Part 2

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 every frontier. Some one remarked that there was need of a fifteenth point, the rights of minorities. The Conference found this out, and upon the newly established states of eastern Europe were imposed special treaties safeguarding the rights of minority peoples--Jews, Germans, Russians, etc.--whom past experience had shown to need such guarantees.

Of these human elements in frontier-making we may begin by eliminating race, for in Europe race is a matter of no importance in drawing national lines. This point is emphasized, here and later, because there has been a great deal of loose talk about race, notably on the part of German writers. So far as it is an exact term at all, race is a physical fact, dependent upon certain elements of stature, color, and shape of the skull which occur and are transmitted in certain fixed combinations or racial types. There are three such types in Europe, the Teutonic, the Alpine, and the Mediterranean, most prevalent respectively in northern, central, and southern Europe. But in no country do they appear in pure or unmixed form. Migration and conquest have intermingled them to such an extent as to leave no sharp racial frontiers and to make the people of every country a mixture of two or three races. Thus the central or Alpine type is widely prevalent in the south and west of Germany, and the Teutonic type in the north and east of France. Furthermore these physical types are quite without political significance--no one cares whether his neighbors are tall or short, blonde or brunette, round-headed or long-headed. So far as Europe is concerned, all talk of race has to be eliminated from serious international discussion.

Language, on the other hand, is a matter of prime importance. Speech is a fundamental element in creating consciousness of kind: the man in the street knows whether he can understand the speech of his neighbor, and has always had opprobrious epithets for those who speak an alien tongue, from the ‘barbarians’ of the Greeks and the ‘Welsh’ of the Teutonic Middle Ages to the ‘dagoes’ and ‘gringoes’ and ‘wops’ of current parlance. Even differences of dialect engender similar terms, as when the people of the Right Bank are called _Schwob_ in Alsace and the Alsatians are stigmatized as _Wacke_ by those beyond the Rhine.

Still, language has its pitfalls as a guide to national lines of cleavage. To begin with, while in the country districts it is singularly persistent, it can also be learned and unlearned by a new generation, especially when the resources of universal education are wielded by the compulsive power of the modern state. The German schoolmaster has labored to reduce the area of Danish in Schleswig and of French in Alsace-Lorraine. The Russians have checked German in the Baltic provinces. In the British Isles Celtic speech is far less widespread than Celtic blood. Moreover, if the government cannot always drive out minority languages, it can at least make its own language statistics. It is easy for the census-taker to impose on the weak or ignorant, to interpret all doubtful cases in one direction, to adopt definitions which fall on one side. The statistics of Polish-speaking districts in Prussia and of Italian-speaking elements in Austria-Hungary are well known examples.

Again, language statistics, even when trustworthy, do not necessarily yield a sharp dividing line. There may be more than two significant elements in the population, or, as in parts of the Balkans and Asia Minor, villages of different speech may be interspersed in a checkerboard fashion.

Finally, language, even when accurately ascertained, is not a certain test of political affiliation. There has been a strong pro-French tradition among the German-speaking Alsatians. The small German-speaking districts of Belgium are not pro-German.

After all, it is the opinion of the people concerned which we wish to ascertain with respect to a given frontier, and language is important chiefly as a guide to that. Unequivocal expressions of popular opinion are, however, hard to reach, especially in times of stress and in regions that are under dispute. At best a plebiscite may be but a poor indication of real opinion, and the opinion it registers well may be only transitory. Moreover, caution may be required in giving effect to a vote or an otherwise well ascertained expression of opinion. Thus it is open to debate whether the vote of a small district should necessarily carry with it the disposal of a great key deposit of mineral wealth which concerns a much wider constituency. It is also possible that in the long run commercial intercourse and economic interest may create ties more lasting than language or national sentiment, and that a given boundary may do more ultimate harm by violating the fundamental economic interests of a region than by violating its momentary political sentiments.

