a bad name and hang him," says the proverb, and it was exemplified in the case of the Russians, who soon came to be regarded as a _tertium quid_ between enemies of public order and suspicious neutrals. They were profoundly mistrusted. Their officers were deprived of their authority over their own men and placed under the command of excellent French officers, who cannot be blamed for not understanding the temper of the Slavs nor for rubbing them against the grain. The privates, seeing their superiors virtually degraded, concluded that they had forfeited their claim to respect, and treated them accordingly. That gave the death-blow to discipline. The officers, most of whom were devoted heart and soul to the cause of the Allies, with which they had fondly identified their own, lost heart. After various attempts to get themselves reinstated, their feelings toward the nation, which was nowise to blame for the excessive zeal of its public servants, underwent a radical change.

Blazing indignation consumed whatever affection they had originally nurtured for the French, and in many cases also for the other Allies, and they went home to communicate their animus to their countrymen. The soldiers, who now began to be taunted and vilipended as Boches, threw all discipline to the winds and, feeling every hand raised against them, resolved to raise their hands against every man. These were the beginnings of the process of "bolshevization."

This anti-Russian spirit grew intenser as time lapsed. Thousands of Russian soldiers were sent out to work for private employers, not by the War Ministry, but by the Ministry of Agriculture, under whom they were placed. They were fed and paid a wage which under normal circ.u.mstances should have contented them, for it was more than they used to receive in pre-war days in their own country. But the circ.u.mstances were not normal. Side by side with them worked Frenchmen, many of whom were unable physically to compete with the st.u.r.dy peasants from Perm and Vyatka. And when propagandists pointed out to them that the French worker was paid 100 per cent. more, they brooded over the inequality and labeled it as they were told. For overwork, too, the rate of pay was still more unequal. One result of this differential treatment was the estrangement of the two races as represented by the two cla.s.ses of workmen, and the growth of mutual dislike. But there was another. When they learned, as they did in time, that the employer was selling the produce of their labor at a profit of 400 and 500 per cent., they had no hesitation about repeating the formulas suggested to them by socialist propagandists: "We are working for bloodsuckers. The bourgeois must be exterminated." In this way bitterness against the Allies and hatred of the capitalists were inculcated in tens of thousands of Russians who a few months before were honest, simple-minded peasants and well-disciplined soldiers. Many of these men, when they returned to their country, joined the Red Guards of Bolshevism with spontaneous ardor. They needed no pressing.

There was one young officer of the Guards, in particular, named G----, who belonged to a very good family and was an exceptionally cultured gentleman. Music was his recreation, and he was a virtuoso on the violin. In the war he had distinguished himself first on the Russian front and then on the French. He had given of his best, for he was grievously wounded, had his left hand paralyzed, and lost his power of playing the violin forever. He received a high decoration from the French government. For the English nation he professed and displayed great affection, and in particular he revered King George, perhaps because of his physical resemblance to the Tsar. And when King George was to visit Paris he rejoiced exceedingly at the prospect of seeing him. Orders were issued for the troops to come out and line the princ.i.p.al routes along which the monarch would pa.s.s. The French naturally had the best places, but the Place de l'etoile was reserved for the Allied forces. G----, delighted, went to his superior officer and inquired where the Russians were to stand. The general did not know, but promised to ascertain. Accordingly he put the question to the French commander, who replied: "Russian troops? There is no place for any Russian troops." With tears in his eyes G---- recounted this episode, adding: "We, who fought and bled, and lost our lives or were crippled, had to swallow this humiliation, while Poles and Czechoslovaks, who had only just arrived from America in their brand-new uniforms, and had never been under fire, had places allotted to them in the pageant. Is that fair to the troops without whose exploits there would have been no Polish or Czechoslovak officers, no French victory, no triumphal entry of King George V into Paris?"

FOOTNOTE:

[287] It is right to say that during the summer months a considerable section of the anti-Bolshevists modified their view of Britain's policy, and expressed grat.i.tude for the aid bestowed on Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenitch, without which their armies would have collapsed.

