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Peaceless Europe

by Francesco Saverio Nitti · English · Gutenberg #10090 · 475,319 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Peaceless Europe

Author: Francesco Saverio Nitti


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10090]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEACELESS EUROPE ***

PEACELESS EUROPE

By

FRANCESCO S. NITTI


1922




PREFACE


In this book are embodied the ideas which, as a parliamentarian, as
head of the Italian Government, and as a writer, I have upheld with
firm conviction during the last few years.

I believe that Europe is threatened with decadence more owing to the
Peace Treaties than as a result of the War. She is in a state of daily
increasing decline, and the causes of dissatisfaction are growing
apace.

Europe is still waiting for that peace which has not yet been
definitely concluded, and it is necessary that the public should be
made aware that the courses now being followed by the policy of the
great victorious States are perilous to the achievement of serious,
lasting and useful results. I believe that it is to the interest of
France herself if I speak the language of truth, as a sincere friend
of France and a confirmed enemy of German Imperialism. Not only did
that Imperialism plunge Germany into a sea of misery and suffering,
covering her with the opprobrium of having provoked the terrible War,
or at least of having been mainly responsible for it, but it has
ruined for many years the productive effort of the most cultured and
industrious country in Europe.

Some time ago the ex-President of the French Republic, R. Poincaré,
after the San Remo Conference, _à propos_ of certain differences of
opinion which had arisen between Lloyd George and myself on the one
hand and Millerand on the other, wrote as follows:

    "Italy and England know what they owe to France, just as France
    knows what she owes to them. They do not wish to part company with
    us, nor do we with them. They recognize that they need us, as we
    have need of them. Lloyd George and Nitti are statesmen too shrewd
    and experienced not to understand that their greatest strength
    will always lie in this fundamental axiom. On leaving San Remo
    for Rome or London let them ask the opinion of the 'man in the
    street.' His reply will be: '_Avant tout, restez unis avec la
    France_.'"

I believe that Lloyd George and I share the same cordial sentiments
toward France. We have gone through so much suffering and anxiety
together that it would be impossible to tear asunder links firmly
welded by common danger and pain. France will always remember with a
sympathetic glow that Italy was the first country which proclaimed her
neutrality, on August 2, 1914; without that proclamation the destinies
of the War might have taken a very different turn.

But the work of reconstruction in Europe is in the interest of France
herself. She has hated too deeply to render a sudden cessation of her
hate-storm possible, and the treaties have been begotten in rancour
and applied with violence. Even as the life of men, the life of
peoples has days of joy and days of grief: sunshine follows the storm.
The whole history of European peoples is one of alternate victories
and defeats. It is the business of civilization to create such
conditions as will render victory less brutal and defeat more
bearable.

The recent treaties which regulate, or are supposed to regulate,
the relations among peoples are, as a matter of fact, nothing but a
terrible regress, the denial of all those principles which had been
regarded as an unalienable conquest of public right. President Wilson,
by his League of Nations, has been the most responsible factor in
setting up barriers between nations.

Christopher Columbus sailed from Europe hoping to land in India,
whereas he discovered America. President Wilson sailed from America
thinking that he was going to bring peace to Europe, but only
succeeded in bringing confusion and war.

However, we should judge him with the greatest indulgence, for his
intentions were undoubtedly sincere and honest.

France has more to gain than any other country in Europe by reverting
to those sound principles of democracy which formed her erstwhile
glory. We do not forget what we owe her, nor the noble spirit which
pervades some of her historic deeds. But _noblesse oblige_, and all
the more binding is her duty to respect tradition.

When France shall have witnessed the gradual unfolding of approaching
events, she will be convinced that he who has spoken to her the
language of truth and has sought out a formula permitting the peoples
of Europe to rediscover their path in life, towards life, is not only
a friend, but a friend who has opportunely brought back to France's
mind and heart the deeds of her great ancestors at the time when fresh
deeds of greatness and glory await accomplishment. The task which we
must undertake with our inmost feeling, with all the ardour of our
faith, is to find once more the road to peace, to utter the word of
brotherly love toward oppressed peoples, and to reconstruct Europe,
which is gradually sinking to the condition of Quattrocento Italy,
without its effulgence of art and beauty: thirty States mutually
diffident of each other, in a sea of programmes and Balkan ideas.

Towards the achievement of this work of civilization the great
democracies must march shoulder to shoulder. At the present moment I
hear nothing but hostile voices; but the time is not far distant when
my friends of France will be marching with us along the same road.
They already admit in private many things which they will presently be
obliged to recognize openly. Many truths are the fruit of persuasion;
others, again, are the result of former delusions.

I place my greatest trust in the action of American democracy.

By refusing to sanction the Treaty of Versailles and all the other
peace treaties, the American Senate has given proof of the soundest
political wisdom: the United States of America has negotiated its own
separate treaties, and resumes its pre-war relations with victors and
vanquished alike.

It follows that all that has been done hitherto in the way of
treaties is rendered worthless, as the most important participant
has withdrawn. This is a further motive for reflecting that it is
impossible to continue living much longer in a Europe divided by two
contending fields and by a medley of rancour and hatred which tends to
widen the chasm.

It is of the greatest interest to America that Europe should once more
be the wealthy, prosperous, civilized Europe which, before 1914, ruled
over the destinies of the world. Only by so great an effort can the
finest conquests of civilization come back to their own.

We should only remember our dead in so far as their memory may prevent
future generations from being saddened by other war victims. The
voices of those whom we have lost should reach us as voices praying
for the return of that civilization which shall render massacres
impossible, or shall at least diminish the violence and ferocity of
war.

Just as the growing dissolution of Europe is a common danger, so is
the renewal of the bonds of solidarity a common need.

Let us all work toward this end, even if at first we may be
misunderstood and may find obstacles in our way. Truth is on the march
and will assert herself: we shall strike the main road after much of
dreary wandering in the dark lanes of prejudice and violence.

Many of the leading men of Europe and America, who in the intoxication
of victory proclaimed ideas of violence and revenge, would now be very
glad to reverse their attitude, of which they see the unhappy results.
The truth is that what they privately recognize they will not yet
openly admit. But no matter.

The confessions which many of them have made to me, both verbally and
in writing, induce me to believe that my ideas are also their ideas,
and that they only seek to express them in the form and on the
occasions less antagonistic to the currents of opinion which they
themselves set up in the days when the chief object to be achieved
seemed to be the vivisection of the enemy.

Recent events, however, have entirely changed the situation.

As I said before, the American Senate has not sanctioned the Treaty
of Versailles, nor is it likely to give it its approval. The United
States of America concludes separate treaties on its own account.

Agreements of a military character had been arrived at in Paris: the
United States of America and Great Britain guaranteed France against
any future unjust attack by Germany. The American Senate did not
sanction the agreement; in fact, it did not even discuss it. The House
of Commons had approved it subordinate to the consent of the United
States. Italy has kept aloof from all alliances. As a result of this
situation, the four Entente Powers, "allied and associated" (as
formerly was the official term), have ceased to be either "allied" or
"associated" after the end of the War.

On the other hand, Europe, after emerging from the War, is darkened
and overcast by intrigues, secret agreements and dissimulated plots:
fresh menaces of war and fresh explosions of dissatisfaction.

Nothing can help the cause of peace more than giving a full knowledge
of the real situation to the various peoples. Errors thrive in
darkness while truth walks abroad in the full light of day. It has
been my intention to lay before the public those great controversies
which cannot merely form the object of diplomatic notes or of
posthumous books presented to Parliament in a more or less incomplete
condition after events have become irreparable.

The sense of a common danger, threatening all alike, will prove the
most persuasive factor in swerving us from the perilous route which we
are now following.

As a result of the War the bonds of economic solidarity have been
torn asunder: the losers in the War must not only make good their own
losses, but, according to the treaties, are expected to pay for all
the damage which the War has caused. Meanwhile all the countries of
Europe have only one prevailing fear: German competition. In order
to pay the indemnities imposed upon her (and she can only do it by
exporting goods), Germany is obliged to produce at the lowest possible
cost, which necessitates the maximum of technical progress. But
exports at low cost must in the long run prove detrimental, if not
destructive, to the commerce of neutral countries, and even to that of
the victors. Thus in all tariffs which have already been published or
which are in course of preparation there is one prevailing object in
view: that of reducing German competition, which practically amounts
to rendering it impossible for her to pay the War indemnity.

If winners and losers were to abandon war-time ideas for a while,
and, rather, were to persuade themselves that the oppression of the
vanquished cannot be lasting, and that there is no other logical way
out of the difficulty but that of small indemnities payable in a
few years, debiting to the losers in tolerable proportion all debts
contracted towards Great Britain and the United States, the European
situation would immediately improve.

Why is Europe still in such a state of economic disorder? Because the
confusion of moral ideas persists. In many countries nerves are still
as tense as a bowstring, and the language of hatred still prevails.
For some countries, as for some social groups, war has not yet
ceased to be. One hears now in the countries of the victors the same
arguments used as were current coin in Germany before the War and
during the first phases of the War; only now and then, more as a
question of habit than because they are truly felt, we hear the words
justice, peace, and democracy.

Why is the present state of discomfort and dissatisfaction on the
increase? Because almost everywhere in Continental Europe, in the
countries which have emerged from the War, the rate of production is
below the rate of consumption, and many social groups, instead of
producing more, plan to possess themselves with violence of the wealth
produced by others. At home, the social classes, unable to resist,
are threatened; abroad, the vanquished, equally unable to resist, are
menaced, but in the very menace it is easy to discern the anxiety
of the winners. Confusion, discomfort and dissatisfaction thus grow
apace.

The problem of Europe is above all a moral problem. A great step
toward its solution will have been accomplished when winners and
losers persuade themselves that only by a common effort can they be
saved, and that the best enemy indemnity consists in peace and joint
labour. Now that the enemy has lost all he possessed and threatens
to make us lose the fruits of victory, one thing is above all others
necessary: the resumption, not only of the language, but of the ideas
of peace;

During one of the last international conferences at which I was
present, and over which I presided, at San Remo, after a long exchange
of views with the British and French Premiers, Lloyd George and
Millerand, the American journalists asked me to give them my ideas
on peace: "What is the most necessary thing for the maintenance of
peace?" they inquired.

"One thing only," I replied, "is necessary. Europe must smile once
more." Smiles have vanished from every lip; nothing has remained but
hatred, menaces and nervous excitement.

When Europe shall smile again she will "rediscover" her political
peace ideas and will drink once more at the spring of life. Class
struggles at home, in their acutest form, are like the competition of
nationalism abroad: explosions of cupidity, masked by the pretext of
the country's greatness.

The deeply rooted economic crisis, which threatens and prepares new
wars, the deeply rooted social crisis, which threatens and prepares
fresh conflicts abroad, are nothing but the expression of a _status
animae_ or soul condition. Statesmen are the most directly responsible
for the continuation of a language of violence; they should be the
first to speak the language of peace.

F.S. NITTI.

ACQUAFREDDA IN BASILICATA.

_September_ 30, 1921.


P.S.--"Peaceless Europe" is an entirely new book, which I have written
in my hermitage of Acquafredda, facing the blue Adriatic; it contains,
however, some remarks and notices which have already appeared in
articles written by me for the great American agency, the _United
Press_, and which have been reproduced by the American papers.

I have repeatedly stated that I have not published any document which
was not meant for publication; I have availed myself of my knowledge
of the most important international Acts and of all diplomatic
documents merely as a guide, but it is on facts that I have solidly
based my considerations.

J. Keynes and Robert Lansing have already published some very
important things, but no secret documents; recently, however, Tardieu
and Poincaré, in the interest of the French nationalist thesis which
they sustain, have published also documents of a very reserved nature.
Tardieu's book is a documentary proof of the French Government's
extremist attitude during the conference, amply showing that the
present form of peace has been desired almost exclusively by France,
and that the others have been unwilling parties to it. Besides his
articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Poincaré has recently
published in the _Temps_ (September 12, 1921) a whole secret
correspondence between Poincaré, President of the Republic,
Clemenceau, President of the Council of Ministers, the American
Delegation, and, above all, Lloyd George.




CONTENTS


1. EUROPE WITHOUT PEACE

2. THE PEACE TREATIES AND THE CONTINUATION OF THE WAR

3. THE PEACE TREATIES: THEIR ORIGIN AND AIMS

4. THE CONQUERORS AND THE CONQUERED

5. THE INDEMNITY FROM THE DEFEATED ENEMY AND THE ANXIETIES OF THE
VICTORS

6. EUROPE'S POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION AND PEACE POLICY

INDEX




_The author includes in the book numerous secret official documents
that emanated from the Peace Conference and which came into his hands
in his position, at that time, as Italian Prime Minister. Among these
is a long and hitherto unpublished secret letter sent by Lloyd George
to Nitti, Wilson, Clemenceau, and the other members of the Peace
Conference_.




I

EUROPE WITHOUT PEACE


Is there anyone who still remembers Europe in the first months of 1914
or calls to mind the period which preceded the first year of the War?
It all seems terribly remote, something like a prehistoric era, not
only because the conditions of life have changed, but because our
viewpoint on life has swerved to a different angle.

Something like thirty million dead have dug a chasm between two ages.
War killed many millions, disease accounted for many more, but the
hardiest reaper has been famine. The dead have built up a great cold
barrier between the Europe of yesterday and the Europe of to-day.

We have lived through two historic epochs, not through two different
periods. Europe was happy and prosperous, while now, after the
terrible World War, she is threatened with a decline and a reversion
to brutality which suggest the fall of the Roman Empire. We ourselves
do not quite understand what is happening around us. More than
two-thirds of Europe is in a state of ferment, and everywhere there
prevails a vague sense of uneasiness, ill-calculated to encourage
important collective works. We live, as the saying is, "from hand to
mouth."

Before 1914 Europe had enjoyed a prolonged period of peace, attaining
a degree of wealth and civilization unrivalled in the past.

In Central Europe Germany had sprung up. After the Napoleonic
invasions, in the course of a century, Germany, which a hundred years
ago seemed of all European countries the least disposed to militarism,
had developed into a great military monarchy. From being the most
particularist country Germany had in reality become the most unified
state. But what constituted her strength was not so much her army and
navy as the prestige of her intellectual development. She had achieved
it laboriously, almost painfully, on a soil which was not fertile and
within a limited territory, but, thanks to the tenacity of her effort,
she succeeded in winning a prominent place in the world-race for
supremacy. Her universities, her institutes for technical instruction,
her schools, were a model to the whole world. In the course of a few
years she had built up a merchant fleet which seriously threatened
those of other countries. Having arrived too late to create a real
colonial empire of her own, such as those of France and England, she
nevertheless succeeded in exploiting her colonies most intelligently.

