The New Germany Part 10

The growth of German industry in late years, comparable only to industrial growth in North America, was due, as with us, to the combination of coal with iron and of first-rate management with foreign markets. The Treaty has deprived Germany, in the east, of the Silesian coalfields with their dependent industries, and, in the west, of the Lorraine and Saar ores; which, together, may be compared to the loss of South Wales and Northumberland. It has also deprived Germany, not only of its colonies, but also of its commercial establishments abroad, so closing foreign markets to it except by way of foreign intermediaries, bankers, brokers and shippers. There is nothing left of German foreign commerce and little left of German industry but a mutilated torso; for it has not only lost its right hand in Lorraine but also its left in Silesia. Yet, what German men of business feel it hardest to forgive is not the injury done by the Treaty but the insult. That camouflaged receivership, the Reparation Commission, prejudges Germany as a fraudulent bankrupt. If we had in the Treaty fixed our claims as creditors and negotiated with Germany as to how they could be paid, the German middle cla.s.s would have taken a pride in showing itself equal to the enormous emergency even as the French did in the far less searching trial of 1870. But this foreign Commission has been given such powers as have never yet been proposed for foreign financial control, even of the most wholly bankrupt and barbarous Sovereign State. Those powers will, of course, never be exercised, and they would defeat the object of the financial provisions of the Treaty if they were; but the unnecessary insult they involve has cost us the co-operation of the German middle cla.s.ses in rebuilding the economic system of Europe.

And, now for the last mistake. The one desire of the lower cla.s.ses of Germany, whether industrial or agricultural, is for peace and plenty.

In condemning them to a continuance of war conditions for nine months after their surrender and revolution we turned them from internationalists, ready to welcome us as representatives of democracy and as crusaders for an international ideal, into either nationalists who looked on us as enemies seeking the destruction of all Germans, or into internationalists who looked on us as enemies of the revolution seeking their destruction as we were seeking that of the Russians. The result has been that we have lost the co-operation of the German working cla.s.s in extending our system of parliamentary Government to Central and Eastern Europe. And it requires no profound political knowledge of continental conditions to recognise that, without such co-operation, British political ideas and inst.i.tutions and with them British political influence will not penetrate Europe.

To this result two actions on our part especially contributed. The first, our opposition to the union of German-Austria with Germany; the second, our refusal to admit Germany to the League of Nations. These were the two meaningless, almost motiveless insults that in my opinion have done us more lasting harm in Europe than such mistakes in practical policy as the maintenance of the blockade. The repudiation, presumably at French dictation, of both the principle of nationality and that of self-determination was bad enough. It was worse to try to b.u.t.tress an artificial barrier between two sections of the German race by a.s.signing German populations to neighbouring States--Germans of Bohemia to Tchecho-Slovakia--Germans of Karinthia to Yugo-Slavia--Germans of the Tyrol to Italy. This diplomatic device failed even in a far more thorough form in Poland over a century ago. Just as the policy of artificial separation failed in the case of Eastern Roumelia.

But, apart from such moral considerations which must in the long run defeat our policy of segregating Austro-Germans, that policy might have been seen to be impolitic even in its most material and immediate aspects.

The idea of a union of Germany and Austria presented itself to our minds as an aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of Germany. But if the union of Germany and Austria would have been a concession to the force of German nationality, yet it would have been no reinforcement of German nationalism. Union with German-Austria would indeed have been the best guarantee against Germany's relapse into Prussianism. For the marriage of Prussia and Austria would not be due to affection nor to ambition nor even to advantage, but to affinity. German-Austria might indeed consider herself fortunate in having a relation bound by family ties to take her for better or worse, for richer or poorer, with all her dowry of decrepitude and debt. "Tu felix Austria nube" would have acquired a new meaning.

The phrase, "union of Germany with Austria" might suggest a great extension eastwards of German imperialism over Eastern Europe and Asia Minor. But a glance at the map shows that, whereas previously Germany enjoyed by alliance with Austria political control eastwards to the Carpathians and Balkans and economic control to the aegean and Black Sea, now Germany is barricaded on the east at its national frontier by strong national States; and by union with German-Austria would receive an extension of its own national frontier not eastward but southward.

The effect of union with Austria would be to add to Germany not another East Prussia or Silesia, but another Baden or Bavaria.