XIII

SIDELIGHTS ON THE TREATY

From the opening of the Conference fundamental differences sprang up which split the delegates into two main parties, of which one was solicitous mainly about the resettlement of the world and its future mainstay, the League of Nations, and the other about the furtherance of national interests, which, it maintained, was equally indispensable to an enduring peace. The latter were ready to welcome the League on condition that it was utilized in the service of their national purposes, but not if it countered them. To bridge the chasm between the two was the task to which President Wilson courageously set his hand.

Unluckily, by way of qualifying for the experiment, he receded from his own strong position, and having cut his moorings from one shove, failed to reach the other. His pristine idea was worthy of a world-leader; had, in fact, been entertained and advocated by some of the foremost spirits of modern times. He purposed bringing about conditions under which the pacific progress of the world might be safeguarded in a very large measure and for an indefinite time. But being very imperfectly acquainted with the concrete conditions of European and Asiatic peoples--he had never before felt the pulsation of international life--his ideas about the ways and means were hazy, and his calculations bore no real reference to the elements of the problem. Consequently, with what seemed a wide horizon and a generous ambition, his grasp was neither firm nor comprehensive enough for such a revolutionary undertaking. In no case could he make headway without the voluntary co-operation of the nations themselves, who in their own best interests might have submitted to heavy sacrifices, to which their leaders, whom he treated as true exponents of their will, refused their consent. But he scouted the notion of a world-parliament. Whenever, therefore, contemplating a particular issue, not as an independent question in itself, but as an integral part of a larger problem, he made a suggestion seemingly tending toward the ultimate goal, his motion encountered resolute opposition in the face of which he frequently retreated.

At the outset, on which so much depended, the peoples as distinguished from the governments appeared to be in general sympathy with his princ.i.p.al aim, and it seemed at the time that if appealed to on a clear issue they would have given him their whole-hearted support, provided always that, true to his own principles, he pressed these to the fullest extent and admitted no such invidious distinctions as privileged and unprivileged nations. This belief was confirmed by what I heard from men of mark, leaders of the labor people, and three Prime Ministers. They a.s.sured me that such an appeal would have evoked an enthusiastic response in their respective countries. Convinced that the principles laid down by the President during the last phases of the war would go far to meet the exigencies of the conjuncture, I ventured to write on one of the occasions, when neither party would yield to the other: "The very least that Mr. Wilson might now do, if the deadlock continues, is to publish to the world the desirable objects which the United States are disinterestedly, if not always wisely, striving for, and leave the judgment to the peoples concerned."[288]

But he recoiled from the venture. Perhaps it was already too late. In the judgment of many, his a.s.sent to the suppression of the problem of the freedom of the seas, however unavoidable as a tactical expedient, knelled the political world back to the unregenerate days of strategical frontiers, secret alliances, military preparations, financial burdens, and the balance of power. On that day, his grasp on the banner relaxing, it fell, to be raised, it may be, at some future time by the peoples whom he had aspired to lead. The contests which he waged after that first defeat had little prospect of success, and soon the pith and marrow of the issue completely disappeared. The utmost he could still hope for was a paper covenant--- which is a different thing from a genuine accord--to take home with him to Washington. And this his colleagues did not grudge him. They were operating with a different cast of mind upon a wholly different set of ideas. Their aims, which they pursued with no less energy and with greater perseverance than Mr.

Wilson displayed, were national. Some of them implicitly took the ground that Germany, having plunged the world in war, would persist indefinitely in her nefarious machinations, and must, therefore, in the interests of general peace, be crippled militarily, financially, economically, and politically, for as long a time as possible, while her potential enemies must for the same reason be strengthened to the utmost at her expense, and that this condition of things must be upheld through the beneficent instrumentality of the League of Nations.

On these conflicting issues ceaseless contention went on from the start, yet for lack of a strong personality of sound, over-ruling judgment the contest dragged on without result. For months the demon of procrastination seemed to have possessed the souls of the princ.i.p.al delegates, and frustrated their professed intentions to get through the work expeditiously. Even unforeseen incidents led to dangerous delay.