In the field of industry she appeared to beat all competitors from a
technical point of view; and even in those industries which were not
hers by habit and tradition she developed so powerful an organization
as to appear almost uncanny. Germany held first place not only in the
production of iron, but in that of dyes and chemicals. Men went
there from all parts of the world not only to trade but to acquire
knowledge. An ominous threat weighed on the Empire, namely the
constitution of the State itself, essentially militaristic and
bureaucratic. Not even in Russia, perhaps, were the reins of power
held in the hands of so few men as in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

A few years before the World War started one of the leading European
statesmen told me that there was everything to be feared for the
future of Europe where some three hundred millions, the inhabitants
of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, about two-thirds of the whole
continent, were governed in an almost irresponsible manner by a man
without will or intelligence, the Tsar of Russia; a madman without a
spark of genius, the German Kaiser, and an obstinate old man hedged in
by his ambition, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Not more than
thirty persons, he added, act as a controlling force on these three
irresponsible sovereigns, who might assume, on their own initiative,
the most terrible responsibilities.

The magnificent spiritual gifts of the Germans gave them an Emanuel
Kant, the greatest thinker of modern times, Beethoven, their greatest
exponent of music, and Goethe, their greatest poet. But the imperial
Germany which came after the victory of 1870 had limited the spirit of
independence even in the manifestations of literature and art. There
still existed in Germany the most widely known men of science, the
best universities, the most up-to-date schools; but the clumsy
mechanism tended to crush rather than to encourage all personal
initiative. Great manifestations of art or thought are not possible
without the most ample spiritual liberty. Germany was the most highly
organized country from a scientific point of view, but at the same
time the country in which there was the least liberty for individual
initiative. It went on like a huge machine: that explains why it
almost stopped after being damaged by the war, and the whole life of
the nation was paralysed while there were very few individual impulses
of reaction. Imperial Germany has always been lacking in political
ability, perhaps not only through a temperamental failing, but chiefly
owing to her militaristic education.

Before the War Germany beat her neighbours in all the branches of
human labour: in science, industry, banking, commerce, etc. But in one
thing she did not succeed, and succeeded still less after the War,
namely, in politics. When the German people was blessed with a
political genius, such as Frederick the Great or Bismarck, it achieved
the height of greatness and glory. But when the same people, after
obtaining the maximum of power, found on its path William II with his
mediocre collaborators, it ruined, by war, a colossal work, not only
to the great detriment of the country, but also to that of the victors
themselves, of whom it cannot be said with any amount of certainty,
so far as those of the Continent are concerned, whether they are the
winners or the losers, so great is the ruin threatening them, and so
vast the material and moral losses sustained.

I have always felt the deepest aversion for William II. So few as ten
years ago he was still treated with the greatest sympathy both in
Europe and America. Even democracies regarded with ill-dissimulated
admiration the work of the Kaiser, who brought everywhere his voice,
his enthusiasm, his activity, to the service of Germany. As a matter
of fact, his speeches were poor in phraseology, a mere conglomerate
of violence, prejudice and ignorance. As no one believed in the
possibility of a war, no one troubled about it. But after the War
nothing has been more harmful to Germany than the memory of those ugly
speeches, unrelieved by any noble idea, and full of a clumsy vulgarity
draped in a would-be solemn and majestic garb. Some of his threatening
utterances, such as the address to the troops sailing for China in
order to quell the Boxer rebellion, the constant association in
all his speeches of the great idea of God, with the ravings of a
megalomaniac, the frenzied oratory in which he indulged at the
beginning of the War, have harmed Germany more than anything else. It
is possible to lose nobly; but to have lost a great war after having
won so many battles would not have harmed the German people if it
had not been represented abroad by the presumptuous vulgarity of the
Kaiser and of all the members of his entourage, who were more or less
guilty of the same attitude.

Before the War Germany had everywhere attained first place in all
forms of activity, excepting, perhaps, in certain spiritual and
artistic manifestations. She admired herself too much and too openly,
but succeeded in affirming her magnificent expansion in a greatness
and prosperity without rival.

By common accord Germany held first place. Probably this consciousness
of power, together with the somewhat brutal forms of the struggle for
industrial supremacy, as in the case of the iron industry, threw a
mysterious and threatening shadow over the granitic edifice of the
Empire.

When I was Minister of Commerce in 1913 I received a deputation of
German business men who wished to confer with me on the Italian
customs regime. They spoke openly of the necessity of possessing
themselves of the iron mines of French Lorraine; they looked upon war
as an industrial fact. Germany had enough coal but not enough iron,
and the Press of the iron industry trumpeted forth loud notes of war.
After the conclusion of peace, when France, through a series of wholly
unexpected events, saw Germany prostrate at her feet and without an
army, the same phenomenon took place. The iron industry tends to
affirm itself in France; she has the iron and now she wants coal.
Should she succeed in getting it, German production would be doomed.
To deprive Germany of Upper Silesia would mean killing production
after having disorganized it at the very roots of its development.

Seven years ago, or thereabouts, Germany was flourishing in an
unprecedented manner and presented the most favourable conditions for
developing. Her powerful demographic structure was almost unique.
Placed in the centre of Europe after having withstood the push of so
many peoples, she had attained an unrivalled economic position.

Close to Germany the Austro-Hungarian Empire united together eleven
different peoples, not without difficulty, and this union tended to
the common elevation of all. The vast monarchy, the result of a slow
aggregation of violence and of administrative wisdom, represented,
perhaps, the most interesting historic attempt on the part of
different peoples to achieve a common rule and discipline on the same
territory. Having successfully weathered the most terrible financial
crises, and having healed in half a century the wounds of two great
wars which she had lost, Austria-Hungary lived in the effort of
holding together Germans, Magyars, Slavs and Italians without their
flying at each others' throats. Time will show how the effort of
Austria-Hungary has not been lost for civilization.

Russia represented the largest empire which has ever been in
existence, and in spite of its defective political regime was daily
progressing. Perhaps for the first time in history an immense empire
of twenty-one millions and a half of square kilometres, eighty-four
times the size of Italy, almost three times as large as the United
States of America, was ruled by a single man. From the Baltic to
the Yellow Sea, from Finland to the Caucasus, one law and one rule
governed the most different peoples scattered over an immense
territory. The methods by which, after Peter the Great, the old Duchy
of Muscovy had been transformed into an empire, still lived in the
administration; they survive to-day in the Bolshevist organization,
which represents less a revolution than a hieratic and brutal form of
violence placed at the service of a political organization.

The war between Russia and Japan had revealed all the perils of
a political organization exclusively based on central authority
represented by a few irresponsible men under the apparent rule of a
sovereign not gifted with the slightest trace of will power.

Those who exalt nationalist sentiments and pin their faith on
imperialistic systems fail to realize that while the greatest push
towards the War came from countries living under a less liberal
regime, those very countries gave proof of the least power of
resistance. Modern war means the full exploitation of all the human
and economic resources of each belligerent country. The greater a
nation's wealth the greater is the possibility to hold out, and the
perfection of arms and weapons is in direct ratio with the degree
of technical progress attained. Moreover, the combatants and the
possibility of using them are in relation with the number of persons
who possess sufficient skill and instruction to direct the war.
Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States of America,
were able without any appreciable effort to improvise an enormous
number of officers for the War, transforming professional men,
engineers and technicians into officers. Russia, who did not have a
real industrial bourgeoisie nor a sufficient development of the middle
classes, was only able to furnish an enormous number of combatants,
but an insufficient organization from a technical and military point
of view, and a very limited number of officers. While on a peace
footing her army was the most numerous in the world, over one million
three hundred thousand men; when her officers began to fail Russia was
unable to replace them so rapidly as the proportion of nine or ten
times more than normal required by the War.

Russia has always had a latent force of development; there is within
her a _vis inertiae_ equivalent to a mysterious energy of expansion.
Her birth-rate is higher than that of any other European country;
she does not progress, she increases. Her weight acts as a menace
to neighbouring countries, and as, by a mysterious historic law the
primitive migrations of peoples and the ancient invasions mostly
originated from the territories now occupied by Russia, the latter has
succeeded in amalgamating widely different peoples and in creating
unity where no affinity appeared possible.

At any rate, although suffering from an excessively centralized
government and a form of constitution which did not allow the
development of popular energies nor a sufficient education of the
people, Russia was perhaps, half a century before the War, the
European country which, considering the difficulties in her path, had
accomplished most progress.

European Russia, with her yearly excess of from one million and a
half to two million births over deaths, with the development of
her industries and the formation of important commercial centres,
progressed very rapidly and was about to become the pivot of European
politics.

When it will be possible to examine carefully the diplomatic documents
of the War, and time will allow us to judge them calmly, it will be
seen that Russia's attitude was the real and underlying cause of the
world-conflict. She alone promoted and kept alive the agitations
in Serbia and of the Slavs in Austria; she alone in Germany's eyes
represented the peril of the future. Germany has never believed in a
French danger. She knew very well that France, single handed, could
never have withstood Germany, numerically so much her superior. Russia
was the only danger that Germany saw, and the continual increase of
the Russian army was her gravest preoccupation. Before the War, when
Italy was Germany's ally, the leading German statesmen with whom I
had occasion to discuss the situation did nothing but allude to the
Russian peril. It was known (and subsequent facts have amply proved
it) that the Tsar was absolutely devoid of will power, that he was led
and carried away by conflicting currents, and that his advisers were
for the most part favourable to the War. After the Japanese defeat the
militarist party felt keenly the need for just such a great military
revival and a brilliant _revanche_ in Europe.

Possessing an enormous wealth of raw materials and an immense
territory, Russia represented Europe's great resource, her support for
the future.

If the three great empires had attained enviable prosperity and
development in 1914, when the War burst, the three great western
democracies, Great Britain, France and Italy, had likewise progressed
immensely.

Great Britain, proud of her "splendid isolation," and ruler of the
seas, traded in every country of the world. Having the vastest empire,
she was also financially the greatest creditor country: creditor of
America and Asia, of the new African states and of Australia. Perhaps
all this wealth had somewhat diminished the spirit of enterprise
before the War, and popular culture also suffered from this
unprecedented prosperity. There was not the spasmodic effort
noticeable in Germany, but a continuous and secure expansion, an
undisputed supremacy. Although somewhat preoccupied at Germany's
progress and regarding it as a peril for the future, Great Britain
attached more importance to the problems of her Empire, namely to her
internal constitution: like ancient Rome, she was a truly imperial
country in the security of her supremacy, in her calm, in her
forbearance.

France continued patiently to accumulate wealth. She did not increase
her population, but ably added to her territory and her savings.
Threatened with the phenomenon known to political economists under the
name of "oliganthropy," or lack of men, she had founded a colonial
empire which may be regarded as the largest on earth. It is true that
the British colonies, even before the War, covered an area of thirty
million square kilometres, while France's colonial empire was slightly
over twelve millions. But it must be remembered that the British
colonies are not colonies in the real sense of the word, but consist
chiefly in Dominions which enjoy an almost complete autonomy. Canada
alone represents about one-third of the territories of the British
Dominions; Australia and New Zealand more than one-fourth, and
Australasia, the South African Union and Canada put together represent
more than two-thirds of the Empire, while India accounts for about
fifty per cent. of the missing third. After England, France was the
most important creditor country. Her astonishing capacity for saving
increased in proportion with her wealth. Without having Germany's
force of development and Great Britain's power of expansion, France
enjoyed a wonderful prosperity and her wealth was scattered all over
the world.

Italy had arisen under the greatest difficulties, but in less than
fifty years of unity she progressed steadily. Having a territory
too small and mountainous for a population already overflowing and
constantly on the increase, Italy had been unable to exploit the
limited resources of her subsoil and had been forced to build up her
industries in conditions far less favourable than those of other
countries. Italy is perhaps the only nation which has succeeded in
forming her industries without having any coal of her own and very
little iron. But the acquisition of wealth, extremely difficult at
first, had gradually been rendered more easy by the improvement in
technical instruction and methods, for the most part borrowed from
Germany. On the eve of the War, after a period of thirty-three years,
the Triple Alliance had rendered the greatest services to Italy, fully
confirming Crispi's political intuition. France, with whom we had had
serious differences of opinion, especially after the Tunis affair, did
not dare to threaten Italy because the latter belonged to the Triple
Alliance, and for the same reason all ideas of a conflict with
Austria-Hungary had been set aside because of her forming part of the
"Triplice."

During the Triple Alliance Italy built up all her industries,
she consolidated her national unity and prepared her economic
transformation, which was fraught with considerable difficulties.
Suddenly her sons spread all over the world, stimulated by the
fecundity of their race and by the narrowness of their fields.

The greater States were surrounded by minor nations which had achieved
considerable wealth and great prosperity.

Europe throughout her history had never been so rich, so far advanced
on the road to progress, above all so united and living in her unity;
as regards production and exchanges she was really a living unity. The
vital lymph was not limited to this or that country, but flowed with
an even current through the veins and arteries of the various nations
through the great organizations of capital and labour, promoting a
continuous and increasing solidarity among all the parties concerned.

In fact, the idea of solidarity had greatly progressed: economic,
moral and spiritual solidarity.

Moreover, the idea of peace, although threatened by military
oligarchies and by industrial corners, was firmly based on the
sentiments of the great majority. The strain of barbaric blood which
still ferments in many populations of Central Europe constituted--it
is true--a standing menace; but no one dreamt that the threat was
about to be followed, lightning like, by facts, and that we were on
the eve of a catastrophe.

Europe had forgotten what hunger meant. Never had Europe had at her
disposal such abundant economic resources or a greater increase in
wealth.

Wealth is not our final object in life. But a minimum of means is an
indispensable condition of life and happiness. Excessive wealth may
lead both to moral elevation and to depression and ruin.

Europe had not only increased her wealth but developed the solidarity
of her interests. Europe is a small continent, about as large as
Canada or the United States of America. But her economic ties and
interests had been steadily on the increase.

Now the development of her wealth meant for Europe the development of
her moral ideas and of her social life and aspirations. We admire a
country not so much for its wealth as for the works of civilization
which that wealth enables it to accomplish.

Although peace be the aspiration of all peoples, even as physical
health is the aspiration of all living beings, there are wars which
cannot be avoided, as there are diseases which help us to overcome
an organic crisis to which we might otherwise succumb. War and peace
cannot be regarded as absolutely bad or absolutely good and desirable;
war is often waged in order to secure peace. In certain cases war is
not only a necessary condition of life but may be an indispensable
condition towards progress.

We must consider and analyse the sentiments and psychological causes
which bring about a war. A war waged to redeem its independence by a
nation downtrodden by another nation is perfectly legitimate, even
from the point of view of abstract morality. A war which has for
its object the conquest of political or religious liberty cannot be
condemned even by the most confirmed pacificist.