What would be the political consequence of this geographical extension southward? We all know the blood differences between Southerner and Northerner in German politics. The North with a Protestant and Prussian mentality, a bureaucratic and burgher government, an efficient and energetic morale, a land of big business and big battalions; and the south a Catholic and conservative mentality, an easy-going and eclectic morale, a land of fat farms and the fine arts.

And war and revolution have only changed without lessening these differences. The new Austrian province in the south would have acted as ballast to steady the rollings of the Ship of State, top-heavy with its northern profiteers and proletariat. Nor would we be right if we a.s.sumed from the short-lived Rate-Republik of Munich that Vienna would bring an accession of strength to the Communists. It is the clerical Centrum, Parliamentary Government and Federalism that would have benefited from the Union.

And, not only as a community, but as individuals, Austrians would have a useful political _role_ in the new German democracy. Some of us may have noticed how the Bavarians and Rheinlanders come to the front in Germany as liberal speakers and writers. The Austrians would have brought a like leaven into the lump of half-baked German civilisation.

The Austrian in all the elegancies of life is as superior to the German as he is inferior to him in all life's efficiencies. Finally, they would have served as interpreters and intermediaries between Germans and other races. It is as difficult to dislike an Austrian as to like a Prussian.

As to the material effect of the Union, we find that the total population of the German Republic after union would have been no more than was that of the German Empire before the war. At the beginning of the war the latter was 68 millions. Up to January, 1919, the excess of deaths over births was 700,000, the war casualties 1.8 millions.

Losses in Alsace-Lorraine, Posen and Schleswig will reduce this, at least, to 61 millions and probably to below 60 millions.

German-Austria cannot bring in more than 9 millions and may bring in as little as 6 millions. So that Germany would about have regained in the south what it has lost in the east, north and west.

Now, as to money. The public debt of Austria, without Hungary, was 83.17 milliard kronen. This has still to be apportioned among the new national States; but even on the most favourable basis for German-Austria, that of population, it will mean a debt of about 30 milliard kronen with an annual charge of 1.5 milliards. This will mean a much heavier charge per head than that in Germany. The note circulation was 37.5 milliards, of which less than 10 per cent. is secured in gold; and a restoration of the currency will therefore be a costly business.

Economically, German-Austria is a poor country with a few prosperous rural districts and an imperial capital. Its agriculture produces between half and two-thirds per acre of the average German production.

Its live stock is so depleted as to be practically destroyed. Its few factories and inferior railways are in worse condition even than the German, which is saying much. It has no coal supplies and no port. As to Vienna, it is difficult to say what will happen to it. It may have a future as the land-port of Germany on the east, as Hamburg is on the west, and as a commercial and financial centre for the new nations; but for the next few years it will be in industrial and financial liquidation, as the imperial banks and businesses reorganise and redistribute themselves among the nations. Vienna's machine, motor and railway works and the Alpine Montant Company with large iron ore deposits, are the most important a.s.sets that go with German-Austria.

Of course, there are wealthy industrial districts and mineral deposits in German-Bohemia and the Sudetic country, but the question of their union with Germany is a different one. The Bohemian Republic is making a strong bid to the industrial "interests" of these German districts, which fear the compet.i.tion of Saxony should they enter the German union. It will be interesting to see whether this alliance between plutocracy and diplomacy will avail to keep these German populations permanently in the Tchech State. But with the exception of a few dynastic, clerical and capitalistic interests, German-Austria is to-day German, not Austrian.

You would have a better idea of the difference between German-Austria and the old Austrian Empire if you had visited Dr. Hartmann, the representative of German-Austria in the old Austrian Emba.s.sy in Berlin. There, in a palladian palace that was once a centre of the peculiar blend of courtly brilliance and corrupt brutality with which the Austrian Empire kept itself going, you found a modest rather melancholy don and a young secretary; looking like lost souls of a national democracy buried in the sarcophagus of imperialist diplomacy. But after a few minutes' talk you also found that these mild-mannered men represented that force that broke to fragments the Iron Crown of the House of Habsburg, and that will break its way to Union over the paper barricade of the Hall of Mirrors.

There is, indeed, nothing to be said for the insistence of the Supreme Council at Paris on delaying the union of Austro-Germany with Germany.