Again, the political sentiment of the moment may run counter to strong historic forces, as in Bohemia, where the considerable German element has been settled for centuries, so that its incorporation with adjacent German-speaking countries would tear apart the historic unity of the Czech state. Indeed, it is a nice question how far it was the task of the Peace Conference to right ancient territorial wrongs. “The wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine” was a clear case for rectification, if only because, in President Wilson’s phrase, it had “unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years.” Much the same could be said for the restoration of North Schleswig, seized by Prussia in 1864, and even for Poland, though its destruction dates back to the eighteenth century. On the other hand, more recent acts of injustice, such as the Prussian annexations of 1814, the Conference left untouched, except on the Belgian frontier, evidently considering them as internal German questions which time had adjusted. Some notion of prescription had evidently to be admitted, else in seeking to right ancient wrongs the Conference would have done a greater wrong by introducing confusion into every part of the world. The only noteworthy attempt to reach far back into history would be the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, now inhabited by a preponderantly Mohammedan and Christian population. Here, as in many parts of eastern Europe, religion becomes an important element in national cleavage.

In general, the Paris Conference was disposed to give more weight to the principle of nationality, in its broader historic sense, than to economic or strategic considerations. This idea of nationality runs through the programme of President Wilson, which the members of the Conference had accepted in advance. It is, of course, easier to set peoples free from their rulers than from economic necessity, and the creation of new political frontiers undoubtedly complicates questions of trade and commercial policy. Nevertheless, it is a curious inconsistency that some who are most eager to find discrepancies between the programme of the Conference and its achievements should at the same time propose to destroy the economic and political independence of the newly liberated peoples of central Europe and the Balkans by imposing on them a compulsory customs union after the manner of Germany’s Mitteleuropa.[5]

Finally, the nature of the frontiers to be drawn at Paris depended on the kind of world for which they were to be made. If Europe was to continue to be an armed camp, divided between two competing systems of alliances, then the strongest possible military frontiers would be required--along the Rhine and the Danube, in the Alps and in the Balkans--, and the strategic element must preponderate in every boundary. If, on the other hand, some better form of international organization could be found through a League of Nations, however rudimentary, strategic considerations could drop into the background in favor of the economic convenience and the political desires of the people concerned. If colonial rivalries were to be reduced in the interest of world peace, the German colonies ought to be subjected to some international control, and they could not be internationalized without creating some international authority. An international control of ports and rivers might affect the whole problem of access to the sea, while areas of special tension or perplexity, like Danzig or the Saar valley, might be placed under some form of international administration such as commissions of the League of Nations. This explains why the problem of the League could not be postponed until after the conclusion of peace, but formed an integral part of the negotiations and of the treaty itself. At every turn the problem of the League of Nations obtruded itself, and the elaboration of the plan for a League facilitated, instead of hindering, the work of the Conference.

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In addition to the fundamental principle of self-determination expressed in President Wilson’s speeches, Germany and the Allies had accepted his specific Fourteen Points as the basis of the negotiations. This immensely simplified the task of the Conference in certain directions, and gave a firm ground for discussion wherever these applied; but much was required in the way of interpretation, extension, supplementing, and application before the two pages of the Fourteen Points could grow into the two hundred pages of the treaty with Germany and the correspondingly long texts of the other treaties. The Fourteen Points did not cover the whole field, and even where they were clearly and directly applicable, much knowledge and much negotiation were required to put them into effect.

The Congress of Vienna had its Statistical Commission, one of the most successful parts of the Congress, which collected the statistical data for parcelling out peoples among the various princes. It was limited, however, to statistics of population, the counting of heads being the only basis there admitted in the balancing of territorial adjustments. The Paris Conference needed a far larger and more varied body of knowledge, not only because it covered every part of the world, but because its declared principles necessitated information of every sort respecting the history, traditions, aspirations, ethnology, government, resources, and economic conditions of the peoples with which it was to deal.

Information the Conference had in huge quantities, literally by the ton. It came in every day in scores of foreign newspapers, in masses of pamphlets, in piles of diplomatic reports and despatches. Every special interest was on hand, eager to present its case orally to the Conference or its commissions, to enlighten personally the commissioners or their subordinates, to hand in endless volumes of more or less trustworthy ethnographical maps and statistics, of pictures and description, of propagandist matter of every conceivable sort. A steady head, a critical judgment, and a considerable background of fact were required to keep one’s vision clear amidst this mass of confusing and conflicting material.