Taken as a whole, the wars fought in the nineteenth century, wars of
nationality, of independence, of unity, even colonial wars, were of a
character far less odious than that of the great conflict which has
devastated Europe and upset the economic conditions of the world. It
has not only been the greatest war in history, but in its consequences
it threatens to prove the worst war which has ravaged Europe in modern
times.

After nearly every nineteenth-century war there has been a marked
revival of human activity. But this unprecedented clash of peoples
has reduced the energy of all; it has darkened the minds of men, and
spread the spirit of violence.

Europe will be able to make up for her losses in lives and wealth.
Time heals even the most painful wounds. But one thing she has lost
which, if she does not succeed in recovering it, must necessarily lead
to her decline and fall: the spirit of solidarity.

After the victory of the Entente the microbes of hate have developed
and flourished in special cultures, consisting of national egotism,
imperialism, and a mania for conquest and expansion.

The peace treaties imposed on the vanquished are nothing but arms of
oppression. What more could Germany herself have done had she won the
War? Perhaps her terms would have been more lenient, certainly not
harder, as she would have understood that conditions such as we have
imposed on the losers are simply inapplicable.

Three years have elapsed since the end of the War, two since the
conclusion of peace, nevertheless Europe has still more men under
arms than in pre-war times. The sentiment of nationality, twisted and
transformed into nationalism, aims at the subjugation and depression
of other peoples. No civilized co-existence is possible where each
nation proposes to harm instead of helping its neighbour.

The spread of hatred among peoples has everywhere rendered more
difficult the internal relations between social classes and the
economic life of each country. Fearing a repetition of armed
conflicts, and owing to that spirit of unrest and intolerance
engendered everywhere by the War, workers are becoming every day more
exacting. They, too, claim their share of the spoils; they, too,
clamour for enemy indemnities. The same manifestations of hate, the
same violence of language, spread from people to people and from class
to class.

This tremendous War, which the peoples of Europe have fought and
suffered, has not only bled the losers almost to death, but it has
deeply perturbed the very life and existence of the victors. It
has not produced a single manifestation of art or a single moral
affirmation. For the last seven years the universities of Europe
appear to be stricken with paralysis: not one outstanding personality
has been revealed.

In almost every country the War has brought a sense of internal
dissolution: everywhere this disquieting phenomenon is more or less
noticeable. With the exception, perhaps, of Great Britain, whose
privileged insular situation, enormous mercantile navy and flourishing
trade in coal have enabled her to resume her pre-war economic
existence almost entirely, no country has emerged scatheless from
the War. The rates of exchange soar daily to fantastic heights, and
insuperable barriers to the commerce of European nations are being
created. People work less than they did in pre-war times, but
everywhere a tendency is noticeable to consume more. Austria,
Germany, Italy, France are not different phenomena, but different
manifestations and phases of the same phenomenon.

Before the War Europe, in spite of her great sub-divisions,
represented a living economic whole. To-day there are not only
victors and vanquished, but currents of hate, ferments of violence, a
hungering after conquests, an unscrupulous cornering of raw materials
carried out brutally and almost ostentatiously in the name of the
rights of victory: a situation which renders production, let alone its
development and increase, utterly impossible.

The treaty system as applied after the War has divided Europe into
two distinct parts: the losers, held under the military and economic
control of the victors, are expected to produce not only enough
for their own needs, but to provide a super-production in order to
indemnify the winners for all the losses and damages sustained on
account of the War. The victors, bound together in what is supposed to
be a permanent alliance for the protection of their common interests,
are supposed to exercise a military action of oppression and control
over the losers until the full payment of the indemnity. Another part
of Europe is in a state of revolutionary ferment, and the Entente
Powers have, by their attitude, rather tended to aggravate than to
improve the situation.

Europe can only recover her peace of mind by remembering that the
War is over and done with. Unfortunately, the treaty system not only
prevents us from remembering that the War is finished, but determines
a state of permanent war.

Clemenceau bluntly declared to the French Chamber that treaties were a
means of continuing the War. He was perfectly right, for war is being
waged more bitterly than ever and peace is as remote as it ever was.

The problem with which modern statesmen are confronted is very simple:
can Europe continue in her decline without involving the ruin of
civilization? And is it possible to stop this process of decay without
finding some form of civil symbiosis which will ensure for all men a
more human mode of living? In the affirmative case what course should
we take, and is it presumable that there should be an immediate change
for the better in the situation, given the national and economic
interests now openly and bitterly in conflict?

We have before us a problem, or rather a series of problems, which
call for impartiality and calm if a satisfactory solution is to be
arrived at. Perhaps if some fundamental truths were brought home to
the people, or, to be more exact, to the peoples now at loggerheads
with each other, a notion of the peril equally impending upon all
concerned and the conviction that an indefinite prolongation of the
present state of things is impossible, would prove decisive factors in
restoring a spirit of peace and in reviving that spirit of solidarity
which now appears spent or slumbering.

But in the first place it is necessary to review the situation, such
as it is at the present moment:

Firstly, Europe, which was the creditor of all other continents, has
now become their debtor.

Secondly, her working capacity has greatly decreased, chiefly owing to
the negative change in her demographic structure. In pre-war times the
ancient continent supplied new continents and new territories with a
hardy race of pioneers, and held the record as regards population,
both adult and infantile, the prevalence of women over men being
especially noted by statisticians. All this has changed considerably
for the worse!

Thirdly, on the losing nations, including Germany, which is generally
understood to be the most cultured nation in the world, the victors
have forced a peace which practically amounts to a continuation of
the War. The vanquished have had to give up their colonies, their
shipping, their credits abroad, and their transferable resources,
besides agreeing to the military and economic control of the Allies;
moreover, despite their desperate conditions, they are expected to
pay an indemnity, the amount of which, although hitherto only vaguely
mentioned, surpasses by its very absurdity all possibility of an even
remote settlement.

Fourthly, considerable groups of ex-enemy peoples, chiefly Germans
and Magyars, have been assigned to populations of an inferior
civilization.

Fifthly, as a result of this state of things, while Germany, Austria
and Bulgaria have practically no army at all and have submitted
without the slightest resistance to the most stringent forms of
military control, the victorious States have increased their armies
and fleets to proportions, which they did not possess before the War.

Sixthly, Europe, cut up into thirty States, daily sees her buying
capacity decreasing and the rate of exchange rising menacingly against
her.

Seventhly, the peace treaties are the most barefaced denial of all the
principles which the Entente Powers declared and proclaimed during the
War; not only so, but they are a fundamental negation of President
Wilson's famous fourteen points which were supposed to constitute a
solemn pledge and covenant, not only with the enemy, but with the
democracies of the whole world.

Eighthly, the moral unrest deriving from these conditions has divided
among themselves the various Entente Powers: United States of America,
Great Britain, Italy and France, not only in their aims and policy,
but in their sentiments. The United States is anxious to get rid,
as far as possible, of European complications and responsibilities;
France follows methods with which Great Britain and Italy are not
wholly in sympathy, and it cannot be said that the three Great Powers
of Western Europe are in perfect harmony. There is still a great deal
of talk about common ends and ideals, and the necessity of applying
the treaties in perfect accord and harmony, but everybody is convinced
that to enforce the treaties, without attenuating or modifying their
terms, would mean the ruin of Europe and the collapse of the victors
after that of the vanquished.

Ninthly, a keen contest of nationalisms, land-grabbing and cornering
of raw materials renders friendly relations between the thirty States
of Europe extremely difficult. The most characteristic examples of
nationalist violence have arisen out of the War, as in the case of
Poland and other newborn States, which pursue vain dreams of empire
while on the verge of dissolution through sheer lack of vital strength
and energy, and becoming every day more deeply engulfed in misery and
ruin.

Finally, Continental Europe is on the eve of a series of fresh and
more violent wars among peoples, threatening to submerge civilization
unless some means be found to replace the present treaties, which are
based on the principle that it is necessary to continue the War, by a
system of friendly agreements whereby winners and losers are placed
on a footing of liberty and equality, and which, while laying on the
vanquished a weight they are able to bear, will liberate Europe from
the present spectacle of a continent divided into two camps, where one
is armed to the teeth and threatening, while the other, unarmed and
inoffensive, is forced to labour in slavish conditions under the
menace of a servitude even more severe.




II

THE PEACE TREATIES AND THE CONTINUATION OF THE WAR


The various peace treaties regulating the present territorial
situation bear the names of the localities near Paris in which they
were signed: Versailles, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Trianon and Sèvres.
The first deals with Germany, the second with Austria, the third
with Hungary, and the fourth with Turkey. The Treaty of Neuilly,
comparatively far less important, concerns Bulgaria alone. But the one
fundamental and decisive treaty is the Treaty of Versailles, inasmuch
as it not only establishes as a recognized fact the partition of
Europe, but lays down the rules according to which all future treaties
are to be concluded.

History has not on record a more colossal diplomatic feat than this
treaty, by which Europe has been neatly divided into two sections:
victors and vanquished; the former being authorized to exercise on the
latter complete control until the fulfilment of terms which, even at
an optimistic point valuation, would require at least thirty years to
materialize.

Although it is a matter of recent history, we may as well call to mind
that the Entente Powers have always maintained that the War was
wanted and was imposed by Germany; that she alone, with her Allies,
repeatedly violated the rights of peoples; that the World War could
well be regarded as the last war, inasmuch as the triumph of the
Entente meant the triumph of democracy and a more human regime of
life, a society of nations rich in effects conducive to a lasting
peace. It was imperative to restore the principles of international
justice. In France, in England, in Italy, and later, even more
solemnly, in the United States, the same principles have been
proclaimed by Heads of States, by Parliaments and Governments.

There are two documents laying down and fixing the principles which
the Entente Powers, on the eve of that event of decisive importance,
the entry of the United States into the War, bound themselves to
sustain and to carry on to triumph. The first is a statement by Briand
to the United States Ambassador, in the name of all the other Allies,
dated December 30, 1916. Briand speaks in the name of all "_les
gouvernements alliés unis pour la défense et la liberté des peuples_."

Briand's second declaration, dated January 10, 1917, is even more
fundamentally important. It is a collective note of reply to President
Wilson, delivered in the name of all the Allies to the United States
Ambassador. The principles therein established are very clearly
enunciated. According to that document the Entente has no idea of
conquest and proposes mainly to achieve the following objects:

1st. Restoration of Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro, with the
indemnities due to them.

2nd. Evacuation of invaded territories in France, Russia and Rumania
and payment of just reparations.

3rd. Reorganization of Europe with a permanent regime based on the
respect of nationalities and on the right of all countries, both great
and small, to complete security and freedom of economic development,
besides territorial conventions and international regulations capable
of guaranteeing land and sea frontiers from unjustified attacks.

4th. Restitution of the provinces and territories taken in the past
from the Allies by force and against the wish of the inhabitants.

5th. Liberation of Italians, Slavs, Rumanians and Czeko-Slovaks from
foreign rule.

6th. Liberation of the peoples subjected to the tyranny of the Turks
and expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman Empire, as being decidedly
extraneous to western civilization.

7th. The intentions of his Majesty the Emperor of Russia in regard
to Poland are clearly indicated in the proclamation addressed to his
armies.

8th. The Allies have never harboured the design of exterminating
German peoples nor of bringing about their political disappearance.

At that time the autocratic form of government still prevailed in
Russia, and the Allies still considered themselves bound to Russia's
aspirations; moreover there existed, in regard to Italy, the
obligations established by the Pact of London. That is why in the
statements of the Entente Powers of Europe the restoration of
Montenegro is regarded as an obligation; mention is made of the
necessity of driving the Turks out of Europe in order to enable Russia
to seize Constantinople; and as to Poland, there are only vague
allusions, namely, the reference made to the Tsar's intentions as
outlined in his proclamation.

The Entente has won the War, but Russia has collapsed under the
strain. Had victory been achieved without the fall of Russia, the
latter would have installed herself as the predominating Power in the
Mediterranean. On the other hand, to unite Dalmatia to Italy, while
separating her from Italy, according to the pact of London, by
assigning the territory of Fiume to Croatia, would have meant setting
all the forces of Slav irredentism against Italy.

These considerations are of no practical value inasmuch as events have
taken another course. Nobody can say what would have happened if the
Carthagenians had conquered the Romans or if victory had remained with
Mithridates. Hypotheses are of but slight interest when truth follows
another direction. Nevertheless we cannot but repeat that it was a
great fortune for Europe that victory was not decided by Russia, and
that the decisive factor proved the United States.

It is beyond all possible doubt that without the intervention of
the United States of America the War could not have been won by the
Entente. Although the admission may prove humiliating to the European
point of view, it is a fact which cannot be attenuated or disguised.
The United States threw into the balance the weight of its enormous
economic and technical resources, besides its enormous resources in
men. Although its dead only amount to fifty thousand, the United
States built up such a formidable human reserve as to deprive Germany
of all hopes of victory. The announcement of America's entry in the
War immediately crushed all Germany's power of resistance. Germany
felt that the struggle was no longer limited to Europe, and that every
effort was vain.

The United States, besides giving to the War enormous quantities of
arms and money, had practically inexhaustible reserves of men to place
in the field against an enemy already exhausted and famine-stricken.

War and battles are two very different things. Battles constitute an
essentially military fact, while war is an essentially political fact.
That explains why great leaders in war have always been first and
foremost great political leaders, namely, men accustomed to manage
other men and able to utilize them for their purposes. Alexander,
Julius Caesar, Napoleon, the three greatest military leaders produced
by Aryan civilization, were essentially political men. War is not only
a clash of arms, it is above all the most convenient exploitation of
men, of economic resources and of political situations. A battle is a
fact of a purely military nature. The Romans almost constantly placed
at the head of their armies personages of consular rank, who regarded
and conducted the war as a political enterprise. The rules of tactics
and strategy are perfectly useless if those who conduct the war fail
to utilize to the utmost all the means at their disposal.

It cannot be denied that in the War Germany and Austria-Hungary scored
the greatest number of victories. For a long period they succeeded in
invading large tracts of enemy territory and in recovering those
parts of their own territory which had been invaded, besides always
maintaining the offensive. They won great battles at the cost of
enormous sacrifices in men and lives, and for a long time victory
appeared to shine on their arms. But they failed to understand that
from the day in which the violation of Belgium's neutrality determined
Great Britain's entry in the field the War, from a general point of
view, could be regarded as lost. As I have said, Germany is especially
lacking in political sense: after Bismarck, her statesmen have never
risen to the height of the situation. Even von Bülow, who appeared
to be one of the cleverest, never had a single manifestation of real
intelligence.

The "banal" statements made about Belgium and the United States of
America by the men who directed Germany's war policy were precisely
the sort of thing most calculated to harm the people from whom they
came. What is decidedly lacking in Germany, while it abounds in
France, is a political class. Now a political class, consisting of
men of ability and culture, cannot but be the result of a democratic
education in all modern States, especially in those which have
achieved a high standard of civilization and development. It seems
almost incredible that Germany, despite all her culture, should
have tolerated the political dictatorship of the Kaiser and of his
accomplices.