Every pa.s.sing episode became a ground for postponing the vital issue, although each day lost increased the difficulties of achieving the princ.i.p.al object, which was the conclusion of peace. For example, the committee dealing with the question of reparations would reach a decision, say, that Germany must pay a certain sum, which would entail a century of strenuous effort, accompanied with stringent thrift and self-denial; while the Economic Committee decided that her supply of raw material should be restricted within such narrow limits as to put such payment wholly out of her power. And this difference of view necessitated a postponement of the whole issue. Mr. Hughes, the Premier of Australia, commenting on this shilly-shallying, said with truth:[289]

"The minds of the people are grievously perturbed. The long delay, coupled with fears lest that the Peace Treaty, when it does come, should prove to be a peace unworthy, unsatisfactory, unenduring, has made the hearts of the people sick. We were told that the Peace Treaty would be ready in the coming week, but we look round and see half a world engaged in war, or preparation for war. Bolshevism is spreading with the rapidity of a prairie fire. The Allies have been forced to retreat from some of the most fertile parts of southern Russia, and Allied troops, mostly British, at Murmansk and Archangel are in grave danger of destruction. Yet we were told that peace was at hand, and that the world was safe for liberty and democracy. It is not fine phrases about peace, liberty, and making the world safe for democracy that the world wants, but deeds. The peoples of the Allied countries justifiably desire to be rea.s.sured by plain, comprehensible statements, instead of long-drawn-out negotiations and the thick veil of secrecy in which these were shrouded."

It requires an effort to believe that procrastination was raised to the level of a theory by men whose experience of political affairs was regarded as a guarantee of the soundness of their judgment. Yet it is an incontrovertible fact that dilatory tactics were seriously suggested as a policy at the Conference. It was maintained that, far from running risks by postponing a settlement, the Entente nations were, on the contrary, certain to find the ground better prepared the longer the day of reckoning was put off. Germany, they contended, had recovered temporarily from the Bolshevik fever, but the improvement was fleeting.

The process of decomposition was becoming intenser day by day, although the symptoms were not always manifest. Lack of industrial production, of foreign trade and sound finances, was gnawing at the vitals of the Teuton Republic. The army of unemployed and discontented was swelling.

Soon the sinister consequences of this stagnation would take the form of rebellions and revolts, followed by disintegration. And this conjunction would be the opportunity of the Entente Powers, who could then step in, present their bills, impose their restrictions, and knead the Teuton dough into any shape they relished. Then it would be feasible to prohibit the Austrian-Germans from ever entering the Republic as a federated state. In a word, the Allied governments need only command, and the Teutons would hasten to obey. It is hardly credible that men of experience in foreign politics should build upon such insecure foundations as these. It is but fair to say the Conference rejected this singular program in theory while unintentionally carrying it out.

Although everybody admitted that the liquidation of the world conflict followed by a return to normal conditions was the one thing that pressed for settlement, so intent were the plenipotentiaries on preventing wars among unborn generations that they continued to overlook the pressing needs of their contemporaries. It is at the beginning and end of an enterprise that the danger of failure is greatest, and it was the opening moves of the Allies that proved baleful to their subsequent undertakings. Germany, one would think, might have been deprived summarily of everything which was to be ultimately and justly taken from her, irrespective of its final destination. The first and most important operation being the severance of the provinces allotted to other peoples, their redistribution might safely have been left until afterward. And hardly less important was the despatch of an army to eastern Europe. Then Germany, broken in spirit, with Allied troops on both her fronts, between the two jaws of a vise, could not have said nay to the conditions. But this method presupposed a plan which unluckily did not exist. It a.s.sumed that the peace terms had been carefully considered in advance, whereas the Allies prepared for war during hostilities, and for peace during the negotiations. And they went about this in a leisurely, lackadaisical way, whereas expedition was the key to success.

As for a durable peace, involving general disarmament, it should have been outlined in a comprehensive program, which the delegates had not drawn up, and it would have become feasible only if the will to pursue it proceeded from principle, not from circ.u.mstances. In no case could it be accomplished without the knowledge and co-operation of the peoples themselves, nor within the time-limits fixed for the work of the Conference. For the abolition of war and the creation of a new ordering, like human progress, is a long process. It admits of a variety of beginnings, but one can never be sure of the end, seeing that it presupposes a radical change in the temper of the peoples, one might almost say a remodeling of human nature. It can only be the effect of a variety of causes, mainly moral, operating over a long period of time.