The forcible splitting off of East Prussia and the subjection of millions of Germans to Polish, Tchecho-Slovak and Yugo-Slav governments, though indefensible in principle, may be defended by practical arguments--for instance that these German ports and lands are geographically essential to the new States, while their German population will be a valuable element in them. The a.s.signment of the Tyrol to Italy may have a diplomatic defence as a design to falsify future relations between Germans and Italians, to the advantage of France and England. The acquisition of German Lorraine and the Saar valley by France may be explained by the policy of making France industrially independent of Germany and of preventing any future economic hegemony of Germany in Europe. An insistence on Austro-Germany entering the German Republic might have been explained as an attempt to save Germany from Bolshevism and Prussianism, and to keep it quiet. But an insistence on Austro-Germany remaining independent, with its corollary in the intrigues for a separate Rhine Republic, seem to me as diplomatically ill-considered as they are democratically ill-conceived. We intended a material injury to German nationalists, but we have only inflicted a mortal insult on the German nation.

The Treaty of Versailles has then no elements either of permanence or of peace; because it runs counter both to facts and to forces both in the region of national and in that of international relationships.

In the national region it stultifies its own objects most effectively.

Now nationalist idealism, though existing in Germany to-day only among the conservative gentry and a small section of upper-cla.s.s progressives, is not a negligible quant.i.ty. For nationalism has control of the whole Coalition Government, the whole Press, with the exception of a few opposition Labour papers, and the whole of the Frei-Corps and the armed police. Owing to our continuation of a state of war after the armistice, the German Government has, by a logical process it would take too long to trace, become purely nationalist, instead of mainly socialist and internationalist. More than that, it has come into collision with Socialism and the German Revolution in its efforts to maintain a _regime_ such as we would recognise. The nationalist forces, that it relies on to maintain parliamentary party government and the supremacy of the propertied cla.s.s to the exclusion both of Council Government and of a possible supremacy of the proletariat, were, in the first place, the more liberal bureaucracy and the officers, and in the second place the "Frei-Corps." But as pointed out already the Treaty we imposed on Germany forced out of the Government all the better elements of the bureaucratic and bourgeois cla.s.ses. While the "Frei-Corps" with which the Government now holds all the princ.i.p.al towns under military rule have as moral ideals patriotism, privilege and property, and as material inducements high pay and quadruple rations. They embody not only the survivors of the officer caste, but also the young burghers and students, hitherto the Young Guard of revolution. Their formation was due partly to our delusion that a professional army is necessarily democratic because we have one, and that a short service militia is necessarily militarist because Germany used that method for its recovery a century ago; and partly to a reaction against the revolution in Germany itself. By now they have become the foundation of the present parliamentary _regime_.

But the Treaty requires their reduction from over 400,000 to a quarter of that number, while it utterly discredits the nationalist Government by imposing on it humiliations such as no modern nation has ever yet undergone. Therefore, while our policy requires the maintenance of the present German parliamentarians and their police as the only possible native agents for the realisation of our economic exploitation of Germany, our procedure renders their retention of power materially and morally impossible. As I myself think that the economic policy is as shortsighted as it is wrongheaded, I do not regret that the territorial and military provisions will, unless materially modified, prevent any possibility of realising any part of it. That they will shortly revive racial and religious frontier wars in which we shall probably be involved is a minor matter. Better we should lose more men and millions in expeditions to subject frontier provinces to their racial and religious enemies, than try to subjugate all Germany to our imperial system as we apparently aspire to do in the economic and financial clauses.

In the international region also the Treaty has similarly stultified itself. It depends for its execution on the acceptance by Germany not only of its provisions but of the principles on which it is based.

These principles a.s.sume that Germany will conform Const.i.tutionally to the European system that we are setting up. That is that Germany will have a parliamentary government in which the upper and middle cla.s.ses will preponderate. This Germany was quite prepared to do, and regarded its revolution chiefly as the qualification for admission to the Allied system on an equal footing. Parliamentary Government meant to Germany last winter not so much liberty as equality and fraternity--equality in the world's markets and fraternity in a League of Nations. In other words, peace and food. When Germany found that it was to be excluded from the League and outlawed, parliamentary government _a l'anglaise_ was left without a leg to stand on. It lost its right leg because nationalists reverted to militarism and its left leg because internationalists turned towards Sovietism. It can fairly be said that the Weimar a.s.sembly and the National Government that signed the Treaty of Peace represented no German force but merely German weakness. If the Treaty is ever to be enforced it can only be so through the Reichstag, and what it stands for, and yet the Treaty has gone out of its way to weaken the Reichstag.