At the Conferences of Paris and London, in 1919 and 1920, I did all
that was in my power to prevent the trial of the Kaiser, and I am
convinced that my firm attitude in the matter succeeded in avoiding
it. Sound common sense saved us from floundering in one of the most
formidable blunders of the Treaty of Versailles. To hold one man
responsible for the whole War and to bring him to trial, his enemies
acting as judge and jury, would have been such a monstrous travesty
of justice as to provoke a moral revolt throughout the world. On the
other hand it was also a moral monstrosity, which would have deprived
the Treaty of Versailles of every shred of dignity. If the one
responsible for the War is the Kaiser, why does the Entente demand of
the German people such enormous indemnities, unprecedented in history?

One of the men who has exercised the greatest influence on European
events during the last ten years, one of the most intelligent of
living statesmen, once told me that it was his opinion that the Kaiser
did not want the War, but neither did he wish to prevent it.

Germany, although under protest, has been forced to accept the
statement of the Versailles Treaty to the effect that she is
responsible for the War and that she provoked it. The same charge has
been levelled at her in all the Entente States throughout the War.

When our countries were engaged in the struggle, and we were at grips
with a dangerous enemy, it was our duty to keep up the _morale_ of our
people and to paint our adversaries in the darkest colours, laying on
their shoulders all the blame and responsibility of the War. But after
the great world conflict, now that Imperial Germany has fallen, it
would be absurd to maintain that the responsibility of the War is
solely and wholly attributable to Germany and that earlier than 1914
in Europe there had not developed a state of things fatally destined
to culminate in a war. If Germany has the greatest responsibility,
that responsibility is shared more or less by all the countries of the
Entente. But while the Entente countries, in spite of their mistakes,
had the political sense always to invoke principles of right and
justice, the statesmen of Germany gave utterance to nothing but brutal
and vulgar statements, culminating in the deplorable mental and moral
expressions contained in the speeches, messages and telegrams of
William II. He was a perfect type of the _miles gloriosus_, not a
harmless but an irritating and dangerous boaster, who succeeded in
piling up more loathing and hatred against his country than the most
active and intelligently managed enemy propaganda could possibly have
done.

If the issue of the War could be regarded as seriously jeopardized
by England's intervention, it was practically lost for the Central
Empires when the United States stepped in.

America's decision definitely crippled Germany's resistance--and
not only for military, but for moral reasons. In all his messages
President Wilson had repeatedly declared that he wanted a peace
based on justice and equity, of which he outlined the fundamental
conditions; moreover, he stated that he had no quarrel with the
Germans themselves, but with the men who were at their head, and that
he did not wish to impose on the vanquished peace terms such as might
savour of oppression.

President Wilson's ideas on the subject have been embodied in a
bulky volume.[1] Turning over the pages of this book now we have the
impression that it is a collection of literary essays by a man who had
his eye on posterity and assumed a pose most likely to attract the
admiration of generations as yet unborn. But when these same words
were uttered in the intervals of mighty battles, they fell on
expectant and anxious ears: they were regarded as a ray of light in
the fearsome darkness of uncertainty, and everybody listened to them,
not only because the President was the authorized exponent of a
great nation, of a powerful people, but because he represented an
inexhaustible source of vitality in the midst of the ravages of
violence and death. President Wilson's messages have done as much as
famine and cruel losses in the field to break the stubborn resistance
of the German people. If it was possible to obtain a just peace, why
go to the bitter end when defeat was manifestly inevitable? Obstinacy
is the backbone of war, and nothing undermines a nation's power of
resistance so much as doubt and faint-heartedness on the part of the
governing classes.

[Footnote 1: "President Wilson's State Speeches and Addresses," New
York, 1918.]

President Wilson, who said on January 2, 1917, that a peace without
victory was to be preferred ("It must be a peace without victory"),
and that "Right is more precious than peace," had also repeatedly
affirmed that "We have no quarrel with the German people."

He only desired, as the exponent of a great democracy, a peace which
should be the expression of right and justice, evolving from the War a
League of Nations, the first milestone in a new era of civilization, a
league destined to bind together ex-belligerents and neutrals in one.

In Germany, where the inhabitants had to bear the most cruel
privations, President Wilson's words, pronounced as a solemn pledge
before the whole world, had a most powerful effect on all classes
and greatly contributed towards the final breakdown of collective
resistance. Democratic minds saw a promise for the future, while
reactionaries welcomed any way out of their disastrous adventure.

After America's entry in the War, President Wilson, on January 8,
1918, formulated the fourteen points of his programme regarding the
finalities of the War and the peace to be realized.

It is here necessary to reproduce the original text of President
Wilson's message containing the fourteen points which constitute a
formal pledge undertaken by the democracy of America, not only towards
enemy peoples but towards all peoples of the world.

These important statements from President Wilson's message have,
strangely enough, been reproduced either incompletely or in an utterly
mistaken form even in official documents and in books published by
statesmen who took a leading part in the Paris Conference.

It is therefore advisable to reproduce the original text in full:

    1st. Honest peace treaties, following loyal and honest
    negotiations, after which secret international agreements will be
    abolished and diplomacy will always proceed frankly and openly.

    2nd. Full liberty of navigation on the high seas outside
    territorial waters, both in peace and war, except when the seas be
    closed wholly or in part by an international decision sanctioned
    by international treaties.

    3rd. Removal, as far as possible, of all economic barriers and
    establishment of terms of equality in commerce among all nations
    adhering to peace and associated to maintain it.

    4th. Appropriate guarantees to be given and received for the
    reduction of national armaments to a minimum compatible with
    internal safety.

    5th. A clear, open and absolutely impartial settlement of all
    colonial rights, based on a rigorous observance of the principle
    that, in the determination of all questions of sovereignty, the
    interests of the populations shall bear equal weight with those of
    the Government whose claims are to be determined.

    6th. The evacuation of all Russian territories and a settlement
    of all Russian questions such as to ensure the best and most
    untrammelled co-operation of other nations of the world in
    order to afford Russia a clear and precise opportunity for the
    independent settlement of her autonomous political development and
    of her national policy, promising her a cordial welcome in the
    League of Nations under institutions of her own choice, and
    besides a cordial welcome, help and assistance in all that she may
    need and require. The treatment meted out to Russia by the sister
    nations in the months to come must be a decisive proof of their
    goodwill, of their understanding of her needs as apart from
    their own interests, and of their intelligent and disinterested
    sympathy.

    7th. Belgium, as the whole world will agree, must be evacuated
    and reconstructed without the slightest attempt at curtailing the
    sovereign rights which she enjoys in common with other free
    nations. Nothing will be more conducive to the re-establishment
    of confidence and respect among nations for those laws which they
    themselves have made for the regulation and observance of their
    reciprocal relations. Without this salutary measure the whole
    structure and validity of international law would be permanently
    undermined.

    8th. All French territories will be liberated, the invaded regions
    reconstructed, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871,
    in the question of Alsace-Lorraine, and which has jeopardized the
    peace of the world for nearly half a century, must be made good,
    so as to ensure a lasting peace in the general interest.

    9th. The Italian frontier must be rectified on the basis of the
    clearly recognized lines of nationality.

    10th. The people of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations
    we wish to see safeguarded and maintained, should come to an
    agreement as to the best way of attaining their autonomous
    development.

    11th. Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro are to be evacuated and
    occupied territories restored: a free and secure access to the
    sea for Serbia; mutual relations between the Balkan States to be
    determined on a friendly basis by a Council, following the lines
    of friendship and nationality traced by tradition and history; the
    political and economic integrity of the various Balkan States to
    be guaranteed.

    12th. A certain degree of sovereignty must be assigned to that
    part of the Ottoman Empire which is Turkish; but the other
    nationalities now under the Turkish regime should have the
    assurance of an independent existence and of an absolute and
    undisturbed opportunity to develop their autonomy; moreover
    the Dardanelles should be permanently open to the shipping and
    commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

    13th. An independent Polish State should be founded, comprising
    all territories inhabited by peoples of undoubtedly Polish
    nationality, with a free and secure access to the sea and its
    political and economic independence and territorial integrity
    guaranteed by international agreements.

    14th. A League of Nations must be formed with special pacts and
    for the sole scope of ensuring the reciprocal guarantees of
    political independence and of territorial integrity, in equal
    measure both for large and small States.

The Peace Treaty as outlined by Wilson would really have brought about
a just peace; but we shall see how the actual result proved quite the
reverse of what constituted a solemn pledge of the American people and
of the Entente Powers.

On February 11, 1918, President Wilson confirmed before Congress that
all territorial readjustments were to be made in the interest and for
the advantage of the populations concerned, not merely as a bargain
between rival States, and that there were not to be indemnities,
annexations or punitive exactions of any kind.

On September 27, 1918, just on the eve of the armistice, when German
resistance was already shaken almost to breaking point, President
Wilson gave it the _coup de grâce_ by his message on the _post-bellum_
economic settlement. No special or separate interest of any single
nation or group of nations was to be taken as the basis of any
settlement which did not concern the common interest of all; there
were not to be any leagues or alliances, or special pacts or ententes
within the great family of the society of nations; economic deals and
corners of an egotistical nature were to be forbidden, as also all
forms of boycotting, with the exception of those applied in punishment
to the countries transgressing the rules of good fellowship; all
international treaties and agreements of every kind were to be
published in their entirety to the whole world.

It was a magnificent programme of world policy. Not only would it have
meant peace after war, but a peace calculated to heal the deep wounds
of Europe and to renovate the economic status of nations.

On the basis of these principles, which constituted a solemn pledge,
Germany, worn out by famine and even more by increasing internal
unrest, demanded peace.

According to President Wilson's clear statements, made not only in
the name of the United States but in that of the whole Entente, peace
should therefore have been based on justice, the relations between
winners and losers in a society of nations being exclusively inspired
by mutual trust.

There were no longer to be huge standing armies, neither on the
part of the ex-Central Empires or on that of the victorious States;
adequate guarantees were to be _given and received_ for the reduction
of armies to the minimum necessary for internal defence; removal of
all economic barriers; absolute freedom of the seas; reorganization
of the colonies based on the development of the peoples directly
concerned; abolition of secret diplomacy, etc.

As to the duties of the vanquished, besides evacuating the occupied
territories, they were to reconstruct Belgium, to restore to France
the territories taken in 1871; to restore all the territories
belonging to Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro, giving Serbia a free and
secure access to the sea; to constitute a free Poland with territories
_undoubtedly Polish_ to which _there might_ be granted a free and
secure access to the sea. Poland, founded on secure ethnical bases,
far from being a military State, was to be an element of peace, and
her political and economic independence and territorial integrity were
to have been guaranteed by an international agreement.

After the rectification of the Italian frontier according to the
principles of nationality, the peoples of Austria-Hungary were to
agree on the free opportunity of their autonomous development. In
other terms, each people could freely choose autonomy or throw in its
lot with some other State. After giving a certain sovereignty to the
Turkish populations of the Ottoman Empire the other nationalities were
to be allowed to develop autonomously, and the free navigation of the
Dardanelles was to be internationally guaranteed.

These principles announced by President Wilson, and already proclaimed
in part by the Entente Powers when they stoutly affirmed that they
were fighting for right, for democracy and for peace, did not
constitute a concession but a duty towards the enemy. In each of the
losing countries, in Germany as in Austria-Hungary, the democratic
groups contrary to the War, and those even more numerous which had
accepted the War as in a momentary intoxication, when they exerted
themselves for the triumph of peace, had counted on the statements, or
rather on the solemn promises which American democracy had made not
only in the name of the United States but in that of all the Entente
Powers.

Let us now try to sum up the terms imposed on Germany and the other
losing countries by the treaty of June 28, 1919. The treaty, it is
true, was concluded between the allied and associated countries and
Germany, but it also concerns the very existence of other countries
such as Austria-Hungary, Russia, etc.:


I.--TERRITORIAL AND POLITICAL CLAUSES

Until the payment of an indemnity the amount of which is as yet not
definitely stated, Germany loses the fundamental characters of a
sovereign state. Not only part of her territory remains under the
occupation of the ex-enemy troops for a period of fifteen years but a
whole series of controls is established, military, administrative, on
transports, etc. The Commission for Reparations is empowered to effect
all the changes it thinks fit in the laws and regulations of the
German State, besides applying sanctions of a military and economic
nature in the event of violations of the clauses placed under its
control (Art. 240, 241).

The allied and associated governments declare and Germany recognizes
that Germany and her allies are solely responsible, being the direct
cause thereof, for all the losses and damages suffered by the allied
and associated governments and their subjects as a result of the War,
which was thrust upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies
(Art. 231). Consequently the resources of Germany (and by the
other treaties those of her allies as well) are destined, even if
insufficient, to ensure full reparation for all losses and damages
(Art. 232).

The allied and associated Powers place in a state of public accusation
William II of Hohenzollern, ex-German Emperor, charging him with
the gravest offences against international morality and the sacred
authority of treaties. A special tribunal composed of representatives
of the five great Entente Powers shall try him and will have the
right of determining his punishment (Art. 227). The German Government
likewise recognizes the right of the allied and associated Powers to
try in their courts of justice the persons (and more especially the
officers) accused of having committed acts contrary to the rules and
customs of war.

Restitution of Alsace and Lorraine to France without any obligation
on the latter's part, not even the corresponding quota of public debt
(Art. 51 _et seq_.).

The treaties of April 19, 1839, are abolished, so that Belgium, being
no longer neutral, may become allied to France (Art. 31); attribution
to Belgium of the territories of Eupen, Malmédy and Moresnet.

Abolition of all the treaties which established political and economic
bonds between Germany and Luxemburg (Art. 40).

Annulment of all the treaties concluded by Germany during the War.

German-Austria, reduced to a little State of hardly more than
6,000,000 inhabitants, about one-third of whom live in the capital
(Art. 80), cannot become united to Germany without the consent of the
Society of Nations, and is not allowed to participate in the affairs
of another nation, namely of Germany, before being admitted to the
League of Nations (Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Art. 88). As the
consent of the League of Nations must be unanimous, a contrary vote on
the part of France would be sufficient to prevent German-Austria from
becoming united to Germany.

Attribution of North Schleswig to Denmark (Art. 109).

Creation of the Czeko-Slovak State (Art. 87), which comprises the
autonomous territory of the Ruthenians south of the Carpathians,
Germany abandoning in favour of the new State all her rights and
claims on that part of Silesia mentioned in Art. 83.

Creation of the State of Poland (Art. 87), to whom Posnania and part
of Western Prussia are made over. Upper Silesia is to decide by a
plebiscite (Art. 88) whether it desires to be united to Germany or to
Poland. The latter, even without Upper Silesia, becomes a State of
31,000,000 inhabitants, with about fifty per cent. of the population
non-Polish, including very numerous groups of Germans.