Peace with Germany was a matter for the governments concerned; the elimination of war could only be accomplished by the peoples. The one was in the main a political problem, the other social, economical, and ethical.

Mr. Balfour a.s.serted optimistically[290] that the work of concluding peace with Germany was a very simple matter. None the less it took the Conference over five months to arrange it. So desperately slow was the progress of the Supreme Council that on the 213th day of the Peace Conference,[291] two months after the Germans had signed the conditions, not one additional treaty had been concluded, nay, none was even ready for signature. The Italian plenipotentiary, Signor t.i.ttoni, thereupon addressed his colleagues frankly on the subject and asked them whether they were not neglecting their primary duty, which was to conclude treaties with the various enemies who had ceased to fight in November of the previous year and were already waiting for over nine months to resume normal life, and whether the delegates were justified in seeking to discharge the functions of a supreme board for the government of all Europe. He pointed out that n.o.body could hope to profit by the state of disorder and paralysis for which this procrastination was answerable, the economic effects making themselves felt sooner or later in every country. He added that the cost of the war had been calculated for every month, every week, every day, and that the total impressed every one profoundly; but that n.o.body had thought it worth his while to count up the atrocious cost of this incredibly slow peace and of the waste of wealth caused every week and month that it dragged on. Italy, he lamented, felt this loss more keenly than her partners because her peace had not yet been concluded. He felt moved, therefore, he said, to tell them that the business of governing Europe to which the Conference had been attending all those months was not precisely the work for which it was convoked.[292]

This sharp and timely admonition was the preamble of a motion. The Conference was just then about to separate for a "well-earned holiday,"

during which its members might renew their spent energies and return in October to resume their labors, the peoples in the meanwhile bearing the cost in blood and substance. The Italian delegate objected to any such break and adjured them to remain at their posts. Why, he asked, should ill-starred Italy, which had already sustained so many and such painful losses, be condemned to sacrifice further enormous sums in order that the delegates who had been frittering away their time tackling irrelevant issues, and endeavoring to rule all Europe, might have a rest? Why should they interrupt the sessions before making peace with Austria, with Hungary, with Bulgaria, with Turkey, and enabling Italy to return to normal life? Why should time and opportunity be given to the Turks and Kurds for the ma.s.sacre of Armenian men, women, and children?

This candid reminder is said to have had a sobering effect on the versatile delegates yearning for a holiday. The situation that evoked it will arouse the pa.s.sing wonder of level-headed men.

It is worth recording that such was the atmosphere of suspicion among the delegates that the motives for this holiday were believed by some to be less the need of repose than an unavowable desire to give time to the Hapsburgs to recover the Crown of St. Stephen as the first step toward seizing that of Austria.[293] The Austrians desired exemption from the obligation to make reparations and pay crushing taxes, and one of the delegates, with a leaning for that country, was not averse to the idea. As the states that arose on the ruins of the Hapsburg monarchy were not considered enemies by the Conference, it was suggested that Austria herself should enjoy the same distinction. But the Italian plenipotentiaries objected and Signor t.i.ttoni asked, "Will it perhaps be a.s.serted that there was no enemy against whom we Italians fought for three years and a half, losing half a million slain and incurring a debt of eighty thousand millions?"

A French journal, touching on this Austrian problem, wrote:[294]

"Austria-Hungary has been killed and now France is striving to raise it to life again. But Italy is furiously opposed to everything that might lead to an understanding among the new states formed out of the old possessions of the Hapsburgs. That, in fact, is why our transalpine allies were so favorable to the union of Austria with Germany. France on her side, whose one overruling thought is to reduce her vanquished enemy to the most complete impotence, France who is afraid of being afraid, will not tolerate an Austria joined to the German Federation." Here the principle of self-determination went for nothing.