In respect of such criticisms I am continually being told by my quondam diplomatic colleagues that they quite agree, but that they could get nothing better; and, given the conditions under which they worked at Paris, they think that things might have been much worse.

And this seems to be the line also of the American delegation, with the exception of some bolder younger spirits who broke off into open opposition. Of course, given these conditions, they could do no better. But that's just what they ought to have provided against.

Every diplomatist knows, or ought to know, that the result of his negotiations will depend on two things; his success in interpreting to and impressing on his foreign surroundings the forces he represents whether they be ironclads or ideals; and his success in selecting such surroundings as will be most effectively impressed. It is mainly because they have not learnt the second part of this lesson that American diplomatists fail. It was a great discovery when we found after years of negotiation at Washington in which either n.o.body got any forrarder at all or we got altogether the worst of it, that it was only necessary to transfer the venue to The Hague or Paris or London, and American diplomacy collapsed. I am not going into detail, interesting though it might be. But I used to explain it to myself by a.n.a.lysing American diplomacy as an att.i.tude of business instincts and moral ideals which felt itself absurd in the cold, courtly, and cynical atmosphere of diplomacy; so, instead of imposing its own rules and standards, it either became helpless or tried hurriedly to adapt and adjust itself. We have only to read the memoirs of American Amba.s.sadors to see that it takes a Benjamin Franklin to realise that broadcloth and beaver are more effective at Court than gold lace and a feathered hat. For it is this and nothing more that explains how an American failed in the greatest political opportunity offered to mortal man in modern times. And if President Wilson, with all the trumps in his hands, could win so few tricks and left the table politically bankrupt, it may seem perhaps absurd to have expected anything from our liberal representatives, tied and bound abroad by the chains of their secret treaties, tethered and burdened at home by their dependence on a conservative clique and on an imperialist newspaper proprietor.

Yet, those of our rulers who wanted a real peace treaty not a mere truce for dividing the spoils, ought to have known, what the Americans did not, that no peace could be got through a diplomatic conference at Paris. They should, in the first place, have secured a real representation of the popular forces of the British Empire, and in the second place, a forum where those forces could take effect. Public opinion had already provided the foundation of such a forum in the demand for a League of Nations. The proper procedure, obviously, was to stop hostilities, subject to guarantees, and to set up a League of Nations that should make peace. It would have taken little longer to get together than did the diplomatic delegations, and would certainly have taken no longer in reaching a result. Both its const.i.tution and its conclusions would probably have been resisted to the verge of rupture by the French and Italian Governments; but would, with the moral sanction of the League and with the urgent pressure of the military situation, have been easily enforced by the British and Americans. MM. Clemenceau and Tardieu could override Messrs. Lloyd George and Philip Kerr easily enough, for, after all, the former do stand for forces, the latter are merely phenomena. They could even override Messrs. Wilson and Lansing, for though these did represent real forces, they could not reproduce them in Paris. But mixed French and Italian delegations of all parties would have offered points of contact to British and American Liberals and even to German and Russian Socialists. The cleavages between the various national interests would have been bridged and an internationalist cement introduced to counteract the imperialist cleavages. Of course, such a body would not have elaborated the details of peace in a plenary debate. It would have proceeded as national Const.i.tuent a.s.semblies always have done after civil war. It would have debated and approved general principles for its own permanent const.i.tution and the resettlement of Europe, and referred them for elaboration to committees controlling the diplomatic experts.

It will be objected that such a new and untried inst.i.tution could never have succeeded where the fine flower of diplomacy failed, or would have been merely a stalking horse for diplomatic intrigue and imperialistic interests. But an inst.i.tution is strong in proportion to the public powers it has acquired and the public acquiescence in them: not in proportion to its degree of const.i.tutional development, or the perfection of its machinery. A British parish council, with its carefully defined powers, can do little and does nothing. A German revolutionary communal council could do anything and does a good deal.