Creation of the Free State of Danzig within the limits of Art. 100,
under the protection of the League of Nations. The city is a Free
City, but enclosed within the Polish Customs House frontiers, and
Poland has full control of the river and of the railway system.
Poland, moreover, has charge of the foreign affairs of the Free City
of Danzig and undertakes to protect its subjects abroad.

Surrender to the victors, or, to be more precise, almost exclusively
to Great Britain and France, of all the German colonies (Art. 119 and
127). The formula (Art. 119) is that Germany renounces in favour of
the leading allied and associated Powers all her territories beyond
the seas. Great Britain has secured an important share, but so has
France, receiving that part of Congo ceded in 1911, four-fifths of the
Cameroons and of Togoland.

Abandonment of all rights and claims in China, Siam, Liberia, Morocco,
Egypt, Turkey, Bulgaria and Shantung (Art. 128 and 158).

Creation of a League of Nations to the exclusion, practically, of
Germany and of the other losing countries, with the result that the
League is nothing but a juridical completion of the Commission of
Reparations. In all of the various treaties, the pact of the League of
Nations, the Covenant, left standing among the collapse of President
Wilson's other ideas and proposals, is given precedence over all other
clauses.


II.--MILITARY CLAUSES AND GUARANTEES

Germany is obliged, and with her, by the subsequent treaties, all the
other losing countries, to surrender her arms and to reduce her troops
to the minimum necessary for internal defence (Art. 159 and 213). The
German army has no General Staff; its soldiers are mercenaries who
enlist for a period of ten years; it cannot be composed of more than
seven infantry and three cavalry divisions, not exceeding 100,000
men including officers: no staff, no military aviation, no heavy
artillery. The number of gendarmes and of local police can only be
increased proportionately with the increase of the population. The
maximum of artillery allowed is limited to the requirements of
internal defence. Germany is strictly forbidden to import arms,
ammunition and war material of any kind or description. Conscription
is abolished, and officers must remain with the colours at least till
they have attained the age of forty-five. No institute of science or
culture is allowed to take an interest in military questions. All
fortifications included in a line traced fifty kilometres to the east
of the Rhine are to be destroyed, and on no account may German troops
cross the said line.

Destruction of Heligoland and of the fortresses of the Kiel Canal.

Destruction under the supervision of the allied commissions of control
of all tanks, flying apparatus, heavy and field artillery, namely
35,000 guns, 160,000 machine guns, 2,700,000 rifles, besides the tools
and machinery necessary for their manufacture. Destruction of all
arsenals. Destruction of the German fleet, which must be limited to
the proportions mentioned in Art. 181.

Creation of inter-allied military commissions of control to supervise
and enforce the carrying out of the military and naval clauses, at the
expense of Germany and with the right to install themselves in the
seat of the central government.

Occupation as a guarantee, for a period of fifteen years after the
application of the treaty, of the bridgeheads and of the territories
now occupied west of the Rhine (Art. 428 and 432). If, however, the
Commission of Reparations finds that Germany refuses wholly or in part
to fulfil her treaty obligations, the zones specified in Article
421 will be immediately occupied by the troops of the allied and
associated Powers.


III.--FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CLAUSES

The principle being recognized that Germany alone is responsible for
the War which she willed and which she imposed on the rest of the
world, Germany is bound to give complete and full reparation within
the limits specified by Art. 232. The amount of the damages for which
reparation is due will be fixed by the Commission of Reparations,
consisting of the representatives of the winning countries.

The coal fields of the Saar are to be handed over, in entire and
absolute ownership, free of all liens and obligations, to France, in
compensation for the destruction of the coal mines in the north of
France. Before the War, in 1913, the output of the Saar basin amounted
to 17,000,000 tons. The Saar is incorporated in the French douane
system and after fifteen years will be submitted to a plebiscite.

Germany may not charge heavier duties on imports from allied countries
than on those from any other country. This treatment of the most
favoured nation to be extended to all allied and associated States
does not imply the obligation of reciprocity (Art. 264). A similar
limitation is placed on exports, on which no special duty may be
levied.

Exports from Alsace and Lorraine into Germany to be exempt from duty,
without right of reciprocity (Art. 268).

Germany delivers to the Allies all the steamers of her mercantile
fleet of over I,600 tons, half of those between 1,000 and I,600 tons,
and one-fourth of her fishing vessels. Moreover, she binds herself to
build at the request of the Allies every year, and for a period of
five years, 200,000 tons of shipping, as directed by the Allies, and
the value of the new constructions will be credited to her by the
Commission of Reparations (Part viii, 3).

Besides giving up all her colonies, Germany surrenders all her rights
and claims on her possessions beyond the seas (Art. 119), and all
the contracts and conventions in favour of German subjects for the
construction and exploiting of public works, which will be considered
as part payment of the reparations due. The private property of
Germans in the colonies, as also the right of Germans to live and
work there, come under the free jurisdiction of the victorious States
occupying the colonies, and which reserve unto themselves the right to
confiscate and liquidate all property and claims belonging to Germans
(Art. 121 and 297).

The private property of German citizens residing in Alsace-Lorraine is
subject to the same treatment as that of residents in the ex-German
colonies. The French Government may confiscate without granting any
compensation the private property of Germans and of German concerns in
Alsace-Lorraine, and the sums thus derived will be credited towards
the partial settlement of eventual French claims (Art. 53 and 74).
The property of the State and of local bodies is likewise surrendered
without any compensation whatever. The allies and associates reserve
the right to seize and liquidate all property, claims and interests
belonging, at the date of the ratification of the treaty, to
German citizens or to firms controlled by them, situated in their
territories, colonies, possessions and protectorates, including the
territories surrendered in accordance with the clauses of the treaty
(Art. 217).

Germany loses everything with the exception of her territory:
colonies, possessions, rights, commercial investments, etc.

After giving the Saar coal fields in perpetual ownership to France in
reparation of the temporary damages suffered by the French coal mines,
the treaty goes on to establish the best ways and means to deprive
Germany, in the largest measure possible, of her coal and her iron.
The Saar coal fields have been handed over to France absolutely, while
the war damages of the French mines have been repaired or can be
repaired in a few years. Upper Silesia being subject to the plebiscite
with the occupation of the allied troops, Germany must have lost
several of her most important coal fields had the plebiscite gone
against her.

Germany is forced to deliver in part reparation to France 7,000,000
tons of coal a year for ten years, besides a quantity of coal equal
to the yearly _ante-bellum_ output of the coal mines of the North of
France and of the Pas-de-Calais, which were entirely destroyed during
the War; the said quantity not to exceed 20,000,000 tons in the first
five years and 8,000,000 tons during the five succeeding years (Part
viii, 5). Moreover, Germany must give 8,000,000 tons to Belgium for a
period of ten years, and to Italy a quantity of coal which, commencing
at 4,500,000 tons for the year 1919-1920, reaches the figure of
8,500,000 tons in the five years after 1923-1924. To Luxemburg Germany
must provide coal in the same average quantity as in pre-war times.
Altogether Germany is compelled to hand over to the winners as part
reparation about 25,000,000 tons of coal a year.

For three years Polish exports to Germany, and for five years exports
from Luxemburg into Germany, will be free of all duty, without right
of reciprocity (Art. 268).

The Allies have the right to adopt, on the territories left of the
Rhine and occupied by their troops, a special customs regime both as
regards imports and exports (Art. 270).

After having surrendered, as per Par. 7 of the armistice terms,
5,000 locomotives and 150,000 trucks and carriages with all their
accessories and fittings (Art. 250), Germany must hand over the
railway systems of the territories she has lost, with all the rolling
stock in a good state of preservation, and this measure applies even
to Prussian Poland occupied by Germany during the War (Art. 371).

The German transport system is placed under control, and the
administration of the Elbe, the Rhine, the Oder, the Danube, owing to
the fact that they pass through more than one state and give access
to the sea, is entrusted to inter-allied commissions. In all these
commissions Germany is represented by a small minority. France
and Great Britain, who are not directly interested, have numerous
representatives on all the important river commissions, while on the
Rhine commission Germany has only four votes out of nineteen (Art. 382
to 337). A privilege of first degree is established on all production
and resources of the German States to ensure the payment of
reparations and other charges specified by the treaty (Art. 248).

The total cost of the allied and associated armies will be borne by
Germany, including the upkeep of men and beasts, pay and lodging,
heating, clothing, etc., and even veterinary services, motor lorries
and automobiles. All these expenses must be reimbursed in gold marks
(Art. 249).

The privilege, as per Art. 248 of the treaty, is to be applied in the
following order:

(a) Reimbursement of expenses for the armies of occupation during
the armistice and after the peace treaty.

(b) Payment of the reparations as established by the treaty or
treaties or supplementary conventions.

(c) Other expenses deriving from the armistice terms, from the peace
treaty and from other supplementary terms and conventions (Art. 251).
Restitution, on the basis of an estimate presented sixty days after
the application of the treaty by the Commission of Reparations, of the
live stock stolen or destroyed by the Germans and necessary for the
reconstruction of the invaded countries, with the right to exact from
Germany, as part reparations, the delivery of machinery, heating
apparatus, furniture, etc.

Reimbursement to Belgium of all the sums loaned to her by the allied
and associated Powers during the War.

Compensation for the losses and damages sustained by the civilian
population of the allied and associated Powers during the period in
which they were at war with Germany (Art. 232 and Part viii, I).

Payment, during the first two years, of twenty milliard marks in
gold or by the delivery of goods, shipping, etc., on account of
compensation (Art. 235).

The reparations owed by Germany concern chiefly:

1st. Damages and loss of life and property sustained by the civilian
population.

2nd. Damages sustained by civilian victims of cruelty, violence or
ill-treatment.

3rd. Damages caused on occupied or invaded territories.

4th. Damages through cruelty to and ill-treatment of prisoners of war.

5th. Pensions and compensations of all kinds paid by the allied and
associated Powers to the military victims of the War and to their
families.

6th. Subsidies paid by the allied and associated Powers to the
families and other dependents of men having served in the army, etc.,
etc. (Part viii, I). These expenses, which have been calculated
at varying figures, commencing from 350 billions, have undergone
considerable fluctuations.

I have given the general lines of the Treaty of Versailles.

The other treaties, far less important, inasmuch as the situation
of all the losing countries was already well defined, especially as
regards territorial questions, by the Treaty of Versailles, are cast
in the same mould and contain no essential variation.

Now these treaties constitute an absolutely new fact, and no one can
affirm that the Treaty of Versailles derives even remotely from the
declarations of the Entente and from Wilson's solemn pledges uttered
in the name of those who took part in the War.

If the terms of the armistice were deeply in contrast with the pledges
to which the Entente Powers had bound themselves before the whole
world, the Treaty of Versailles and the other treaties deriving
therefrom are a deliberate negation of all that had been promised,
amounting to a debt of honour, and which had contributed much more
powerfully towards the defeat of the enemy than the entry in the field
of many fresh divisions.

In the state of extreme exhaustion in which both conquerors and losers
found themselves in 1918, in the terrible suffering of the Germanic
group of belligerents, deprived for four years of sufficient
nourishment and of the most elementary necessaries of life, in the
moral collapse which had taken the place of boasting and temerity, the
words of Wilson, who pledged himself to a just peace and established
its terms, proclaiming them to the world, had completely broken down
whatever force of resistance there still remained. They were the most
powerful instruments of victory, and if not the essential cause,
certainly not the least important among the causes which brought about
the collapse of the Central Empires.

Germany had been deeply hit by the armistice. Obliged to hand over
immediately 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 railway trucks and carriages
at the very time when she had to demobilize, during the first months
she found her traffic almost completely paralysed.

Every war brings virulent germs of revolution in the vanquished
countries. The war of 1870 gave France the impulsive manifestations of
_La Commune_ in exactly the same manner as war gave rise in Germany
during the first months after the armistice to a violent revolutionary
crisis, overcome not without difficulty and still representing a grave
menace.

Forced to surrender immediately a large quantity of live stock, to
demobilize when the best part of her railway material had gone, still
hampered by the blockade, Germany, against the interest of the Allies
themselves, has been obliged to sacrifice her exchange because, in the
absence of sufficient help, she has had to buy the most indispensable
foodstuffs in neutral countries. Her paper currency, which at the
end of 1918 amounted to twenty-two milliard marks, not excessive as
compared with that of other countries, immediately increased with a
growing crescendo till it reached, in a very short time, the figure of
eighty-eight milliards, thus rendering from the very first the payment
of indemnities in gold extremely difficult.

The most skilled men have been thrust into an absolute impossibility
of producing. To have deprived Germany of her merchant fleet, built up
with so much care, means to have deprived the freight market of sixty
thousand of the most skilled, intelligent and hard-working seamen.

But what Germany has lost as a result of the treaty surpasses all
imagination and can only be regarded as a sentence of ruin and decay
voluntarily passed over a whole people.

Germany, without taking into account the countries subject to
plebiscite, has lost 7.5 per cent. of her population. Should the
plebiscites prove unfavourable to her, or, as the tendency seems to
be, should these plebiscites be disregarded, Germany would lose 13.5
per cent. of her population. Purely German territories have been
forcibly wrenched from her. What has been done in the case of the
Saar has no precedents in modern history. It is a country of 650,000
inhabitants of whom not even one hundred are French, a country which
has been German for a thousand years, and which was temporarily
occupied by France for purely military reasons. In spite of these
facts, however, not only have the coal fields of the Saar been
assigned in perpetuity to France as compensation for the damages
caused to the French mines in the North, but the territory of the Saar
forms part of the French customs regime and will be subjected after
fifteen years to a plebiscite, when such a necessity is absolutely
incomprehensible, as the population is purely German and has never
in any form or manner expressed the intention of changing its
nationality.

The ebb and flow of peoples in Europe during the long war of
nationalities has often changed the situation of frontier countries.
Sometimes it may still be regarded as a necessity to include small
groups of alien race and language in different states in order to
ensure strategically safe frontiers. But, with the exception of the
necessity for self-defence, there is nothing to justify what has been
done to the detriment of Germany.

Wilson had only said that France should receive compensation for
the wrong suffered in 1871 and that Belgium should be evacuated and
reconstructed. What had been destroyed was to have been built up
again; but no one had ever thought during the War of handing over to
Belgium a part, however small, of German territory or of surrendering
predominantly and purely German territories to Poland.

The German colonies covered an area of nearly 3,000,000 square
kilometres; they had reached an admirable degree of development and
were managed with the greatest skill and ability. They represented an
enormous value; nevertheless they have been assigned to France, Great
Britain and in minor proportion to Japan, without figuring at all in
the reparations account.