Before the Conference had sat for a month it was angrily a.s.sailed by the peoples who had hoped so much from its love of justice--Egyptians, Koreans, Irishmen from Ireland and from America, Albanians, Frenchmen from Mauritius and Syria, Moslems from Aderbeidjan, Persians, Tartars, Kirghizes, and a host of others, who have been aptly likened to the halt and maimed among the nations waiting round the diplomatic Pool of Siloam for the miracle of the moving of the waters that never came.[295]

These peoples had heard that a great and potent world-reformer had arisen whose mission it was to redress secular grievances and confer liberty upon oppressed nations, tribes, and tongues, and they sent their envoys to plead before him. And these wandered about the streets of Paris seeking the intercession of delegates, Ministers, and journalists who might obtain for them admission to the presence of the new Messiah or his apostles. But all doors were closed to them. One of the pet.i.tioners whose language was vernacular English, as he was about to shake the dust of Paris from his boots, quoting Sydney Smith, remarked: "They, too, are Pharisees. They would do the Good Samaritan, but without the oil and twopence. How has it come to pa.s.s that the Jews without an official delegate commanded the support--the militant support--of the Supreme Council, which did not hesitate to tyrannize eastern Europe for their sake?"

Involuntarily the student of politics called to mind the report written to Baron Hager[296] by one of his secret agents during the Congress of Vienna: "Public opinion continues to be unfavorable to the Congress. On all sides one hears it said that there is no harmony, that they are no longer solicitous about the re-establishment of order and justice, but are bent only on forcing one another's hands, each one grabbing as much as he can.... It is said that the Congress will end because it must, but that it will leave things more entangled than it found them.... The peoples, who in consequence of the success, the sincerity, and the n.o.ble-mindedness of this superb coalition had conceived such esteem for their leaders and such attachment to them, and now perceive how they have forgotten what they solemnly promised--justice, order, peace founded on the equilibrium and legitimacy of their possessions--will end by losing their affection and withdrawing their confidence in their principles and their promises."

Those words, written a hundred and five years ago, might have been penned any day since the month of February, 1919.

The leading motive of the policy pursued by the Supreme Council and embodied in the Treaty was aptly described at the time as the systematic protection of France against Germany. Hence the creation of the powerful barrier states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Greater Rumania, and Greater Greece. French nationalists pleaded for further precautions more comprehensive still. Their contention was that France's economic, strategic, financial, and territorial welfare being the cornerstone of the future European edifice, every measure proposed at the Conference, whether national or general, should be considered and shaped in accordance with that, and consequently that no possibility should be accorded to Germany of rising again to a commanding position because, if she once recovered her ascendancy in any domain whatsoever, Europe would inevitably be thrust anew into the horrors of war. Territorially, therefore, the dismemberment of Germany was obligatory; the annexation of the Saar Valley, together with its six hundred thousand Teuton inhabitants, was necessary to France, and either the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine or its transformation into a detached state to be occupied and administered by the French until Germany pays the last farthing of the indemnity. Further, Austria must be deprived of the right of determining her own mode of existence and constrained to abandon the idea of becoming one of the federated states of the German Republic, and, if possible, northern Germany should be kept entirely separate from southern. The Allies should divide the Teutons in order to sway them. All Germany's other frontiers should be delimitated in a like spirit. And at the same time the work of knitting together the peoples and nations of Europe and forming them into a friendly sodality was to go forward without interruption.

"How to promote our interests in the Rhineland," wrote M. Maurice Barres,[297] "is a life-and-death question for us. We are going to carry to the Rhine our military and, I hope, our economic frontier. The rest will follow in its own good time. The future will not fail to secure for us the acquiescence of the population of the Rhineland, who will live freely under the protection of our arms, their faces turned toward Paris."

Financially it was proposed that the Teutons should be forced to indemnify France, Belgium, and the other countries for all the damage they had inflicted upon them; to pay the entire cost of the war, as well as the pensions to widows, orphans, and the mutilated. And the military occupation of their country should be maintained until this huge debt is wholly wiped out.