The League of Nations would have given the Americans a means of expressing their moral and neutral policies and of exercising the pressure that President Wilson would not or could not apply. Even if the League had not succeeded in imposing respect for his "fourteen points" on the diplomats, and it might have done so, it would at least have regulated procedure. We should not have had vital decisions reached in a few minutes' talk one afternoon, and reversed for some unknown reason the next, without reference to expert conclusions or regard for principle and precedent. Also this procedure would have made it possible to deal with our main obstacles to a permanent peace, the secret treaties. We could not escape from these national diplomatic obligations in a diplomatic conference of national delegates. But we could have got a dispensation from them had they been referred to a supreme international and super-diplomatic authority. No doubt this procedure would have affected such questions as the international status of Germany and Ireland or India. Germany would have been admitted to the League in time to take part in arranging its own penalties and we should thereby have got the best guarantee possible for the permanence of the peace in respect to Germany. The Peace Treaty would thus have become a compact instead of a Coercion Act. As to Ireland, it is outside my scope: but as our national authority avowedly finds reconciliation of the two Irish factions insoluble, there would seem to be no great harm in trying what an international authority could do.

On such lines as this, a League of Nations might have been established. As things are the League is, of course, no more than an alliance to enforce the imperialist and nationalist decisions of Paris on conquered races, and to combat revolution. It is a combination of a Balkan League and a Holy Alliance. The effect of this prost.i.tution of a public ideal to the profiteering of the Paris conclave has made the peace as disastrous morally to Europe as was the war materially. The Treaties have, for a time, Bolshevised Eastern Europe, Balkanised Central Europe and Bottomleyised Western Europe.

But here we are concerned with the effect on Germany. And if it be objected that it does not matter what Germany thinks of it, I reply that the test of the League's utility will be the confidence that it can inspire in the former enemy States. Unless Germans, Bulgars, and even Bolsheviks, see in it something more than a League against themselves, they will not accept its authority and we are back on a basis of a balance of power.

Our relations with Germany in this respect are especially important.

We went into the war for international ideals--the defence of France and the abolition of militarism; and, having fought it to a conclusion, we allowed our rulers to subst.i.tute for that internationalism the worst form of imperialism. Germany went into the war for imperialist ideals, or, at best, for nationalist ideals; but after defeat replaced those ideals by an internationalism involving the acceptance of international control by a League of Nations. That internationalist point of view is still held by the German people, though no one would think it from the character of their present Government, and the tone of their Press.

The internationalist point of view of the German people has so far failed to find expression for two reasons: one was the pressure of Allied imperialism, the other the partial failure of the German Revolution through the innate political incapacity of the people. The armistice, while nominally suspending hostilities, really continued the war on national lines. This treaty, while nominally restoring peace, really continues the war on imperial lines. Under these conditions German internationalism could scarcely survive except among the working cla.s.s, where it was too deeply rooted in the realities of life for any poison gas from Paris to kill it. But, except among the workmen and their idealist leaders, the Independent Socialists, the feeling that the world in general, and Germany in particular, was at the mercy of the imperialist and nationalist elements among the victors caused the abandonment of the new protestantism--internationalism, and reversion to the old orthodoxy--nationalism. This recantation was indeed in response to intimations from Paris that Germany was expected to renounce the devil Bolshevism and all its works. That the realisation of the German Revolution, whether it is the work of a devil or no, is the one and only protection for Germany against Bolshevism is, of course, beyond the political penetration of Paris.

The princ.i.p.al force of public opinion created by the sacrifices of the war expressed itself in the movement for a League of Nations to guarantee peace. In Germany this movement was especially strong. For Germany was left without other protection than that which it could get from such internationalism. Any suggestion that could strengthen the League or Germany's claim to partic.i.p.ate in it was eagerly grasped.

A private suggestion that the German Const.i.tution should contain a formal recognition of the League and be the first national const.i.tution to do so, was at once adopted by the very cautious and conservative Committee. Another from a similar source that the German proposals for the League should correct the democratic deficiencies of the Paris project was also adopted. The German scheme for a League was, indeed, in every respect better than that of the Allies.[I] But the Paris project and the provisions of the Treaty hopelessly prejudiced the whole idea of the League with German progressives.