It is calculated that as a result of the treaty, owing to the loss
of a considerable percentage of her agricultural area, Germany is
twenty-five per cent. the poorer in regard to the production of
cereals and potatoes and ten to twelve per cent. in regard to the
breeding of live stock.

The restitution of Alsace-Lorraine (the only formal claim advanced by
the Entente in its war programme) has deprived Germany of the bulk of
her iron-ore production. In 1913 Germany could count on 21,000,000
tons of iron from Lorraine, 7,000,000 from Luxemburg, 138,000 from
Upper Silesia and 7,344 from the rest of her territory. This means
that Germany is reduced to only 20.41 per cent. of her pre-war wealth
in iron ore.

In 1913 the Saar district represented 8.95 per cent. of the total
production of coal, and Upper Silesia 22.85 per cent.

Having lost about eighty per cent. of her iron ore and large stocks
of coal, while her production is severely handicapped, Germany,
completely disorganized abroad after the suppression of all economic
equilibrium, is condemned to look on helplessly while the very sources
of her national wealth dry up and cease to flow. In order to form a
correct estimate of the facts we must hold in mind that one-fifth of
Germany's total exports before the War consisted of iron and of tools
and machinery mostly manufactured with German iron.

If we now consider the fourteen points of President Wilson, accepted
by the Entente as a peace programme, comparing the actual results
obtained by the Treaty of Versailles, we are faced with the following
situation:

1. "_After loyal peace negotiations and the conclusion and signing
of peace treaties, secret diplomatic agreements must be regarded as
abolished_," says Wilson. On the contrary, secret peace negotiations
have been protracted for more than six months, and no hearing was even
granted to the German delegates who wished to expose their views. By a
system of treaties France has created a military alliance with Belgium
and Poland, thus completely cornering Germany.

2. _Absolute freedom of the sea beyond territorial waters_. Nothing,
as a matter of fact, has been changed from the pre-war state of
things; with the difference that the losers have had to surrender
their mercantile fleets and are therefore no longer directly
interested in the question.

3. _Removal of all economic barriers and equality of trade
conditions_. The treaty imposes on Germany terms without reciprocity,
and almost all Entente countries have already adopted protectionist
and prohibitive tariffs.

4. _Adequate guarantees to be given and received for the reduction of
armaments to a minimum compatible with home defence_. The treaties
have compelled the vanquished countries to destroy or to surrender
their navies, and have reduced the standing armies of Germany to
100,000 men, including officers, of Bulgaria to 23,000, of Austria to
30,000 (in reality only 21,000), of Hungary to 35,000. The conquering
states, on the other hand, maintain enormous armies numerically
superior to those which they had before the War. France, Belgium
and Poland have between them about 1,400,000 men with the colours.
Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria altogether have only 179,000
men under arms, while Rumania alone has 206,000 and Poland more than
450,000 men.

5. _Loyal and straightforward settlement of colonial rights and
claims, based chiefly on the advantage of the peoples directly
concerned_. All her colonies have been taken from Germany, who needed
them more than any other country of continental Europe, having a
density of population of 123 inhabitants per square kilometre (Italy
has a density of 133 per square kilometre) while France has 74, Spain
40, and European Russia before the War had only 24.

6. _Evacuation of all Russian territories and cordial co-operation for
the reconstruction and development of Russia_. For a long time the
Entente has given its support to the military ventures of Koltchak,
Judenic, Denikin and Wrangel, all men of the old regime.

7. _Evacuation and reconstruction of Belgium_. This has been done, but
to Belgium have been assigned territories which she never dreamt of
claiming before the War.

8. _Liberation of French territories, reconstruction of invaded
regions and restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to France in respect of
the territories taken from her in 1871_. France occupies a dominating
position in the Saar which constitutes an absolute denial of the
principle of nationality.

9. _Rectification of the Italian frontier, according to clearly
defined lines of nationality_. As these lines have never been clearly
defined or recognized, the solution arrived at has been distasteful
both to the Italians and to their neighbours.

10. _The peoples of Austria-Hungary to be left free to unite together
or to form autonomous states in the manner best suited to their
development_. As a matter of fact the treaties have taken the greatest
possible number of Germans from Austria and of Magyars from Hungary in
order to hand them over to Poland, to Czeko-Slovakia, to Rumania and
to Jugo-Slavia, namely to populations for the most part inferior to
the Germans.

11. _Evacuation of Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro_. This has been
effected, but whereas the Entente Powers have always proclaimed their
fundamental duty for the reconstruction of Montenegro, they all
contributed to its disappearance, chiefly at the instigation of
France.

12. _A limited sovereignty to the Turkish parts of the Ottoman Empire,
liberation of other nationalities and freedom of navigation in the
Dardanelles placed under international guarantees_. What really
happened was that the Entente Powers immediately tried to possess
themselves of Asia Minor; but events rendered it necessary to adopt
a regime of mandates because direct sovereignty would have been too
perilous an experiment. A sense of deep perturbation and unrest
pervades the whole of Islam.

13. _An independent Polish state with populations undoubtedly Polish
to be founded as a neutral State with a free and secure outlet to the
sea and whose integrity is to be guaranteed by international accords_.
In reality a Polish state has been formed with populations undoubtedly
non-Polish, having a markedly military character and aiming at further
expansion in Ukranian and German territory. It has a population of
31,000,000 inhabitants while it should not exceed 18,000,000, and
proposes to isolate Russia from Germany. Moreover the Free State of
Danzig, practically dependent from Poland, constitutes a standing
menace to Germany.

14. _Foundation of the League of Nations for the sole purpose
of re-establishing order among nations, and laying the basis of
reciprocal guarantees of territorial integrity and political
independence for all states, both great and small_. After more than
two years have elapsed since the conclusion of peace and three since
the armistice the League of Nations is still nothing but a holy
alliance the object of which is to guarantee the privileges of the
conquerors. After the vote of the Senate, deserving of all praise
from every point of view, the United States does not form part of the
League nor do the losing countries, including Germany.

It is therefore obvious that the most solemn pledges on which peace
was based have not been maintained; the noble declarations made by the
Entente during the War have been forgotten; forgotten all the solemn
collective pledges; forgotten and disregarded Wilson's proclamations
which, without being real contracts or treaties, were something far
more solemn and binding, a pledge taken before the whole world at its
most tragic hour to give the enemy a guarantee of justice.

Without expressing any opinion on the treaties it cannot be denied
that the manner in which they have been applied has been even worse.
For the first time in civilized Europe, not during the War, when
everything was permissible in the supreme interests of defence, but
now that the War is over, the Entente Powers, though maintaining
armies more numerous than ever, for which the vanquished must pay,
have occupied German territories, inhabited by the most cultured,
progressive and technically advanced populations in the world, as an
insult and a slight, with coloured troops, men from darkest and most
barbarous Africa, to act as defenders of the rights of civilization
and to maintain the law and order of democracy.




III

THE PEACE TREATIES--THEIR ORIGIN AND AIMS


How, after the solemn pledges undertaken during the War, a peace could
have been concluded which practically negatives all the principles
professed during the War and all the obligations entered into, is
easily explained when the progress of events is noted from the autumn
of 1918 to the end of the spring of 1919. I took no direct part in
those events, as I had no share in the government of Italy from
January to the end of June, 1919, the period during which the Treaties
of Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye were being prepared. The
Orlando Ministry was resigning when the Treaty of Versailles was drawn
up for signature, and the situation which confronted the Ministry
of which I was head was clearly defined. Nevertheless I asked the
Minister of Foreign Affairs and the delegates of the preceding Cabinet
to put their signatures to it. Signing was a necessity, and it fell to
me later on to put my signature to the ratification.

The Treaty of Versailles and those which have followed with Austria,
Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey have been validly signed, and they pledge
the good faith of the countries which have signed them. But in the
application of them there is need of great breadth of view; there is
need of dispassionate study to see if they can be maintained, if the
fulfilment of the impossible or unjust conditions demanded of the
conquered countries will not do more harm to the conquerors, will not,
in point of actual fact, pave the way to their ruin.

If there is one thing, Lloyd George has said, which will never be
forgotten or forgiven, it is arrogance and injustice in the hour
of triumph. We have never tired of saying that Germany is the most
barbarous among civilized countries, that under her civilization
is hidden all the barbarism of mediaeval times, that she puts into
practice the doctrine of might over right. At the present moment it is
our duty to ask ourselves if something of the principles which we have
for so long been attributing to Germany has not passed over to the
other side, if in our own hearts there is not a bitterness of hatred
clouding our judgment and robbing our programme of all action that can
do real good.

Prussia won the war against Austria-Hungary in 1866, and did not ask
for or impose any really onerous terms. It was contented with having
regained hegemony among the German people. Prussia conquered France
in 1870. It was an unjust war, and Prussia laid down two unjust
conditions: Alsace-Lorraine and the indemnity of five milliards. As
soon as the indemnity was paid--and it was an indemnity that could be
paid in one lump sum--Prussia evacuated the occupied territory. It did
not claim of France its colonies or its fleet, it did not impose the
reduction of its armaments or control of its transport after the
peace. The Treaty of Frankfort is a humanitarian act compared with the
Treaty of Versailles.

If Germany had won the War--Germany to whom we have always attributed
the worst possible intentions--what could it have done that the
Entente has not done? It is possible that, as it is gifted with more
practical common sense, it might have laid down less impossible
conditions in order to gain a secure advantage without ruining the
conquered countries.

There are about ninety millions of Germans in Europe, and perhaps
fifteen millions in different countries outside Europe. But in the
heart of Europe they represent a great ethnic unity; they are the
largest and most compact national group in that continent. With all
the good and bad points of their race, too methodical and at the same
time easily depressed by a severe setback, they are still the most
cultivated people on earth. It is impossible to imagine that they can
disappear, much less that they can reconcile themselves to live in a
condition of slavery. On the other hand, the Entente has built on a
foundation of shifting sand a Europe full of small States poisoned
with imperialism and in ruinous conditions of economy and finance, and
a too great Poland without a national basis and necessarily the enemy
of Russia and of Germany.

No people has always been victorious; the peoples who have fought most
wars in modern Europe, English, French and Germans, have had
alternate victories and defeats. A defeat often carries in its train
reconsideration which is followed by renewed energy: the greatness of
England is largely due to its steadfast determination to destroy the
Napoleonic Empire. What elevates men is this steadfast and persevering
effort, and a series of such collective efforts carries a nation to a
high place.

There is nothing lasting in the existing groupings. At the moment of
common danger eternal union and unbreakable solidarity are proclaimed;
but both are mere literary expressions.

Great Britain, the country which has the least need to make war, has
been at war for centuries with nearly all the European countries.
There is one country only against which it has never made war, not
even when a commercial challenge from the mercantile Republics of
Italy seemed possible. That country is Italy. That shows that between
the action of Italy there is not, nor can there be, contrast, and
indeed that between the two nations there is complete agreement in
European continental policy. It is the common desire of the two
nations, though perhaps for different reasons, that no one State shall
have hegemony on the continent. But between the years 1688 and 1815
Great Britain and France were at war for seventy years: for seventy
years, that is, out of a hundred and twenty-seven there was a state of
deadly hostility between the two countries.

General progress, evinced in various ways, above all in respect for
and in the autonomy of other peoples, is a guarantee for all. No
peoples are always victorious, none always conquered. In the time of
Napoleon the First the French derided the lack of righting spirit
in the German peoples, producers of any number of philosophers
and writers. They would have laughed at anyone who suggested the
possibility of any early German military triumph. After 1815 the
countries of the Holy Alliance would never have believed in the
possibility of the revolutionary spirit recovering; they were sure of
lasting peace in Europe. In 1871 the Germans had no doubt at all that
they had surely smothered France; now the Entente thinks that it has
surely smothered Germany.

But civilization has gained something: it has gained that collection
of rules, moral conditions, sentiments, international regulations,
which tend both to mitigate violence and to regulate in a form which
is tolerable, if not always just, relations between conquerors and
conquered, above all, a respect for the liberty and autonomy of the
latter.

Now, the treaties which have been made are, from the moral point of
view, immeasurably worse than any consummated in former days, in that
they carry Europe back to a phase of civilization which was thought
to be over and done with centuries ago. They are a danger too. For
as everyone who takes vengeance does so in a degree greater than the
damage suffered, if one supposes for a moment that the conquered
of to-day may be the conquerors of to-morrow, to what lengths of
violence, degradation and barbarism may not Europe be dragged?

Every effort, then, should now be made to follow the opposite road to
that traversed up to now, the more so in that the treaties cannot be
carried out; and if it is desired that the conquered countries shall
pay compensation to the conquerors, at least in part, for the most
serious damage, then the line to be followed must be based on
realities instead of on violence.

But before trying to see how and why the treaties cannot be carried
out, it may be well to consider how the actual system of treaties
has been reached, in complete opposition to all that was said by the
Entente during the War and to President Wilson's fourteen points. At
the same time ought to be examined the causes which led in six months
from the declarations of the Entente and of President Wilson to the
Treaty of Versailles.

The most important cause for what has happened was the choice of Paris
as the meeting-place of the Conference. After the War Paris was the
least fitted of any place for the holding of a Peace Conference, and
in the two French leaders, the President of the Republic, Poincaré,
and the President of the Council of Ministers, Clemenceau, even if the
latter was more adaptable in mind and more open to consideration of
arguments on the other side, were two temperaments driving inevitably
to extremes. Victory had come in a way that surpassed all expectation;
a people that, living through every day the War had lasted, had passed
through every sorrow, privation, agony, had now but one thought, to
destroy the enemy. The atmosphere of Paris was fiery. The decision of
the peace terms to be imposed on the enemy was to be taken in a city
which a few months before, one might really say a few weeks before,
had been under the fire of the long-range guns invented by the
Germans, in hourly dread of enemy aeroplanes. Even now it is
inexplicable that President Wilson did not realize the situation
which must inevitably come about. It is possible that the delirium of
enthusiasm with which he was received at Paris may have given him the
idea that it was in him alone that the people trusted, may have made
him take the welcome given to the representative of the deciding
factor of the War as the welcome to the principles which he had
proclaimed to the world. Months later, when he left France amid
general indifference if not distrust, President Wilson must have
realized that he had lost, not popularity, but prestige, the one sure
element of success for the head of a Government, much more so for the
head of a State. It was inevitable that a Peace Conference held
in Paris, only a few months after the War, with the direction and
preparation of the work almost entirely in French hands and with
Clemenceau at the head of everything, should conclude as it did
conclude; all the more so when Italy held apart right from the
beginning, and England, though convinced of the mistakes being made,
could not act freely and effectively.

The first duty of the Peace Conference was to restore a state of
equilibrium and re-establish conditions of life. Taking Europe as an
economic unity, broken by the War, it was necessary first of all and
in the interests of all to re-establish conditions of life which would
make it possible for the crisis to be overcome with the least possible
damage.