A Nationalist organ,[298] in a leading article, stated with brevity and clearness the prevailing view of Germany's obligations. Here is a characteristic pa.s.sage: "She is rich, has reserves derived from many years of former prosperity; she can work to produce and repair all the evil she has done, rebuild all the ruins she has acc.u.mulated, and restore all the fortunes she has destroyed, however irksome the burden."

After a.n.a.lyzing Doctor Helfferich's report published six years ago, the article concluded, "Germany must pay; she disposes of the means because she is rich; if she refuses we must compel her without hesitation and without ruth."

As France, whose cities and towns and very soil were ruined, could not be asked to restore these places at her own expense and tax herself drastically like her allies, the Americans and British, the prior and privileged right to receive payment on her share of the indemnity should manifestly appertain to her. Her allies and a.s.sociates should, it was argued, accordingly waive their money claims until hers were satisfied in full. Moreover, as France's future expenditure on her army of occupation, on the administration of her colonies and of the annexed territories, must necessarily absorb huge sums for years to come, which her citizens feel they ought not to be asked to contribute, and as her internal debt was already overwhelming, it is only meet and just that her wealthier partners should pool their war debts with hers and share their financial resources with her and all their other allies. This, it was argued, was an obvious corollary of the war alliance. Economically, too, the Germans, while permitted to resume their industrial occupations on a sufficiently large scale to enable them to earn the wherewithal to live and discharge their financial obligations, should be denied free scope to outstrip France, whose material prosperity is admittedly essential to the maintenance of general peace and the permanence of the new ordering. In this condition, it is further contended, our chivalrous ally was ent.i.tled to special consideration because of her low birth-rate, which is one of the mainsprings of her difficulties. This may permanently keep her population from rising above the level of forty million, whereas Germany, by the middle of the century, will have reached the formidable total of eighty million, so that compet.i.tion between them would not be on a footing of equality. Hence the chances should be evenly balanced by the action of the Conference, to be continued by the League. Discriminating treatment was therefore a necessity. And it should be so introduced that France should be free to maintain a protective tariff, of which she had sore need for her foreign trade, without causing umbrage to her allies. For they could not gainsay that her position deserved special treatment.

Some of the Anglo-Saxon delegates took other ground, feeling unable to countenance the postulate underlying those demands, namely, that the Teuton race was to be forever anathema. They looked far enough ahead to make due allowance for a future when conditions in Europe will be very different from what they are to-day. The German race, they felt, being numerous and virile, will not die out and cannot be suppressed. And as it is also enterprising and resourceful it would be a mistake to render it permanently hostile by the Allies overstepping the bounds of justice, because in this case neither national nor general interests would be furthered. You may hinder Germany, they argued, from acquiring the hegemony of the world, but not from becoming the princ.i.p.al factor in European evolution. If thirty years hence the German population totals eighty million or more, will not their att.i.tude and their sentiment toward their neighbors const.i.tute an all-important element of European tranquillity and will not the trend of these be to a large extent the outcome of the Allies' policy of to-day? The present, therefore, is the time for the delegates to deprive that sentiment of its venomous, anti-Allied sting, not by renouncing any of their countries' rights, but by respecting those of others.

That was the reasoning of those who believed that national striving should be subordinated to the general good, and that the present time and its aspirations should be considered in strict relation to the future of the whole community of nations. They further contended that while Germany deserved to suffer condignly for the heinous crimes of unchaining the war and waging it ruthlessly, as many of her own people confessed, she should not be wholly crippled or enthralled in the hope that she would be rendered thereby impotent forever. Such hope was vain.

With her waxing strength her desire of vengeance would grow, and together with it the means of wreaking it. She might yet knead Russia into such a shape as would make that Slav people a serviceable instrument of revenge, and her endeavors might conceivably extend farther than Russia. The one-sided resettlement of Europe charged with explosives of such incalculable force would frustrate the most elaborate attempts to create not only a real league of nations, but even such a rough approximation toward one as might in time and under favorable circ.u.mstances develop into a trustworthy war preventive. They concluded that a league of nations would be worse than useless if transformed into a weapon to be wielded by one group of nations against another, or as an artificial makeshift for dispensing peoples from the observance of natural laws.

