Chapter 17

The Belgians were discouraged by the disdainful demeanor and grudging disposition of the Supreme Council, and irritated by the arbitrariness of its decrees and the indefensible way in which it applied principles that were propounded as sacred. Before restoring the diminutive cantons of Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium, for example, Mr. Wilson insisted on ascertaining the will of the population by plebiscite. In itself the measure was reasonable, but the position of these little districts was substantially on all-fours with Alsace-Lorraine, which was restored to France without any such test. In Fiume, also, the will of the inhabitants went for nothing, Mr. Wilson refusing to consult them. Further, Austria, whose people were known to favor union with Germany, was systematically jockeyed into ruinous isolation. "Now what, in the light of these conflicting judgments," asked the Belgians, "is the true meaning of the principle of self-determination?" The only reply they received was that Mr. Wilson was right when he told his fellow-countrymen that his principles stood in need of interpretation, and that, as he was the sole authorized interpreter, his presence was required in Europe.

In money matters, too, the chief plenipotentiaries can hardly be acquitted of something akin to niggardliness toward the country which had saved theirs from a catastrophe. Down to the month of May, 1921, two and a half milliard francs was the maximum sum allotted to Belgium by the Supreme Council. And for the work of restoring the devastated country, which the Great Powers had spontaneously promised to accomplish, it was alleged by experts to be wholly inadequate. Other financial grievances were ignored--for a time. Further, it was decided that Germany should surrender her African colonies to the Great Powers; yet Belgium, who contributed materially to their conquest, was not to be associated with them.

Irritated by this illiberality, the Belgian delegation, having consulted with M. Renkin, to whose judgment in these matters special weight attached, resolved to make a firm stand, and refused to sign the Treaty unless at least certain modest financial, economic, and colonial claims, which ought to have been settled spontaneously, were accorded under pressure. And the Supreme Council, rather than be arraigned before the world on the charge of behaving unjustly as well as ungenerously toward Belgium, ultimately gave way, leaving, however, an impression behind which seemed as indelible as it was profound....

The domination which is now being exercised by the principal Powers over the remaining states of the world is fraught with consequences which were not foreseen, and have not yet been realized by those who established it. Among the least momentous, but none the less real, is one to which Belgium is exposed. Hitherto there was a language problem in that heroic country which, being an internal controversy, could be settled without noteworthy perturbations by the good-will of the Walloons and the Flemings. The danger, which one fervently hopes will be warded off, consists in the possible transformation of that dispute into an international question, in consequence of possible accords of a military or economic nature. The subject is too delicate to be handled by a foreigner, and the Belgian people are too practical and law-loving not to avoid unwary steps that might turn a linguistic problem into a racial issue.

The Supreme Council soon came to be looked upon as the prototype of the future League, and in that light its action was sharply scrutinized by all whom the League concerned. Foremost among these were the representatives of the lesser states, or, as they were termed, "states with limited interests." This band of patriots had pilgrimaged to Paris full of hope for their respective countries, having drunk in avidly the unstinted praise and promises which had served as pabulum for their attachment to the Allied cause during the war. But their illusions were short-lived. At one of their first meetings with the delegates of the Great Powers a storm burst which scattered their expectations to the winds. When the sky cleared it was discovered that from indispensable fellow-workers they had shrunk to dwarfish protégées, mere units of an inferior category, who were to be told what to do and would be constrained to do it thoroughly if not unmurmuringly.

At the historic sitting of January 26th, the delegates of the lesser states protested energetically against the purely decorative part assigned to them at a Conference in the decisions of which their peoples were so intensely interested. The Canadian Minister, having spoken of the "proposal" of the Great Powers, was immediately corrected by M. Clemenceau, who brusquely said that it was not a proposal, but a decision, which was therefore definitive and final. Thereupon the Belgian delegate, M. Hymans, delivered a masterly speech, pleading for genuine discussion in order to elucidate matters that so closely concerned them all, and he requested the Conference to allow the smaller belligerent Allies more than two delegates. Their demand was curtly rejected by the French Premier, who informed his hearers that the Conference was the creation of the Great Powers, who intended to keep the direction of its labors in their own hands. He added significantly that the smaller nations' representatives would probably not have been invited at all if the special problem of the League of Nations had not been mooted. Nor should it be forgotten, he added, that the five Great Powers represented no less than twelve million fighting-men.... In conclusion, he told them that they had better get on with their work in lieu of wasting precious time in speechmaking. These words produced a profound and lasting effect, which, however, was hardly the kind intended by the French statesman.

