Chapter 37

Against this violation of the new humanitarian doctrine French publicists flared up. The glaring character of the transgression revolted them, the plight of the Persians touched them, and the right of self-determination strongly appealed to them. Was it not largely for the assertion of that right that all the Allied peoples had for five years been making unheard-of sacrifices? What would become of the League of Nations if such secret and selfish doings were connived at? In a word, French sympathy for the victims of British hegemony waxed as strong as the British fellow-feeling for the Syrians, who objected to be drawn into the orbit of the French. Those sharp protests and earnest appeals, it may be noted, were the principal, perhaps the only, symptoms of tenderness for unprotected peoples which were evoked by the great ethical movement headed by the Conference.

The French further pointed out that the system of Mandates had been specially created for countries as backward and helpless as Persia was assumed to be, and that the only agency qualified to apply it was either the Supreme Council or the League of Nations. The British press answered that no such humiliating assumption about the Shah's people was being made, that the Foreign Office had distinctly disclaimed the intention of establishing a protectorate over Persia, who is, and will remain, a sovereign and independent state. But these explanations failed to convince our indignant Allies. They argued, from experience, that no trust was to be placed in those official assurances and euphemistic phrases which are generally belied by subsequent acts.[317] They further lamented that the long and secret negotiations which were going forward in Teheran while the Persian delegation was wearily and vainly waiting in Paris to be allowed to plead its country's cause before the great world-dictators was not a good example of loyalty to the new cosmic legislation. Had not Mr. Wilson proclaimed that peoples were no longer to be bartered and swapped as chattels? Here the Italians and Rumanians chimed in, reminding their kinsmen that it was the same American statesmen who in the peace conditions first presented to Count Brockdorff-Rantzau made over the German population of the Saar Valley to France at the end of fifteen years as the fair equivalent of a sum of money payable in gold, and that France at any rate had raised no objection to the barter nor to the principle at the root of it. They reasoned that if the principle might be applied to one case it should be deemed equally applicable to the other, and that the only persons or states that could with propriety demur to the Anglo-Persian arrangements were those who themselves were not benefiting by similar transactions.

At last the Paris press, laying due weight on the alliance with Britain, struck a new note. "It seems that these last Persian bargainings offer a theme for conversations between our government and that of the Allies," one influential journal wrote.[318] At once the amicable suggestion was taken up by the British press. The idea was to join the Syrian with the Persian transactions and make French concessions on the other. This compromise would compose an ugly quarrel and settle everything for the best. For France's intentions toward the people of Syria were, it was credibly asserted, to the full as disinterested and generous as those of Britain toward Persia, and if the Syrians desired an English-speaking nation rather than the French to be their mentor, it was equally true that the Persians wanted Americans rather than British to superintend and accelerate their progress in civilization. But instead of harkening to the wishes of only one it would be better to ignore those of both. By this prudent compromise all the demands of right and justice, for which both governments were earnest sticklers, would thus be amply satisfied.

Our American associates were less easily appeased. In sooth there was nothing left wherewith to appease them. Their press condemned the "protectorate" as a breach of the Covenant. Secretary Lansing let it be known[319] that the United States delegation had striven to obtain a hearing for the Persians at the Conference, but had "lost its fight." A Persian, when apprized of this utterance, said: "When the United States delegation strove to hinder Italy from annexing Fiume and obtaining the territories promised her by a secret treaty, they accomplished their aim because they refused to give way. Then they took care not to lose their fight. When they accepted a brief for the Jews and imposed a Jewish semi-state on Rumania and Poland, they were firm as the granite rock, and no amount of opposition, no future deterrents, made any impression on their will. Accordingly, they had their way. But in the cause of Persia they lost the fight, although logic, humanity, justice, and the ordinances solemnly accepted by the Great Powers were all on their side." ... One American press organ termed the Anglo-Persian accord "a coup which is a greater violation of the Wilsonian Fourteen Points than the Shantung award to Japan, as it makes the whole of Persia a mere protectorate for Britain."[320]

Generally speaking, illustrations of the meaning of non-intervention in the home affairs of other nations were numerous and somewhat perplexing. Were it not that Mr. Wilson had come to Europe for the express purpose of interpreting as well as enforcing his own doctrine, one would have been warranted in assuming that the Supreme Council was frequently travestying it. But as the President was himself one of the leading members of that Council, whose decisions were unanimous, the utmost that one can take for granted is that he strove to impose his tenets on his intractable colleagues and "lost the fight."