After their publication the clause recognising the precepts of the League and the provisions of Treaties as the supreme law of the land disappeared[J] from Art. 4 of the Const.i.tution. The League of Paris and the Treaty of Versailles are now to be obeyed as "force majeure"--they are not recognised as German law. And whereas the League could have secured from Germany a willing acceptance of obligations that would not only have guaranteed the peace of Europe so far as the German race was concerned, but would also have made good to some extent the ruin of the last war, now it is looked upon throughout Germany as mere cynical camouflage. The German, whether nationalist or internationalist, listens to American or English preachments about the League with despair and disgust.

Here is one such opinion from my note book: "I can endure with patience Germany being robbed of everything that is easily rob-able and even its being reduced to economic servitude. But what I cannot stand is the confidence trick of Wilson's 'points' and the camouflage of the League of Nations. Bismarck in respect of his Emperor and Bethmann-Hollweg in respect of Belgium both committed a breach of trust, but they did it under necessity of war. Wilson in his Fourteen Points and Lord Robert Cecil in the League have done the same in the name of peace."

Already the internationalism of Germany and Central Europe is under the pressure of Paris, taking a form almost impossible to reconcile with the form of this League of Nations. Until the appearance of the Paris project for the League and the peace conditions, Germany, whether national or international, was wholeheartedly a supporter of it. But now it is not too much to say that the League is moribund, not only in Germany, but in continental Europe generally, as an ideal. Its place is rapidly being taken by the ideal of an International Council on a basis of social and industrial representation, instead of that of a League on a basis of national or territorial representation. Just as the leaders of the German workmen and the younger Democrats caught at the theories of Guild Socialism, so now they are turning eagerly to a new idea, also introduced from England, of an international Soviet system--an organisation that will be really international because, instead of being based as is the Wilsonian League on the nationalism of States, it will be based on the internationalism of trades. That will have as its sanction an international strike instead of a national boycott, and as its authority a Central Council of delegates instead of a Conference of diplomats. This development would have come in due course anyway, but a successful Wilsonian League might have delayed it even as the prestige of the House of Commons is delaying Council government, and as the prestige of the Crown delayed Parliamentary government itself.

To us Liberals and Labour folk here in England--relieved at getting a League in any form and ready as we English always are to make the best of what we've got, however bad--this international Council movement may seem to be a waste of strength. For it would seem likely to require the full force of all progressive continental movements to get the League of Nations put on a democratic basis. But the att.i.tude of America makes it doubtful whether the League can be so developed as to do more good than harm. And in any case the movement for an International Council will proceed concurrently and will help rather than harm the movement for an International Parliament. Nor will it encounter the same difficulties. The international organisation of labour provides a better medium in which to establish an international inst.i.tution than does the present international organisation of governments--the Foreign Offices and Foreign Missions. Moreover, it should prove as easy to extend a Soviet System or Council Commonwealth into the international relationship as it is difficult and dangerous to extend the principle of State Sovereignty and Parliamentary supremacy there. The Council Commonwealth, with its essentially international basis, with its democracy of superimposed councils in constant contact with each other and with the international strike for sanction, is as sound and safe a foundation for such a superstructure as the Parliamentary State, with its long-term parliaments, its large const.i.tuencies, its all-dominating national sentiment and its national blockade or boycott, is unsound. Anyway, the International Industrial Congress and Executive Council are bound to come, either in subst.i.tution for or supplementary to the League of Nations, just as the National Council Congress and Central Council are bound to come either in subst.i.tution for or supplementary to the parliamentary systems. The only question is whether they will come as supplementary to or in subst.i.tution for the League.

As to the sop thrown to the workmen of the world in Section 8 of the Treaty, with its international labour organisation, the German workmen, at least, have no use for it. The revolutionaries with their Independent leaders would not probably co-operate at all in the proceedings at Washington now beginning. The Trades Unionists and Social-Democrats have done so, but under no illusions as to results. A criticism of their organ, _Vorwarts_, points out that this section is inspired by as profound a distrust of the Proletariat as the rest of the Treaty shows of Prussia; and that the provisions as to submission of agenda some months before, as to veto by the Governments except when there is a two-thirds majority, while the workmen's representation is no more than a fourth, and as to enforcing decisions, deprive the whole section of most of its value. The _Vorwarts_, representing the general point of view now dominant in Germany and the point of view which but for other influences would have given the most sympathetic supporters to such procedure as that proposed, now d.a.m.ns it as humbug.