I do not propose to tell the story of the Conference, and it is as
well to say at once that I do not intend to make use of any document
placed in my hands for official purposes. But the story of the Paris
Conference can now be told with practical completeness after what
has been published by J.M. Keynes in his noble book on the Economic
Consequences of the War and by the American Secretary of State, Robert
Lansing, and after the statements made in the British and French
Parliaments by Lloyd George and Clemenceau. But from the political
point of view the most interesting document is still André Tardieu's
book _La Paix_, to which Clemenceau wrote a preface and which
expresses, from the point of view of the French Delegation at the
Conference, the programme which France laid before itself and what it
obtained. This book explains how the principal decisions were taken,
and indeed can be fairly considered to show in a more reliable way
than any other publication extant how the work of the Conference
proceeded. For not only was M. Tardieu one of the French Delegates to
the Conference, one of those who signed the Versailles Treaty, but
also he prepared the plan of work as well as the solutions of the most
important questions in his capacity of trusted agent of the Prime
Minister.

The determination in the mind of President Wilson when he came to
Paris was to carry through his programme of the League of Nations. He
was fickle in his infallibility, but he had the firmest faith that he
was working for the peace of the world and above all for the glory of
the United States. Of European things he was supremely ignorant. We
are bound to recognize his good faith, but we are not in the least
bound on that account to admit his capacity to tackle the problems
which with his academic simplicity he set himself to solve. When he
arrived in Europe he had not even prepared in outline a scheme of what
the League of Nations was to be; the principal problems found him
unprepared, and the duty of the crowd of experts (sometimes not too
expert) who followed him seemed rather to be to demonstrate the
truth of his idea than to prepare material for seriously thought out
decisions.

He could have made no greater mistake than he did in coming to Europe
to take part in the meetings of the Conference. His figure lost relief
at once, in a way it seemed to lose dignity. The head of a State was
taking part in meetings of heads of Governments, one of the latter
presiding. It was a giant compelled to live in a cellar and thereby
sacrificing his height. He was surrounded by formal respect and in
some decisions he exercised almost despotic authority, but his work
was none the less disordered; there was a semblance of giving in to
him while he was giving away his entire programme without being aware
of it.

In his ignorance of European things he was brought, without
recognizing it, to accept a series of decisions not superficially in
opposition to his fourteen points but which did actually nullify them.

Great Britain is part of Europe but is not on the Continent of Europe.
While Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Russia, Hungary, Holland,
Belgium, etc., live the same life, are one in thought, Great Britain
lives in her superb insularity. If she had any moment of supreme
anxiety during the War, it was in the spring and summer of 1917 during
the terrible threat of the destruction of her shipping by submarines
and the inability of construction to keep pace with it. But after
the defeat of Germany Great Britain found herself with a fleet far
superior to those of all the rest of Europe put together; once more
she broke away from Continental Europe.

Lloyd George, with swiftly acting brain and clear insight, undoubtedly
the most remarkable man at the Paris Conference, found himself in a
difficult situation between President Wilson's pronouncements, some
of them, like that regarding the freedom of the seas, undefined and
dangerous, and the claims of France tending, after the brutal attack
it had had to meet, not towards a true peace and the reconstruction of
Europe, but towards the vivisection of Germany. In one of the first
moments, just before the General Elections, Lloyd George, too,
promised measures of the greatest severity, the trial of the Kaiser,
the punishment of all guilty of atrocities, compensation for all who
had suffered from the War, the widest and most complete indemnity. But
such pronouncements gave way before his clear realization of facts,
and later on he tried in vain to put the Conference on the plane of
such realization.

Italy, as M. Tardieu says very plainly, carried no weight in the
Conference. In the meetings of the Prime Ministers and President
Wilson _le ton était celui de la conversation; nul apparat, nulle
pose. M. Orlando parlait peu; l'activité de l'Italie à la conference
a été, jusqu'à l'excès, absorbée par la question de Fiume, et sa part
dans les débats a été de ce fait trop réduite. Restait un dialogue à
trois: Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George_. The Italian Government came
into the War in May, 1915, on the basis of the London Agreement of the
preceding April, and it had never thought of claiming Fiume either
before the War when it was free to lay down conditions or during the
progress of the War.

The Italian people had always been kept in ignorance of the principles
established in the London Agreement. One of the men chiefly
responsible for the American policy openly complained to me that when
the United States came into the War no notification was given them of
the London Agreement in which were defined the future conditions
of part of Europe. A far worse mistake was made in the failure to
communicate the London Agreement to Serbia, which would certainly have
accepted it without hesitation in the terrible position in which it
then was.

But the most serious thing of all was that Italian Ministers were
unaware of its provisions till after its publication in London by the
organ of the Jugo-Slavs, which had evidently received the text from
Petrograd, where the Bolsheviks had published it. In Italy the London
Agreement was a mystery to everyone; its text was known only to the
Presidents of the Council and the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the
War Cabinets. Thus only four or five people knew about it, secrecy was
strictly kept, and, moreover, it cannot possibly be said that it was
in accordance either with national ideals or the currents of public
opinion, much less with any intelligent conception of Italy's needs
and Italy's future.

The framers of the London Agreement never thought of Fiume. Indeed
they specifically expressed their willingness that it should go to
Croatia, whether in the case of Austria-Hungary remaining united or of
the detachment of Croatia from it. It is not true that it was through
the opposition of Russia or of France that the Italian framers of the
London Agreement gave up all claim to Fiume. There was no opposition
because there was no claim. The representatives of Russia and France
have told me officially that no renunciation took place through any
action on the part of their Governments, because no claim was ever
made to them. On the other hand, after the armistice, and when it
became known through the newspapers that the London Agreement gave
Fiume to Croatia, a very strong movement for Fiume arose, fanned by
the Government itself, and an equally strong movement in Fiume also.

If, in the London Agreement, instead of claiming large areas of
Dalmatia which are entirely or almost entirely Slav, provision had
been made for the constitution of a State of Fiume placed in a
condition to guarantee not only the people of Italian nationality but
the economic interests of all the peoples in it and surrounding it,
there is no doubt that such a claim on the part of Italy would have
gone through without opposition.

During the Paris Conference the representatives of Italy showed hardly
any interest at all in the problems concerning the peace of Europe,
the situation of the conquered peoples, the distribution of raw
materials, the regulation of the new states and their relations with
the victor countries. They concentrated all their efforts on the
question of Fiume, that is to say on the one point in which Italian
action was fundamentally weak in that, when it was free to enter into
the War and lay down conditions of peace, at the moment when the
Entente was without America's invaluable assistance and was beginning
to doubt the capacity of Russia to carry on, it had never even asked
for Fiume in its War Treaty, that it had made the inexplicable mistake
of neglecting to communicate that treaty to the United States when
that country came into the War and to Serbia at the moment when
Italy's effort was most valuable for its help. At the conference Italy
had no directing policy. It had been a part of the system of
the German Alliance, but it had left its Allies, Germany and
Austria-Hungary, because it recognized that the War was unjust, and
had remained neutral for ten months. Then, entering into the War
freely and without obligation, there was one road for it to follow,
that of proclaiming solemnly and defending the principles of democracy
and justice. Indeed, that was a moral duty in that the break with the
two countries with which Italy had been in alliance for thirty-three
years became a matter not only of honesty but of duty solely through
the injustice of the cause for which they had proclaimed an offensive
war. It was not possible for Italy to go to war to realize the dream
of uniting the Italian lands to the nation, for she had entered the
system of Alliance of the Central Empires and had stayed there long
years while having all the time Italian territories unjustly subjected
to Austria-Hungary. The annexation of the Italian lands to the
Kingdom of Italy had to be the consequence of the affirmation of the
principles of nationality, not the reason for going to war. In any
case, for Italy, which had laid on itself in the London Agreement
the most absurd limitations, which had confined its war aims within
exceedingly modest limits, which had no share in the distribution
of the wealth of the conquered countries, which came out of the War
without raw materials and without any share in Germany's colonial
empire, it was a matter not only of high duty but of the greatest
utility to proclaim and uphold all those principles which the Entente
had so often and so publicly proclaimed as its war policy and its war
aims. But in the Paris Conference Italy hardly counted. Without any
definite idea of its own policy, it followed France and the United
States, sometimes it followed Great Britain. There was no affirmation
of principles at all. The country which, among all the European
warring Powers, had suffered most severely in proportion to its
resources and should have made the greatest effort to free itself
from the burdens imposed on it, took no part in the most important
decisions. It has to be added that these were arrived at between March
24 and May 7, while the Italian representatives were absent from Paris
or had returned there humbled without having been recalled.

After interminable discussions which decided very little, especially
with regard to the League of Nations which arose before the nations
were constituted and could live, real vital questions were tackled, as
is seen from the report of the Conference, on March 24, and it is a
fact that between that date and May 7 the whole treaty was put in
shape: territorial questions, financial questions, economic questions,
colonial questions. Now, at that very moment, on account of the
question of Fiume and Fiume alone, for some inscrutable reason the
Italian delegates thought good to retire from the Conference, to which
they returned later without being invited, and during that time all
the demonstrations against President Wilson took place in Italy, not
without some grave responsibility on the part of the government. Italy
received least consideration in the peace treaties among all the
conquering countries. It was practically put on one side.

It has to be noted that both in the armistice and in the peace treaty
the most serious decisions were arrived at almost incidentally;
moreover they were always vitiated by slight concessions apparently
of importance. On November 2, 1917, when the representatives of the
different nations met at Paris to fix the terms of armistice, M.
Tardieu relates, the question of reparation for damages was decided
quite incidentally. It is worth while reproducing what he says in his
book, taken from the official report:

M. CLEMENCEAU: _Je voudrais venir maintenant sur la question des
réparations et des tonnages. On ne comprenderait pas chez nous, en
France, que nous n'inscrivions pas dans l'armistice une clause à
cet effet. Ce que je vous demande c'est l'addition de trois mots:
"Réparations des dommages" sans autre commentaire.

Le dialogue suivant s'établit_:

M. HYMANS: _Cela serait-il une condition d'armistice_?

M. SONNINO: _C'est plutôt une condition de paix_.

M. BONAR LAW: _Il est inutile d'insérer dans les conditions
d'armistice une clause qui ne pourrait être exécutée dans un bref
délai_.

M. CLEMENCEAU: _Je ne veux que mentionner le principe. Vous ne devez
pas oublier que la population française est une de celles qui ont
le plus souffert. Elle ne comprendrait pas que nous ne fissions pas
allusion à cette clause_.

M. LLOYD GEORGE: _Si vous envisages le principe des réparations sur
terre, il faut mentionner aussi celui des réparations pour les navires
coulés_.

M. CLEMENCEAU: _Je comprends tout cela dans mes trois mots,
"Réparations des dommages." Je supplie le Conseil de se mettre dans
l'esprit de la population française...._

M. VESSITCH: _Et serbe_....

M. HYMANS: _Et belge_....

M. SONNINO: _Et italienne aussi_....

M. HOUSE: _Puisqu'est une question importante pour tous, je propose
l'addition de M. Clemenceau_.

M. BONAR LAW: _C'est deja dit dans notre lettre au Président Wilson,
qui la comuniquera à l'Allemagne. Il est inutile de la dire deux
fois_.

M. ORLANDO: _J'accepte en principe, quoiqu'il n'en ait pas été fait
mention dans les conditions de l'armistice avec l'Autriche_.

_L'addition "Réparations des dommages" est alors adoptée. M. Klotz
propose de mettre en tête de cette addition les mots: "Sous réserve
de toutes revendications et restaurations ultérieures de la part des
Alliés et des Etats-Unis." Il est ainsi décidé_.

If I were at liberty to publish the official report of the doings of
the Conference while the various peace treaties were being prepared,
as MM. Poincaré and Tardieu have published secret acts, it would be
seen that the proceedings were very much the same in every case.
Meanwhile we may confine ourselves to an examination of the report as
given by M. Tardieu.

The question of reparation of damages was not a condition of the
armistice. It had not been accepted. Clemenceau brings the question up
again solely in homage to French public opinion. The suggestion is to
write in simply the three words: _Reparation of damages_. It is true
that these three words determine a policy, and that there is no
mention of it in the claims of the Entente, in the fourteen points
of President Wilson, or in the armistice between Italy and
Austria-Hungary. In his fourteen points Wilson confined himself, in
the matter of damages, to the following claims: (1) Reconstruction
of Belgium, (2) Reconstruction of French territory invaded, (3)
Reparation for territory invaded in Serbia, Montenegro and Rumania.
There is no other claim or statement in the fourteen points. On the
other hand the pronouncement, "_Réparation des dommages_," included,
as in fact was afterwards included, any claim for damage by land or
sea.

The representatives of Belgium, Italy and Great Britain remark that it
is a condition of peace, not of armistice. But Clemenceau makes it
a question of regard and consideration for France. France would not
understand there being no mention of it; there was no desire to define
anything, only just to mention it, and in three simple words. "I ask
you," says Clemenceau, "to put yourselves into the spirit of the
people of France." At once the British representative notes the
necessity of a clear statement regarding reparations for losses at sea
through submarines and mines; and all, the Serbian, the Belgian and,
last of all, the Italian, at once call attention to their own damages.
Mr. House, not realizing the wide and serious nature of the claim,
says that it is an important question for all, while America had
already stated, in the words of the President of the Republic, that it
renounced all indemnity of any nature whatsoever.

So was established, quite incidentally, the principle of indemnity for
damages which gave the treaty a complete turn away from the spirit
of the pronouncements by the Entente and the United States. Equally
incidentally were established all the declarations in the treaty, the
purpose of which is not easy to understand except in so far as it is
seen in the economic results which may accrue.

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles states that the allied and
associated governments affirm, and Germany accepts, the responsibility
of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which
the allied and associated governments and their peoples have been
subjected as a consequence of the War imposed on them by the
aggression of Germany and her allies.

Article 177 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye states in the
same way that the allied and associated governments affirm, and
Austria-Hungary accepts, the responsibility of Austria and her allies,
etc.

This article is common to all the treaties, and it would have no more
than historic and philosophic interest if it were not followed by
another article in which the allied and associated governments
recognize that the resources of Germany (and of Austria-Hungary, etc.)
are not adequate, after taking into account permanent diminutions of
such resources which will result from other provisions of the present
treaty, to make complete reparation for all such loss and damage.
The allied and associated governments, however, require, and Germany
undertakes, that she will make compensation for all damage done to the
civilian population of the allied and associated powers and to their
property during the period of the belligerency of each as an allied or
associated power against Germany by such aggression by land, by sea
and from the air, and in general all damage as defined in the treaty,
comprising many of the burdens of war (war pensions and compensations
to soldiers and their families, cost of assistance to families of
those mobilized during the War, etc.).