Here is a striking instance of what would look to the average man very like intervention in the domestic politics of another nation--well-meant and, it may be, beneficent intervention--were it not that we are assured on the highest authority that it is nothing of the sort. It was devised as an expedient for getting outside help for the capture of Petrograd by the anti-Bolshevists. The end, therefore, was good, and the means seemed effectual to those who employed them. The Kolchak-Denikin party could, it was believed, have taken possession of that capital long before, by obtaining the military co-operation of the Esthonians. But the price asked by these was the recognition of their complete independence by the non-Bolshevist government in the name of all Russia. Kolchak, to his credit, refused to pay this price, seeing that he had no powers to do so, and only a dictator would sign away the territory by usurping the requisite authority. Consequently the combined attack on Petrograd was not undertaken. The Admiral's refusal was justified by the circumstances that he was the spokesman only of a large section of the Russian people, and that a thoroughly representative assembly must be consulted on the subject previous to action being taken. The military stagnation that ensued lasted for months. Then one day the press brought the tidings that the difficulty was ingeniously overcome. This is the shape in which the intelligence was communicated to the world: "Colonel Marsh, of the British army, who is representing General Gough, organized a republic in northwest Russia at Reval, August 12th, _within forty-five minutes_, General Yudenitch being nominally the head of the new government, which is affiliated with the Kolchak government. Northwest Russia opposes the Esthonian government only in principle because it wants guaranties that the Esthonians will not be the stepping-stone for some big Power like Germany to control the Russian outlet through the Baltic. If the Esthonians give such guaranties, the northwestern Russians are perfectly willing to let them become an independent state."[321]

Here then was a "British colonel" who, in addition to his military duties, was, according to this account, willing and able to create an independent republic without any Supreme Council to assist him, whereas professional diplomatists and military men of other nations had been trying for months to found a Rhine republic under Dorten and had failed. Nor did he, if the newspaper report be correct, waste much time at the business. From the moment of its inception until northwestern Russia stood forth an independent state, promulgating and executing grave decisions in the sphere of international politics, only forty-five minutes are said to have elapsed. Forty-five minutes by the clock. It was almost as quick a feat as the drafting of the Covenant of Nations. Further, the resourceful statemaker forged a republic which was qualified to transfer sovereignly Russian territory to unrecognized states without consulting the nation or obtaining authority from any one. More marvelous than any other detail, however, is the circumstance that he did his work so well that it never amounted to intervention.[322]

One cannot affect surprise if the distinction between this amazing exploit of diplomatico-military prestidigitation and intermeddling in the internal affairs of another nation prove too subtle for the mental grasp of the average unpolitical individual.

It is practices like these which ultimately determine the worth of the treaties and the Covenant which Mr. Wilson was content to take back with him to Washington as the final outcome of what was to have been the most superb achievement of historic man. Of the new ethical principles, of the generous renunciation of privileges, of the righting of secular wrongs, of the respect that was to be shown for the weak, which were to have cemented the union of peoples into one pacific if not blissful family, there remained but the memory. No such bitter draught of disappointment was swallowed by the nations since the world first had a political history. Many of the resounding phrases that once foretokened a new era of peace, right, and equity were not merely emptied of their contents, but made to connote their opposites. Freedom of the seas became supremacy of the seas, which may possibly turn out to be a blessed consummation for all concerned, but should not have been smuggled in under a gross misnomer. The abolition of war means, as British and American and French generals and admirals have since told their respective fellow-citizens, thorough preparations for the next war, which are not to be confined, as heretofore, to the so-called military states, but are to extend over all Anglo-Saxondom.[323] "Open covenants openly arrived at" signify secret conclaves and conspirative deliberations carried on in impenetrable secrecy which cannot be dispensed with even after the whole business has passed into history.[324] The self-determination of peoples finds its limit in the rights of every Great Power to hold its subject nationalities in thrall on the ground that their reciprocal relations appertain to the domestic policy of the state. It means, further, the privilege of those who wield superior force to put irresistible pressure upon those who are weak, and the lever which it places in their hands for the purpose is to be known under the attractive name of the protection of minorities. Abstention from interference in the home affairs of a neighboring community is made to cover intermeddling of the most irksome and humiliating character in matters which have no nexus with international law, for if they had, the rule would be applicable to all nations. The lesser peoples must harken to injunctions of the greater states respecting their mode of treating alien immigrants and must submit to the control of foreign bodies which are ignorant of the situation and its requirements. Nor is it enough that those states should accord to the members of the Jewish and other races all the rights which their own citizens enjoy--they must go farther and invest them with special privileges, and for this purpose renounce a portion of their sovereignty. They must likewise allow their more powerful allies to dictate to them their legislation on matters of transit and foreign commerce.[325] For the Great Powers, however, this law of minorities was not written. They are above the law. Their warrant is force. In a word, force is the trump card in the political game of the future as it was in that of the past. And M. Clemenceau's reminder to the petty states at the opening of the Conference that the wielders of twelve million troops are the masters of the situation was appropriate. Thus the war which was provoked by the transformation of a solemn treaty into a scrap of paper was concluded by the presentation of two scraps of paper as a treaty and a covenant for the moral renovation of the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[288] _The Daily Telegraph_, March 28, 1919.