The collecting and sifting of such information for the Conference had begun years before. The French, systematic as always, had appointed governmental commissions, economic, military, geographic, and had also a special university committee with Professor Lavisse as chairman, the Comité d’Etudes, which prepared two admirable volumes, with detailed maps, on the European problems of the conference. The British had printed two considerable series of Handbooks, one got out by the Naval Intelligence Division under the guidance of Professor W. McNeil Dixon of Glasgow, the other prepared in the Historical Section of the Foreign Office under the editorship of Sir George Prothero. The United States had put little into print, but more than a year before the armistice, by direction of the President, Colonel Edward M. House had organized a comprehensive investigation, known as the ‘Inquiry,’ with its headquarters at the building of the American Geographical Society in New York City, whose secretary, Dr. Isaiah Bowman, served as executive officer. It enlisted throughout the country the services of a large number of geographers, historians, economists, statisticians, ethnologists, and students of government and international law; and carloads of maps, statistics, manuscript reports, and fundamental books of reference accompanied the American Commission to Paris. The specialists who went along or were later brought together were organized into a group of economic advisers--Messrs. Baruch, Davis, Lamont, McCormick, Taussig, Young, and their staffs--; two technical advisers in international law--Messrs. David Hunter Miller and James Brown Scott--with their assistants; and a section of territorial and political intelligence.

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Peace conferences are always represented as sitting around green tables, and this pleasant fiction is perpetuated with reference to Paris in the widely circulated advertisement of a well known fountain pen. Now the Paris Conference never sat around a table. It is true that for certain formal sessions of the whole Conference there was arranged a long table lining three sides of the principal room in the French Foreign Office on the Quai d’Orsay, and that the delegates could be packed in here twice as close as nature meant them to sit. But there were very few formal meetings of this sort, and they could not by any stretch of the imagination be thought of as round-table conferences, if indeed as conferences at all. Certain leaders delivered prepared speeches, and rarely did lesser lights venture to break the prearranged course of the proceedings.

It was early apparent that the Conference could not profitably meet and do business as a whole. Twenty-seven different states were represented, besides the five British dominions. There were seventy authorized delegates. Such a body would have become a debating society; it would still be in session, its labors scarcely begun. Some guiding or steering executive committee was obviously required, and it was early found in the delegates of the five chief Powers: America, England, France, Italy, and Japan.

The five Great Powers themselves had thirty-four delegates, and it was plain that this also was too large a body for doing ordinary business. So there was early organized a Committee or Council of Ten, each state having two members, ordinarily the chief delegate and the foreign secretary; and this became the active agency of the Conference. It had a secretariat; and expert advisers, civil or military, attended as they were needed. If a military matter came up, Marshal Foch would be on hand, member of the Conference in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief, with his curving shoulders, fine face, and clear eye. A naval question brought in the British sea lords, Admiral Benson, and a keen-looking lot of Japanese. When economic questions were to the fore, the American delegation bulked large, with the square jaw of Mr. Herbert Hoover well in evidence.

Even the Council of Ten was not seated about a table, although it is so imagined in an ‘inside history’ of the Conference by one who was never inside.[6] Nor did the American delegation meet around a table, notwithstanding the preparation of an official picture which represents the members in a room where they never met, seated at one end of a table and backed by an imposing array of secretaries and assistants. The Council of Ten sat along three sides of the pleasant office of M. Pichon, the French Foreign Secretary, its walls covered with bright tapestries after the style of Rubens, its windows looking out over a beautiful French garden which tempted the roving eye while a long speech was being translated. M. Clémenceau presided, a tiger at rest, his eyes mostly on the ceiling, sometimes bored but always alert and never napping. Others sometimes appeared to sleep or to distract themselves as best they could; but no one lost touch with the proceedings. Certainly the President of the United States, long trained by golf, kept his eye steadily on the ball.

The Council of Ten met almost daily at three. Each special interest, each minor nationality, had a chance to come forward and state its case, usually at considerable length. Whatever was said in French was translated into English, and vice versa. The sessions grew long and tiresome, and progress was slow. More and more people were called in. One of them remarked that he would not have missed his first meeting for a thousand dollars, but would not give ten cents to see a second! For its last two sessions the Council moved into the large room reserved for the plenary sessions of the Conference. One of these meetings was reported at length in the Paris papers, and it was alleged that undue publicity, as well as undue prolixity, was responsible for the sudden change on March 24. After that date the Council of Ten ceased to meet. Cartoonists represented it as seeking a bomb-proof shelter. At times thereafter the foreign ministers met as a Council of Five. But the real power rested with a new body, the Council of the four principal delegates of England, France, Italy, and the United States--Messrs. Lloyd George, Clémenceau, Orlando, and Wilson.