At the same time all the governments of the Allies were sincere and unanimous in their desire to do everything possible to show their appreciation of France's heroism, to recognize the vastness of her sacrifices, and to pay their debt of grat.i.tude for her services to humanity. All were actuated by a resolve to contribute in the measure of the possible to compensate her for such losses as were still reparable and to safeguard her against the recurrence of the ordeal from which she had escaped terribly scathed. The only limits they admitted to this work of reparation were furnished by the aim itself and by the means of attaining it. Thus Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George held that to incorporate in renovated France millions or even hundreds of thousands of Germans would be to introduce into the political organism the germs of fell disease, and on this ground they firmly refused to sanction the Rhine frontier, which the French were thus obliged to relinquish. The French delegates themselves admitted that if granted it could not be held without a powerful body of international troops ever at the beck and call of the Republic, vigilantly keeping watch and ward on the banks of the Rhine and with no reasonable prospect of a term to this servitude. For the real ground of this dependence upon foreign forces is the disproportion between the populations of Germany and France and between the resources of the two nations. The ratio of the former is at present about six to four and it is growing perceptibly toward seven to four. The organizing capacity in commerce and industry is said to be even greater. If, therefore, France cannot stand alone to-day, still less could she stand alone in ten or fifteen years, and the necessity of protecting her against aggression, a.s.suming that the German people does not become reconciled to its status of forced inferiority, would be more urgent and less practicable with the lapse of time. For, as we saw, it is largely a question of the birth-rate. And as neither the British nor the American people, deeply though they are attached to their gallant comrades in arms, would consent to this arrangement, which to them would be a burden and to the Germans a standing provocation, their representatives were forced to the conclusion that it would be the height of folly to do aught that would give the Teutons a convenient handle for a war of revenge. Let there be no annexation of territory, they said, no incorporation of unwilling German citizens. The Americans further argued that an indefinite occupation of German territory by a large body of international troops would be a direct encouragement to militarism.

The indemnities for which the French yearned, and on which their responsible financiers counted, were large. The figures employed were astronomical. Hundreds of milliards of francs were operated with by eminent publicists in an offhand manner that astonished the survivor of the expiring budgetary epoch and rejoiced the hearts of the Western taxpayers. For it was not only journalists who wrote as though a stream of wealth were to be turned into these countries to fertilize industry and commerce there and enable them to keep well ahead of their pushing compet.i.tors. Responsible Ministers likewise hall-marked these forecasts with their approval. Before the fortune of war had decided for the Allies, the finances of France had sorely embarra.s.sed the Minister, M.

Klotz, of whom his chief, M. Clemenceau, is reported to have said: "He is the only Israelite I have ever known who is out of his element when dealing with money matters." Before the armistice, M. Klotz, when talking of the complex problem and sketching the outlook, exclaimed: "If we win the war, I undertake to make both ends meet, far though they now seem apart. For I will make the Germans pay the entire cost of the war."

After the armistice he repeated his promise and undertook not to levy fresh taxation.

Thus, despite fitful gleams of idealism, the atmosphere of the Paris Conclave grew heavy with interests, pa.s.sions, and ambitions. Only people in blinkers could miss the fact that the elastic formulas launched and interpreted by President Wilson were being stretched to the snapping-point so as to cover two mutually incompatible policies. The chasm between his original prospects and those of his foreign a.s.sociates they both conscientiously endeavored to ignore, and after a time they hit upon a _tertium quid_ between territorial equilibrium and a sterilized league tempered by the Monroe Doctrine and a military compact. This composite resultant carried with it the concentrated evils of one of these systems and was deprived of its redeeming features by the other. At a conjuncture in the world's affairs which postulated internationalism of the loftiest kind, the delegates increased and multiplied nations and states which they deprived of sovereignty and yoked to the first-cla.s.s races. National ambitions took precedence of larger interests; racial hatred was raised to its highest power. In a word, the world's state system was so oddly pieced together that only economic exhaustion followed by a speedy return to militarism could insure for it a moderate duration.