[289] In a speech delivered at a dinner given in Paris on April 19, 1919, by the Commonwealth of Australia to Australian soldiers.

[290] In March, 1919.

[291] August 19, 1919.

[292] Cf. _Corriere delta Sera_, August 20, 1919.

[293] _Ibidem_ (_Corriere della Sera_, August 20, 1919).

[294] _L'Humanité,_ May 21, 1919.

[295] _The Nation_, August 23, 1919.

[296] Chief of the Austrian police at Vienna Congress in the years 1814-15.

[297] In _L'Echo de Paris_, March 2,1919. Cf. _The Daily Telegraph_, March 4th.

[298] _Le Gaulois_, March 8, 1919. Cf. _The Daily Telegraph_, March 10th.

[299] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 21, 1919.

[300] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 23, 1919

[301] Report of Dr. Jacques Bertillon. Cf. _L'Information_, January 20, 1919.

[302] Cf. _Le Matin_, August 13, 1919.

30 3: Excess of births over deaths (yearly average).--Cf. _L'Information,_ January 20, 1919:

Germany Great Britain Italy France 1861-70 408,333 365,499 183,196 93,515 1871-80 511,034 431,436 191,538 64,063 1881-90 551,308 442,112 307,082 66,982 1891-1900 730,265 430,000 339,409 23,961 1901-10 866,338 484,822 369,959 46,524

[304] Professor L. Marchand. Cf. _La Démocratie Nouvelle_, April 26, 1919.

[305] Dr. Walter Rathenau, in a book entitled _The Death of France_. I have not been able to procure a copy of this book. The extracts given above are taken from a statement published by M. Brudenne in the _Matin_ of February 16, 1919.

[306] _Germania_, August 11, 1919. Cf. _Le Temps_, September 9, 1919.

[307] M. André Tardieu in a speech delivered on August 17, 1919. Cf. Paris newspapers of following two days, and in particular _New York Herald_, August 19th.

[308] Cf. speech delivered by M. André Tardieu on August 17, 1919.

[309] On this subject of reparations the _Journal de Genève_ published several interesting articles at various times, as, for example, on May 15, 1919.

[310] Speech of M. Klotz in the Chamber on September 5, 1919. Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, September 6, 1919.

[311] D'Estournelles de Constant. _Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme_, May 15, 1919.

[312] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.

[313] Issued on November 9, 1918.

[314] See _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 30, 1919.

[315] An American Senator uncharitably conjectured that she received this honorable distinction in order to contribute an additional vote to the British.

[316] Cf. interview with a Persian official, published in the Paris edition of _The Chicago Tribune_, August 19, 1919.

[317] "Unfortunately, Mr. Lloyd George, who has stripped the Foreign Office of real power, has frequently given assurances of this nature, and his acts have always contradicted them. As a proof, his last interview with M. Clemenceau will serve." Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 15, 1919, article by Pertinax.

[318] _Le Journal des Débats_, August 15, 1919.

[319] In Washington on August 16, 1919.

[320] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 19, 1919.

[321] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 24, 1919.

[322] After the above was written, a French journal, the _Echo de Paris_ of September 19, 1919, announced that General Marsh declares that his agents acted without his instructions, but none the less it holds him responsible for this Baltic policy.

[323] Marshal Douglas Haig, Lord French, the American pacifist, Sydney Baker, Senator Chamberlain, Representative Kahn, and a host of others have been preaching universal military training. The press, too, with considerable exceptions, favors the movement. "We want a democratized army, which represents all the nation, and it can be found only in universal service.... Universal service is our best guaranty of peace." Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.

[324] President Wilson, when at the close of his conference with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations--at the White House--asked how the United States had voted on the Japanese resolution in favor of race equality, replied: "I am not sure of being free to answer the question, because it affects a large number of points that were discussed in Paris, and in the interest of international harmony I think I had better not reply."--_The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.

[325] In virtue of Article LX of the Treaty with Austria.

XIV

THE TREATY WITH GERMANY

To discuss in detail the peace terms which after many months' desultory talk were finally presented to Count Brockdorff-Rantzau would transcend the scope of these pages. Like every other act of the Supreme Council, they may be viewed from one of two widely sundered angles of survey--either as the exercise by a victorious state of the power derived from victory over the vanquished enemy, or as one of the measures by which the peace of the world is to be enforced in the present and consolidated in the future. And from neither point of view can it command the approval of unbiased political students. At first the Germans, and not they alone, expected that the conditions would be based on the Fourteen Points, while many of the Allies took it for granted that they would be inspired by the resolve to cripple Teutondom for all time. And for each of these anticipations there were good formal grounds.