"Conferential Tsarism" was the term applied to this magisterial method by one of the offended delegates. He said to me on the morrow: "My reply to M. Clemenceau was ready, but fear of impairing the prestige of the Conference prevented me from uttering it. I could have emphasized the need for unanimity in the presence of vigilant enemies, ready to introduce a wedge into every fissure of the edifice we are constructing. I could have pointed out that, this being an assembly of nations which had waged war conjointly, there is no sound reason why its membership should be diluted with states which never drew the sword at all. I might have asked what has become of the doctrine preached when victory was still undecided, that a league of nations must repose upon a free consent of all sovereign states. And above all things else I could have inquired how it came to pass that the architect-in-chief of the society of nations which is to bestow a stable peace on mankind should invoke the argument of force, of militarism, against the pacific peoples who voluntarily made the supreme sacrifice for the cause of humanity and now only ask for a hearing. Twelve million fighting-men is an argument to be employed against the Teutons, not against the peace-loving, law-abiding peoples of Europe.

"Premier Clemenceau seemed to lay the blame for the waste of time on our shoulders, but the truth is that we were never admitted to the deliberations until yesterday; although two and one-half months have elapsed since the armistice was concluded, and although the progress made by these leading statesmen is manifestly limited, he grudged us forty-five minutes to give vent to our views and wishes.

"The French Tiger was admirable when crushing the enemies of civilization with his twelve million fighting-men; but gestures and actions which were appropriate to the battlefield become sources of jarring and discord when imported into a concert of peoples."

Much bitterness was generated by those high-handed tactics, whereupon certain slight concessions were made in order to placate the offended delegates; but, being doled out with a bad grace, they failed of the effect intended. Belgium received three delegates instead of two, and Jugoslavia three; but Rumania, whose population was estimated at fourteen millions, was allowed but two. This inexplicable decision caused a fresh wound, which was kept continuously open by friction, although it might readily have been avoided. Its consequences may be traced in Rumania's singular relations to the Supreme Council before and after the fall of Kuhn in Hungary.

But even those drastic methods might be deemed warranted if the policy enforced were, in truth, conducive to the welfare of the nations on whom it was imposed. But hastily improvised by one or two men, who had no claim to superior or even average knowledge of the problems involved, and who were constantly falling into egregious and costly errors, it was inevitable that their intervention should be resented as arbitrary and mischievous by the leaders of the interested nations whose acquaintanceship with those questions and with the interdependent issues was extensive and precise. This resentment, however, might have been not, indeed, neutralized, but somewhat mitigated, if the temper and spirit in which the Duumvirate discharged its self-set functions had been free from hauteur and softened by modesty. But the magisterial wording in which its decisions were couched, the abruptness with which they were notified, and the threats that accompanied their imposition would have been repellent even were the authors endowed with infallibility.

One of the delegates who unbosomed himself to me on the subject soon after the Germans had signed the Treaty remarked: "The Big Three are superlatively unsympathetic to most of the envoys from the lesser belligerent states. And it would be a wonder if it were otherwise, for they make no effort to hide their disdain for us. In fact, it is downright contempt. They never consult us. When we approach them they shove us aside as importunate intruders. They come to decisions unknown to us, and carry them out in secrecy, as though we were enemies or spies. If we protest or remonstrate, we are imperialists and ungrateful.

"Often we learn only from the newspapers the burdens or the restrictions that have been imposed on us."

A couple of days previously M. Clemenceau, in an unofficial reply to a question put by the Rumanian delegation, directed them to consult the financial terms of the Treaty with Austria, forgetting that the delegates of the lesser states had not been allowed to receive or read those terms. Although communicated to the Austrians, they were carefully concealed from the Rumanians, whom they also concerned. At the same time, the Rumanian government was called upon to take and announce a decision which presupposed acquaintanceship with those conditions, whereupon the Rumanian Premier telegraphed from Bucharest to Paris to have them sent. But his _locum tenens_ did not possess a copy and had no right to demand one.[140] Incongruities of this character were frequent.