But whatever the form of the eventual international inst.i.tution may be, one fact must be faced. We have not yet made peace with Germany.

If the Paris treaties with Germany, Austria and Bulgaria have appeased the angry pa.s.sions excited by war and finally discredited secret diplomacy, they will have fulfilled a function and cleared the road for peace. The armistice demands were the first stage to peace--these diplomatic d.a.m.nifications the second. What will be the third and last?

FOOTNOTES:

[H] This telegram had, I believe, a curious backlash, rather ill.u.s.trative of the times in Germany. A countess with political ambitions, who had set up an Independent salon, had had that Friday her usual "evening," at which I had looked in for a few minutes. On Monday she was arrested and banished to a provincial townlet for supplying false information to a foreign correspondent. Needless to say, one did not need a countess to tell one that Germany would sign in its collapsed condition.

[I] In the German project all signatories of the Hague Convention as well as the new States arisen since the war were admitted. Instead of all authority being a.s.signed to an Executive Council of nine in which the victorious Great Powers reserved themselves a majority of five, the remaining four being elected by smaller States, the German project had the Executive Council elected by a Congress of States, corresponding to the a.s.sembly of Delegates in the Paris project. It also provided a World Parliament of parliamentary delegations. The German project is also more drastic in its provisions for mediation, arbitration, and protection of minorities. It approaches the functions of the League for international social legislation in a much more liberal and constructive spirit.

[J] This article of the Const.i.tution had been amended by the addition of the words in italics: "The generally accepted principles of international law _the p.r.o.nouncements of the League of Nations and the provisions of Treaties_ have binding force as German Const.i.tutional Law." It has now been amended back by their omission.

CHAPTER VII

THE CONSt.i.tUTION

Looking at the new German Const.i.tution, without troubling about its inner meanings, and comparing it with the Const.i.tution of 1871, we are struck at once by the very considerable advance it represents in democratic development. One need not be a const.i.tutional lawyer to a.s.sert with confidence that this is the most democratic Const.i.tution possessed by any of the princ.i.p.al European peoples, and to add that it seems to have avoided many of the mistakes that have been marked in other Republican Const.i.tutions, whether American, French, Portuguese or Russian. The President's powers, for example, and the relation of the Ministry to Parliament suggest that Dr. Preuss, the const.i.tutional jurist responsible for its drafting and elaboration, had studied foreign const.i.tutional history with a Prussian thoroughness and a Hebrew perspicacity.

But a closer study of this Const.i.tution will give us a different view of it. And this view will depend on whether we study it in the light of its development from the Revolution or of its difference from the _ancien regime_. If we compare it with the principles of the revolution we shall be tempted to condemn and reject it, like the German Revolution, as mere camouflaged reaction. It would certainly have been a very different doc.u.ment had it been produced in the first weeks of November. The Revolution, in so far as it had a const.i.tutional conception at all, contemplated a "Rate system" (that is a Council Government), which should secure political power to the proletariat under a Central Committee, on the Russian model. If it had admitted Parliamentary inst.i.tutions at all they would only have been subordinate to Council control. As to any survival of the old State sovereignties, they were looked on as having disappeared with the State dynasties from which they had originated. Thus the Erfurt proclamation of the Thuringian States on December 10th, 1918, proposed that the motley medley of those petty princ.i.p.alities be unified into one administrative department of a centralised Republic.

But this revolutionary impetus did not last. As power relapsed to the upper and middle cla.s.ses particularism reappeared. As the flood tide of revolution drained back, the old channels and watersheds appeared again. Every crisis in modern German history, 1848, 1866 and 1870, had been in the main a movement towards national unity that eventually failed in great measure owing to peculiarities of German character and of Germany's circ.u.mstances. And this last Revolution of 1918 was to a large extent the same; but whereas the previous movements had been thwarted by Conservative ideals and inst.i.tutions, and by the citadels of the past, this movement was most embarra.s.sed by its a.s.sociation with Communist ideals and innovations, like the Councils. So much indeed was this national and centralising factor of the Revolution obscured by the international and socialising feature of it that, at the election of the Const.i.tutional a.s.sembly, such questions as to whether the Const.i.tution should be that of a centralised Republic, like France, or a coalition of Republics, like Switzerland, never came before the public at all.