Some Problems of the Peace Conference

The purpose of the lectures here published is to give a rapid survey of the principal elements in that territorial settlement of Europe which has been pronounced “the most reaso...

Wherever you apply it, self-determination runs against minorities. Ireland has its Ulster, Bohemia its Germans, Poland its Germans and Lithuanians. There are minorities along ev...

The treaty of Versailles, like the other treaties drawn up at Paris, is by no means a perfect instrument. Those who took part in framing it would be the last to believe it verba...

One question of which Denmark and the Schleswigers showed great desire to keep clear was the Kiel Canal. Even the widest limit of evacuation proposed carefully left a belt of Sc...

Important as is the Meuse to Belgium, her great highway is the Scheldt. To all intents and purposes an arm of the sea, the Scheldt is navigable for ocean-going vessels as far as...

Alsace, except the city of Mulhouse, was annexed to France in the course of the reign of Louis XIV. The Middle Ages had broken the country up into a great variety of feudal stat...

The French government from 1648 to 1789 was tender to the traditions of the conquered territory. Except for the prescription of French in the courts, no restrictions were put on...

The economic provisions had to consider not only the status of such individual matters as debts and contracts, pensions and suits at law, but also the new relations created in t...

A wrong a hundred years old, however, is not easily undone, and its undoing may constitute an even greater wrong. Particularist at the outset, the Rhineland had been assimilated...

France not only needed this coal, she had a strong claim to it. The chief French mines, those of Lens and Valenciennes on the Belgian border, had been in German hands for more t...

Moreover the problem was in itself very difficult. Geographically, Poland is one of the hardest countries in the world to define. Clearly marked natural frontiers are lacking; o...

Regrettable as this may be, the following observations may be made upon it. In the first place, if the real facts were known, the ratio would undoubtedly be found to be much mor...

Socially and intellectually there is a striking contrast between the two rival races. The Ruthenians are almost entirely a peasant population, with only a small educated class o...

Out of these discords grew the World War, as a result of Austria’s effort to crush the most dangerous of the nationalist movements threatening her from within by striking at its...

Such were the reasons that led the Conference to depart rather widely in this case from its usual principles of boundary-making. The settlement seems to have been accepted by th...

An ideal which has haunted the minds of Roumanian patriots for a century, but which long seemed only an iridescent dream, has been realized by the annexation to Roumania of Tran...

Finally, the Italians invoke strategic reasons for demanding at least a part of Dalmatia. The Adriatic Sea forms a narrow couloir, about 400 miles in length but in places scarce...

In the Middle Ages, when frontiers in the Balkans were, if possible, even more fluid than they have been in recent times, Macedonia was most frequently under the rule of the Gre...

The fate of Eastern Thrace is still awaiting the conclusion of peace with Turkey and the settlement of the far greater problem--Constantinople. That most tantalizing of question...

Prussia, 17, 19, 38, 39, 40, 54f., 57, 58, 66, 67, 80, 82, 93, 117, 121, 125, 126, 132, 135, 136, 144, 146, 150, 159, 160, 167, 171, 172, 173-188, 205, 287.