One statesman in Paris, who enjoys a world-wide reputation, dissented from those who sided with the lesser states. He looked at their protests and tactics from an angle of vision which the unbiased historian, however emphatically he may dissent from it, cannot ignore. He said: "All the smaller communities are greedy and insatiable. If the chiefs of the World Powers had understood their temper and ascertained their aspirations in 1914, much that has passed into history since then would never have taken place. During the war these miniature countries were courted, flattered, and promised the sun and the moon, earth and heaven, and all the glories therein. And now that these promises cannot be redeemed, they are wroth, and peevishly threaten the great states with disobedience and revolt. This, it is true, they could not do if the latter had not forfeited their authority and prestige by allowing their internal differences, hesitations, contradictions, and repentances to become manifest to all. To-day it is common knowledge that the Great Powers are amenable to very primitive incentives and deterrents. If in the beginning they had been united and said to their minor brethren: 'These are your frontiers. These your obligations,' the minor brethren would have bowed and acquiesced gratefully. In this way the boundary problems might have been settled to the satisfaction of all, for each new or enlarged state would have been treated as the recipient of a free gift from the World Powers. But the plenipotentiaries went about their task in a different and unpractical fashion. They began by recognizing the new communities, and then they gave them representatives at the Conference. This they did on the ground that the League of Nations must first be founded, and that all well-behaved belligerents on the Allied side have a right to be consulted upon that. And, finally, instead of keeping to their program and liquidating the war, they mingled the issues of peace with the clauses of the League and debated them simultaneously. In these debates they revealed their own internal differences, their hesitancy, and the weakness of their will. And the lesser states have taken advantage of that. The general results have been the postponement of peace, the physical exhaustion of the Central Empires, and the spread of Bolshevism."

It should not be forgotten that this mixture of the general and the particular of the old order and the new was objected to on other grounds. The Italians, for example, urged that it changed the status of a large number of their adversaries into that of highly privileged Allies. During the war they were enemies, before the peace discussions opened they had obtained forgiveness, after which they entered the Conference as cherished friends. The Italians had waged their war heroically against the Austrians, who inflicted heavy losses on them. Who were these Austrians? They were composed of the various nationalities which made up the Hapsburg monarchy, and in especial of men of Slav speech. These soldiers, with notable exceptions, discharged their duty to the Austrian Emperor and state conscientiously, according to the terms of their oath. Their disposition toward the Italians was not a whit less hostile than was that of the common German man against the French and the English. Why, then, argued the Italians, accord them privileges over the ally who bore the brunt of the fight against them? Why even treat the two as equals? It may be replied that the bulk of the people were indifferent and merely carried out orders. Well, the same holds good of the average German, yet he is not being spoiled by the victorious World Powers. But the Croats and others suddenly became the favorite children of the Conference, while the Germans and Teuton-Austrians, who in the meanwhile had accepted and fulfilled President Wilson's conditions for entry into the fellowship of nations, were not only punished heavily--which was perfectly just--but also disqualified for admission into the League, which was inconsistent.

The root of all the incoherences complained of lay in the circumstance that the chiefs of the Great Powers had no program, no method; Mr. Wilson's pristine scheme would have enabled him to treat the gallant Serbs and their Croatian brethren as he desired. But he had failed to maintain it against opposition. On the other hand, the traditional method of the balance of power would have given Italy all that she could reasonably ask for, but Mr. Wilson had partially destroyed it. Nothing remained then but to have recourse to a _tertium quid_ which profoundly dissatisfied both parties and imperiled the peace of the world in days to come. And even this makeshift the eminent plenipotentiaries were unable to contrive single-handed. Their notion of getting the work done was to transfer it to missions, commissions, and sub-commissions, and then to take action which, as often as not, ran counter to the recommendations of these selected agents. Oddly enough, none of these bodies received adequate directions. To take a concrete example: a central commission was appointed to deal with the Polish frontier problems, a second commission under M. Jules Cambon had to study the report on the Polish Delimitation question, but although often consulted, it was seldom listened to. Then there was a third commission, which also did excellent work to very little purpose. Now all the questions which formed the subjects of their inquiries might be approached from various sides. There were historical frontiers, ethnographical frontiers, political and strategical and linguistic frontiers. And this does not exhaust the list. Among all these, then, the commissioners had to choose their field of investigation as the spirit moved them, without any guidance from the Supreme Council, which presumably did not know what it wanted.