The Council of Four left the spacious quarters of the Quai d’Orsay. Sometimes it met in M. Clémenceau’s office at the Ministry of War, sometimes at Mr. Lloyd George’s apartment, most frequently at President Wilson’s residence, either in his study, or, when several outsiders were present, in the large drawing-room. The meetings in the study were not always “private and unattended,” nor were the occasional conferences upstairs the confused gatherings which an infrequent spectator has pictured.[7] Outsiders were called in as needed, but ordinarily the Four met by themselves, with a confidential interpreter, Captain Mantoux, very able and very trustworthy. There was no stenographer, not even a secretary, though secretaries were usually outside the door to execute orders. The meetings were quite conversational, and the records necessarily fragmentary. But the Council at least worked rapidly, sometimes perforce too rapidly. Steadily the main lines of the treaty emerged.

By March the expert work of the Conference had been largely organized into commissions, not systematically and at the outset, as the French had proposed in January, but haltingly and irregularly, as necessity compelled. Foresight and organizing ability were not the strong points of the congress. One by one there were created commissions on Poland, on Greece, on Morocco, on Roumania, etc., on reparation, finance, waterways, and the principal economic problems of the conference. Ordinarily a commission consisted of two members from each of the five great powers, with a secretary from each and special advisers as required. Their proceedings were regularly noted, and formal minutes of each session were approved in print. Each country expressed its opinion, but efforts were made to reach and report a unanimous conclusion. On one occasion a Japanese delegate, perplexed by a detailed problem of local topography, gave as his vote, “I agree with the majority.” As the commission had just divided, two to two, he scarcely clarified the situation.

Some of the best work of the Conference was done in these commissions, and it is to be regretted that the system was not organized earlier and used more widely. Some matters were never referred to commissions, delicate questions like Fiume and Dalmatia and the Rhine frontier being reserved for the exclusive consideration of the Four. Problems of an intermediate sort were sent to special committees, extemporized and set to work at double speed. Such were the Saar valley and Alsace-Lorraine, referred to a committee of three, Messrs. Tardieu, Headlam-Morley, and Haskins. Not being an organized commission, this body had no secretariat. Economic and legal advisers might be present, but often there were only the three. This committee met for a certain period very steadily, sometimes twice a day. It reported unanimously the chapters of the treaty on the Saar and Alsace-Lorraine, and was present at the meetings of the Council of Four each time these questions came up.

One naturally asks how far the recommendations of these commissions and special committees were followed in framing the final draft of the treaty. To this it is hard to give a general answer, for in the nature of the case there was no uniform policy. The printed minutes of the commissions will some day be public and can then be compared with the several clauses of the treaty. In general, the territorial commissions were thought of in the first instance as gatherers and sifters of evidence, rather than as framers of treaty articles, questions of policy being reserved for the ultimate consideration of the Council of Ten. As time went on, the commissions tended to acquire more responsibility and to throw their reports into the form of specific articles or sections of a treaty. These naturally required coördination with the work of other bodies, such as the commissions on finance, reparation, or waterways, and a general correlation of the territorial reports was attempted by a Central Territorial Commission of five. Some final suggestions were also made by the Drafting Commission. The reports of the commissions were, however, first made directly to the Ten or the Four or the Five, as the case might be. Each report had its place on the docket, and the members of the commission were then present, each at the elbow of his principal, to furnish any necessary explanations in his ear, but not to speak out. Later in the summer members of the commissions were allowed to take part in the discussions of the Council of Five.

Sometimes the report, presented in print, would be accepted without debate. Sometimes a particular question would be considered at length, perhaps with the result of recommitting the report. Unanimous reports were likely to go through rapidly. A session of the Council of Four might take an important report clause by clause, with explanations from the committee and suggestions from members of the Council, but without fundamental modifications. On the other hand important changes in one chapter of the treaty were made at the last moment by the Four without any consultation of the commission concerned.

In general, the American delegation was disposed to trust its experts, both on matters of fact and on matters of judgment, and trusted them in greater measure as the Conference wore on. It did not dictate or even suggest their decisions, but left them free to form their opinions on the basis of the evidence. They could have been used to better advantage if they had been set to work earlier, and there were unfortunate instances where they were consulted too late; but in general this is to be explained by the haste and confusion inevitable in the rapid movement of events rather than by any desire to ignore the facts or the judgment based upon them. Certainly none of the chief delegates was more eager for the facts of the case than was the President of the United States, and none was able to assimilate them more quickly or use them more effectively in the discussion of territorial problems.

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