Territorial self-sufficiency, military strength, and advantageous alliances were accordingly looked to as the mainstays of the new ordering, even by those who paid lip tribute to the Wilsonian ideal. The ideal itself underwent a disfiguring change in the process of incarnation. The Italians asked how the Monroe Doctrine could be reconciled with the charter of the League of Nations, seeing that the League would be authorized to intervene in the domestic affairs of other member-states, and if necessary to despatch troops to keep Germany, Italy, and Poland in order; whereas if the United States were guilty of tyrannical aggression against Brazil, the Argentine Republic, or Mexico, the League, paralyzed by that Doctrine, must look on inactive. The Germans, alleging capital defects in the Wilsonian Covenant, which was adjusted primarily to the Allies' designs, went to Paris prepared with a subst.i.tute which, it must in fairness be admitted, was considerably superior to that of their adversaries, and incidentally fraught with greater promise to themselves.

It is superfluous to add that the continental view prevailed, but Mr.

Wilson imagined that, while abandoning his principles in favor of Britain, France, and Bulgaria, he could readjust the balance by applying them with rigor to Italy and exaggerating them when dealing with Greece.

He afterward communicated his reasons for this belief in a message published in Washington.[299] The alliance--he was understood to have been opposed to all partial alliances on principle--which guarantees military succor to France, he had signed, he said, in grat.i.tude to that country, for he seriously doubted whether the American Republic could have won its freedom against Britain's opposition without the gallant and friendly aid of France. "We recently had the privilege of a.s.sisting in driving enemies, who also were enemies of the world, from her soil, but that does not pay our debt to her. Nothing can pay such a debt." His critics retorted that that is a sentimental reason which might with equal force have been urged by France and Britain in justification of their promises to Italy and Rumania, yet was rejected as irrelevant by Mr. Wilson in the name of a higher principle.

The President of the United States, it was further urged, is a historian, and history tells him that the help given to his country against England neither came from the French people nor was actuated by sympathy for the American cause. It was the vindictive act of one of those kings whose functions Mr. Wilson is endeavoring to abolish. The monarch who helped the Americans was merely utilizing a favorable opportunity for depriving with a minimum of effort his adversary of lucrative possessions. Moreover, the debt which nothing can pay was already due when in the years 1914-16 France was in imminent danger of being crushed by a ruthless enemy. But at that time Mr. Wilson owed his re-election largely to his refusal to extricate her from that peril.

Instead of calling to mind the debt that can never be repaid he merely announced that he could not understand what the belligerents were fighting for and that in any case France's grateful debtor was too proud to fight. The motive which finally brought the United States into the World War may be the n.o.blest that ever yet actuated any state, but no student of history will allow that Mr. Wilson has correctly described it.

The fact is that the French delegates and their supporters were consistent and, except in their demand for the Rhine frontier, unbending. They drew up a program and saw that it was substantially carried out. They declared themselves quite ready to accept Mr. Wilson's project, but only on condition that their own was also realized, heedless of the incompatibility of the two. And Mr. Wilson felt constrained to make their position his own, otherwise he could not have obtained the Covenant he yearned for. And yet he must have known that acquiescence in the demands put forward by M. Clemenceau would lower the practical value of his Covenant to that of a sheet of paper.

A blunt American journal, commenting on the handiwork of the Conference, gave utterance to views which while making no pretense to courtly phraseology are symptomatic of the way in which the average man thought and spoke of the Covenant which emanated from the Supreme Council. "We are convinced," it said, "that the elder statesmen of Europe, typified by Clemenceau, consider it a hoax. Clemenceau never before was so extremely bored by anything in his life as he was by the necessity of making a pious pretense in the Covenant when what he wanted was the a.s.surance of the Triple Alliance. He got that a.s.surance, which, along with the French watch on the Rhine, the French in the Saar Valley and in Africa, with German money going into French coffers, makes him tolerably indulgent of the altruistic rhetoricians.

"The English, the intelligent English, we know have their tongues in their cheeks. The Italians are petulant imperialists, and j.a.pan doesn't care what happens to the League so long as j.a.pan says what shall happen in Asia."[300]