As an example of the Council's unmethodical procedure, and of its slipshod way of tackling important work, the following brief sketch of a discussion which was intended to be decisive and final, but ended in mere waste of time, may be worth recording. The topic mooted was disarmament. The Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries, feeling that they owed it to their doctrines and their peoples to ease the military burdens of the latter and lessen temptations to acts of violence, favored a measure by which armaments should be reduced forthwith. The Italian delegates had put forward the thesis, which was finally accepted, that if Austria, for instance, was to be forbidden to keep more than a certain number of troops under arms, the prohibition should be extended to all the states of which Austria had been composed, and that in all these cases the ratio between the population and the army should be identical. Accordingly, the spokesmen of the various countries interested were summoned to take cognizance of the decision and intimate their readiness to conform to it.

M. Paderewski listened respectfully to the decree, and then remarked: "According to the accounts received from the French military authorities, Germany still has three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in Silesia." "No," corrected M. Clemenceau, "only three hundred thousand." "I accept the correction," replied the Polish Premier. "The difference, however, is of no importance to my contention, which is that according to the symptoms reported we Poles may have to fight the Germans and to wage the conflict single-handed. As you know, we have other military work on hand. I need only mention our strife with the Bolsheviki. If we are deprived of effective means of self-defense, on the one hand, and told to expect no help from the Allies, on the other hand, the consequence will be what every intelligent observer foresees. Now three hundred thousand Germans is no trifle to cope with. If we confront them with an inadequate force and are beaten, what then?" "Undoubtedly," exclaimed M. Clemenceau, "if the Germans were victorious in the east of Europe the Allies would have lost the war. And that is a perspective not to be faced."

M. Bratiano spoke next. "We too," he said, "have to fight the Bolsheviki on more than one front. This struggle is one of life and death to us. But it concerns, if only in a lesser degree, all Europe, and we are rendering services to the Great Powers by the sacrifices we thus offer up. Is it desirable, is it politic, to limit our forces without reference to these redoubtable tasks which await them? Is it not incumbent on the Powers to allow these states to grow to the dimensions required for the discharge of their functions?" "What you advance is true enough for the moment," objected M. Clemenceau; "but you forget that our limitations are not to be applied at once. We fix a term after the expiry of which the strength of the armies will be reduced. We have taken all the circumstances into account." "Are you prepared to affirm," queried the Rumanian Minister, "that you can estimate the time with sufficient precision to warrant our risking the existence of our country on your forecast?" "The danger will have completely disappeared," insisted the French Premier, "by January, 1921." "I am truly glad to have this assurance," answered M. Bratiano, "for I doubt not that you are quite certain of what you advance, else you would not stake the fate of your eastern allies on its correctness. But as we who have not been told the grounds on which you base this calculation are asked to manifest our faith in it by incurring the heaviest conceivable risks, would it be too much to suggest that the Great Powers should show their confidence in their own forecast by guaranteeing that if by the insurgence of unexpected events they proved to be mistaken and Rumania were attacked, they would give us prompt and adequate military assistance?" To this appeal there was no affirmative response; whereupon M. Bratiano concluded: "The limitation of armaments is highly desirable. No people is more eager for it than ours. But it has one limitation which must, I venture to think, be respected. So long as you have a restive or dubious neighbor, whose military forces are subjected neither to limitation nor control, you cannot divest yourself of your own means of self-defense. That is our view of the matter."

Months later the same difficulty cropped up anew, this time in a concrete form, and was dealt with by the Supreme Council in its characteristic manner. Toward the end of August Rumania's doings in Hungary and her alleged designs on the Banat alarmed and angered the delegates, whose authority was being flouted with impunity; and by way of summarily terminating the scandal and preventing unpleasant surprises M. Clemenceau proposed that all further consignments of arms to Rumania should cease. Thereupon Italy's chief representative, Signor Tittoni, offered an amendment. He deprecated, he said, any measure leveled specially against Rumania, all the more that there existed already an enactment of the old Council of Four limiting the armaments of all the lesser states. The Military Council of Versailles, having been charged with the study of this matter, had reached the conclusion that the Great Powers should not supply any of the governments with war material. Signor Tittoni was of the opinion, therefore, that those conclusions should now be enforced.

The Council thereupon agreed with the Italian delegate, and passed a resolution to supply none of the lesser countries with war material. And a few minutes later it passed another resolution authorizing Germany to cede part of her munitions and war material to Czechoslovakia and some more to General Yudenitch![141]