The only legitimate motive for interweaving the Covenant with the Treaty was to make of the latter a sort of corollary of the former and to moderate the instincts of vengeance by the promptings of higher interests. On this ground, and only on this, did the friends of far-ranging reform support Mr. Wilson in his contention that the two documents should be rendered mutually interdependent. Reparation for the damage done in violation of international law and sound guaranties against its recurrence are of the essence of every peace treaty that follows a decisive victory. But reparation is seldom this and nothing more. The lower instincts of human nature, when dominant as they are during a bloody war and in the hour of victory, generally outweigh considerations not only of right, but also of enlightened egotism, leaving justice to merge into vengeance. And the fruits are treasured wrath and a secret resolve on the part of the vanquished to pay out his victor at the first opportunity. The war-loser of to-day aims at becoming the war-winner of to-morrow. And this frame of mind is incompatible with the temper needed for an era of moral fellowship such as Mr. Wilson was supposed to be intent on establishing. Consequently, a peace treaty unmodified by the principles underlying the Covenant is necessarily a negation of the main possibilities of a society of nations based upon right and a decisive argument against joining together the two instruments.

The other kind of peace which Mr. Wilson was believed to have had at heart consisted not merely in the liquidation of the war, but in the uprooting of its permanent causes, in the renunciation by the various nations of sanguinary conflicts as a means of determining rival claims, and in such an amicable rearrangement of international relations as would keep such disputes from growing into dangerous quarrels. Right, or as near an approximation to it as is attainable, would then take the place of violence, whereby military guaranties would become not only superfluous, but indicative of a spirit irreconcilable with the main purpose of the League. Each nation would be entitled to equal opportunity within the limits assigned to it by nature and widened by its own mental and moral capacities. Thus permanently to forbid a numerous, growing, and territorially cramped nation to possess overseas colonies for its superfluous population while overburdening others with possessions which they are unable to utilize, would constitute a negation of one of the basic principles of the new ordering.

Those were the grounds which seemed to warrant the belief that the Treaty would be not only formally, but substantially and in its spirit an integral, part of the general settlement based on the Fourteen Points.

This anticipation turned out to be a delusion. Wilsonianism proved to be a very different system from that of the Fourteen Points, and its author played the part not only of an interpreter of his tenets, but also of a sort of political pope alone competent to annul the force of laws binding on all those whom he should refuse to dispense from their observance. He had to do with patriotic politicians permeated with the old ideas, desirous of providing in the peace terms for the next war and striving to secure the maximum of advantage over the foe presumptive, by dismembering his territory, depriving him of colonies, making him dependent on others for his supplies of raw stuffs, and artificially checking his natural growth. Nearly all of them had principles to invoke in favor of their claims and some had nothing else. And it was these tendencies which Mr. Wilson sought to combine with the ethical ideals to be incarnated in the Society of Nations. Now this was an impossible synthesis. The spirit of vindictiveness--for that was well represented at the Conference--was to merge and lose itself in an outflow of magnanimity; precautions against a hated enemy were to be interwoven with implicit confidence in his generosity; a military occupation would provide against a sudden onslaught, while an approach to disarmament would bear witness to the absence of suspicion. Thus Poland would discharge the function of France's ally against the Teutons in the east, but her frontiers were to leave her inefficiently protected against their future attacks from the west. Germany was dismembered, yet she was credited with self-discipline and generosity enough to steel her against the temptation to profit by the opportunity of joining together again what France had dissevered. The League of Nations was to be based upon mutual confidence and good fellowship, yet one of its most powerful future members was so distrusted as to be declared permanently unworthy to possess any overseas colonies. Germany's territory in the Saar Valley is admittedly inhabited by Germans, yet for fifteen years there is to be a foreign administration there, and at the end of it the people are to be asked whether they would like to cut the bonds that link them with their own state and place themselves under French sway, so that a premium is offered for French immigration into the Saar Valley.

Those are a few of the consequences of the mixture of the two irreconcilable principles.

That Germany richly deserved her punishment cannot be gainsaid. Her crime was without precedent. Some of its most sinister consequences are irremediable. Whole sections of her people are still unconscious not only of the magnitude, but of the criminal character, of their misdeeds. None the less there is a future to be provided for, and one of the safest provisions is to influence the potential enemy's will for evil if his power cannot be paralyzed. And this the Treaty failed to do.