There is nothing more useless, indeed more stupid, than to take your
enemy by the throat after you have beaten him and force him to declare
that all the wrong was on his side. The declaration is of no use
whatever, either to the conqueror, because no importance can be
attributed to an admission extorted by force; or to the conquered,
because he knows that there is no moral significance in being forced
to state what one does not believe; or for third parties, because they
are well aware of the circumstances under which the declaration was
made. It is possible that President Wilson wanted to establish a moral
reason--I do not like to say a moral alibi--for accepting, as he was
constrained by necessity to accept, all those conditions which were
the negation of what he had solemnly laid down, the moral pledge of
his people, of the American democracy.

Germany and the conquered countries have accepted the conditions
imposed on them with the reserve that they feel that they are not
bound by them, even morally, in the future. The future will pour
ridicule on this new form of treaty which endeavours to justify
excessive and absurd demands, which will have the effect of destroying
the enemy rather than of obtaining any sure benefit, by using a forced
declaration which has no value at all.

I have always detested German imperialism, and also the phases of
exaggerated nationalism which have grown up in every country after the
War and have been eliminated one after the other through the simple
fact of their being common to all countries, but only after having
brought the greatest possible harm to all the peoples, and I cannot
say that Germany and her allies were solely responsible for the War
which devastated Europe and threw a dark shadow over the life of the
whole world. That statement, which we all made during the War, was a
weapon to be used at the time; now that the War is over, it cannot be
looked on as a serious argument.

An honest and thorough examination of all the diplomatic documents,
all the agreements and relations of pre-war days, compels me to
declare solemnly that the responsibility for the War does not lie
solely on the defeated countries; that Germany may have desired
war and prepared for it under the influence of powerful industrial
interests, metallurgic, for instance, responsible for the extreme
views of newspapers and other publications, but still all the warring
countries have their share of responsibility in differing degree. It
cannot be said that there existed in Europe two groups with a moral
conception differing to the point of complete contrast; on one side,
Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, responsible for the
War, which they imposed by their aggression; on the other, all the
free and independent nations. By the side of England, France, Italy
and the United States there was Russia, which must bear, if not the
greatest, a very great responsibility for what happened. Nor is it
true that armament expenses in the ten years preceding the War were
greater in the Central Empires, or, to put it better, in the States
forming the Triple Alliance, than in the countries which later formed
the European Entente.

It is not true that only in the case of Germany were the war aims
imperialist, and that the Entente countries came in without desire of
conquest. Putting aside for the moment what one sees in the treaties
which have followed the War, it is worth while considering what would
have happened if Russia had won the War instead of being torn to
pieces before victory came. Russia would have had all the Poland of
the eighteenth century (with the apparent autonomy promised by the
Tsar), nearly all Turkey in Europe, Constantinople, and a great part
of Asia Minor. Russia, with already the greatest existing land empire
and at least half the population not Russian, would have gained
fresh territories with fresh non-Russian populations, putting the
Mediterranean peoples, and above all Italy, in a very difficult
situation indeed.

It cannot be said that in the ten years preceding the War Russia did
not do as much as Germany to bring unrest into Europe. It was on
account of Russia that the Serbian Government was a perpetual cause
of disturbance, a perpetual threat to Austria-Hungary. The unending
strife in the Balkans was caused by Russia in no less degree than
by Austria-Hungary, and all the great European nations shared, with
opposing views, in the policy of Eastern expansion.

The judgment of peoples and of events, given the uncertainty of policy
as expressed in parliament and newspapers, is variable to the last
degree. It will be enough to recall the varying judgment upon Serbia
during the last ten years in the Press of Great Britain, France and
Italy: the people of Serbia have been described as criminals and
heroes, assassins and martyrs. No one would have anything to do with
Serbia; later Serbia was raised to the skies.

The documents published by Kautsky in Germany and those revealed from
time to time by the Moscow Government prove that the preparation for
and conviction of war was not only on the part of the Central Empires,
but also, and in no less degree, on the part of the other States. One
point will always remain inexplicable: why Russia should have taken
the superlatively serious step of general mobilization, which could
not be and was not a simple measure of precaution. It is beyond doubt
that the Russian mobilization preceded even that of Austria. After
a close examination of events, after the bitter feeling of war had
passed, in his speech of December 23, 1920, Lloyd George said justly
that the War broke out without any Government having really desired
it; all, in one way or another, slithered into it, stumbling and
tripping.

There were three Monarchies in Europe, the Russian, German, and
Austro-Hungarian Empires, and the fact that they were divided into
two groups necessarily led to war. It was inevitable sooner or later.
Russia was the greatest danger, the greatest threat to Europe; what
happened had to happen under one form or another. The crazy giant was
under the charge of one man without intelligence and a band of men,
the men of the old regime, largely without scruples.

Each country of Europe has its share of responsibility, Italy not
excluded. It is difficult to explain why Italy went to Tripoli in the
way in which she did in 1911, bringing about the Italo-Turkish war,
which brought about the two Balkan wars and the policy of adventure of
Serbia, which was the incident though not the cause of the European
War.

The Libyan adventure, considered now in the serene light of reason,
cannot be looked on as anything but an aberration. Libya is an immense
box of sand which never had any value, nor has it now. Tripolitania,
Cyrenaica and Fezzan cover more than one million one hundred
thousand square kilometres and have less than nine hundred thousand
inhabitants, of whom even now, after ten years, less than a third are
under the effective control of Italy. With the war and expenses of
occupation, Libya has cost Italy about seven milliard lire, and for a
long time yet it will be on the debit side in the life of the nation.
With the same number of milliards, most of which were spent before the
European War, Italy could have put in order and utilized her immense
patrimony of water-power and to-day would be free from anxiety about
the coal problem by which it is actually enslaved. The true policy
of the nation was to gain economic independence, not a barren waste.
Ignorant people spoke of Libya in Italy as a promised land; in one
official speech the King was even made to say that Libya could absorb
part of Italian emigration. That was just a phenomenon of madness,
for Libya has no value at all from the agricultural, commercial or
military point of view. It may pay its way one day, but only if all
expenses are cut down and the administrative system is completely
changed. It may be that, if only from a feeling of duty towards the
inhabitants, Italy cannot abandon Libya now that she has taken it, but
the question will always be asked why she did take it, why she took
it by violence when a series of concessions could have been obtained
without difficulty from the Turkish Government.

The Libyan enterprise, undertaken on an impulse, against the opinion
of Italy's allies, Austria and Germany, against the wish of England
and France, is a very serious political responsibility for Italy.

The European War was the consequence of a long series of movements,
aspirations, agitations. It cannot be denied, and it is recognized by
clear-thinking men like Lloyd George, that France and England too
have by their actions taken on themselves their part in the serious
responsibility. To say that in the past they had never thought of
war is to say a thing not true. And there is no doubt that all the
diplomatic documents published before and during the War show in
Russia, above all, a situation which inevitably would soon lead to
war. In the Balkans, especially in Serbia, Russia was pursuing a
cynical and shameless policy of corruption, nourishing and exciting
every ferment of revolt against Austria-Hungary. Russian policy in
Serbia was really criminal. Everyone in Germany was convinced that
Russia was preparing for war. The Tsar's pacificist ideas were of no
importance whatever. In absolute monarchies it is an illusion to think
that the sovereign, though apparently an autocrat, acts in accordance
with his own views. His views are almost invariably those of the
people round him; he does not even receive news in its true form, but
in the form given it by officials. Russia was an unwieldy giant who
had shown signs of madness long before the actual revolution. It
is impossible that a collective madness such as that which has had
possession of Russia for three years could be produced on the spur of
the moment; the regime of autocracy contained in itself the germs
of Bolshevism and violence. Bolshevism cannot properly be judged by
Western notions; it is not a revolutionary movement of the people; it
is, as I have said before, the religious fanaticism of the Eastern
Orthodox rising from the dead body of Tsarist despotism. Bolshevism,
centralizing and bureaucratic, follows the same lines as the imperial
policy of almost every Tsar.

Undoubtedly the greatest responsibility for the War lies on Germany.
If it has not to bear all the responsibility, as the treaties claim,
it has to bear the largest share; and the responsibility lies, rather
than on the shoulders of the Emperor and the quite ordinary men
who surrounded him, on those of the military caste and some great
industrial groups. The crazy writings of General von Bernhardi and
other scandalous publications of the same sort expressed, more than
just theoretical views, the real hopes and tendencies of the whole
military caste. It is true enough that there existed in Germany a real
democratic society under the control of the civil government, but
there was the military caste too, with privileges in social life and a
special position in the life of the State. This caste was educated in
the conception of violence as the means of power and grandeur. When a
country has allowed the military and social theories of General von
Bernhardi and the senselessly criminal pronouncements of the Emperor
William II to prevail for so many years, it has put the most
formidable weapons possible into the hands of its enemies. The people
who governed Germany for so long have no right to complain now of the
conditions in which their country is placed. But the great German
people, hardworking and persevering, has full right to look on such
conditions as the negation of justice. The head of a European State, a
man of the clearest view and calmest judgment, speaking to me of the
Emperor William, of whose character and intellect he thought very
little, expressed the view that the Emperor did not want war, but that
he would not avoid it when he had the chance.

The truth is that Germany troubled itself very little about France.
Kinderlen Wächter, the most intelligent of the German Foreign
Ministers, and perhaps the one most opposed to the War, when he
outlined to me the situation as it was ten years ago, showed no
anxiety at all except in regard to Russia. Russia might make war, and
it was necessary to be ready or to see that it came about at a moment
when victory was certain if conditions did not change. Germany had no
reason at all for making war on France from the time that it had got
well ahead of that country in industry, commerce and navigation. It
is true that there were a certain number of unbalanced people in the
metal industry who talked complacently of French iron and stirred up
the yellow press, just as in France to-day there are many industrials
with their eyes fixed on German coal which they want to seize as far
as possible. But the intellectuals, the politicians, even military
circles, had no anxiety at all except with regard to Russia.

There were mistaken views in German policy, no doubt, but at the same
time there was real anxiety about her national existence. With a huge
population and limited resources, with few colonies, owing to her
late arrival in the competition for them, Germany looked on the
never-ceasing desire of Russia for Constantinople as the ruin of her
policy of expansion in the East.

And in actual fact there was but one way by which the three great
Empires, which in population and extension of territory dominated
the greater part of Europe, could avoid war, and that was to join in
alliance among themselves or at least not to enter other alliances.
The three great Empires divided themselves into two allied groups.
From that moment, given the fact that in each of them the military
caste held power, that the principal decisions lay in the hands of a
few men not responsible to parliament; given the fact that Russia,
faithful to her traditional policy, aimed to draw into her political
orbit all the Slav peoples right down to the Adriatic and the Aegean
and Austria, was leaning toward the creation of a third Slav monarchy
in the dual kingdom, it was inevitable that sooner or later the
violence, intrigue and corruption with which we are familiar should
culminate in open conflict. Bismarck always saw that putting Russia
and Germany up against each other meant war.

Peoples, like individuals, are far from representing with anything
approaching completeness such social conceptions as we call violence
and right, honesty and bad faith, justice and injustice; each people
has its different characteristics, but no one people represents good,
or another bad, no one represents brutality, or another civilization.
All these meaningless phrases were brought out during the War,
according to which, as was said by one of the Prime Ministers of the
Entente, the War was the decisive struggle between the forces of
autocracy and liberty, between the dark powers of evil and violence
and the radiant powers of good and right. To-day all this causes
nothing but a smile. Such things are just speechifying, and banal at
that. Perhaps they were a necessity of War-time which might well be
made use of; when you are fighting for your very life you use every
means you have; when you are in imminent danger you do not choose your
weapons, you use everything to hand. All the War propaganda against
the German Empires, recounting, sometimes exaggerating, all the crimes
of the enemy, claiming that all the guilt was on the side of Germany,
describing German atrocities as a habit, almost a characteristic of
the German people, deriding German culture as a species of liquid
in which were bred the microbes of moral madness--all this was
legitimate, perhaps necessary, during the War. The reply to the
asphyxiating gas of the enemy was not only the same gas, but a
propaganda calculated to do more damage, and which, in fact, did do as
much damage as tanks and blockade.

But, when war is over, nothing should be put into a peace treaty
except such things as will lead to a lasting peace, or the most
lasting peace compatible with our degree of civilization.

On January 22, 1917, President Wilson explained the reasons why he
made the proposal to put an end to the War; he said in the American
Senate that the greatest danger lay in a peace imposed by conquerors
after victory. At that time it was said that there must be neither
conquerors nor conquered. A peace imposed after victory would be the
cause of so much humiliation and such intolerable sacrifices for the
conquered side, it would be so severe, it would give rise to so much
bitter feeling that it would not be a lasting peace, but one founded
on shifting sand.

In the spring of 1919, just before the most serious decisions were to
be taken, Lloyd George put before the conference a memorandum entitled
"_Some considerations for the Peace Conference before they finally
draft their terms_."

With his marvellously quick insight, after having listened to the
speeches of which force was the leading motive (the tendency round him
was not to establish a lasting peace but to vivisect Germany), Lloyd
George saw that it was not a true peace that was being prepared.

On March 25, 1919, Lloyd George presented the following memorandum to
the conference:

I

When nations are exhausted by wars in which they have put forth all
their strength and which leave them tired, bleeding and broken, it is
not difficult to patch up a peace that may last until the generation
which experienced the horrors of the war has passed away. Pictures
of heroism and triumph only tempt those who know nothing of the
sufferings and terrors of war. It is therefore comparatively easy to
patch up a peace which will last for thirty years.

What is difficult, however, is to draw up a peace which will not
provoke a fresh struggle when those who have had practical experience
of what war means have passed away. History has proved that a
peace which has been hailed by a victorious nation as a triumph of
diplomatic skill and statesmanship, even of moderation, in the long
run has proved itself to be short-sighted and charged with danger to
the victor. The peace of 1871 was believed by Germany to ensure not
only her security but her permanent supremacy. The facts have shown
exactly the contrary. France itself has demonstrated that those who
say you can make Germany so feeble that she will never be able to hit
back are utterly wrong. Year by year France became numerically weaker
in comparison with her victorious neighbour, but in reality she became
ever more powerful. She kept watch on Europe; she made alliance with
those whom Germany had wronged or menaced; she never ceased to warn
the world of its danger, and ultimately she was able to secure the
overthrow of the far mightier power which had trampled so brutally
upon her. You may strip Germany of her colonies, reduce her armaments
to a mere police force and her navy to that of a fifth-rate power; all
the same, in the end, if she feels that she has been unjustly treated
in the peace of 1919, she will find means of exacting retribution from
her conquerors. The impression, the deep impression, made upon the
human heart by four years of unexampled slaughter will disappear with
the hearts upon which it has been marked by the terrible sword of the
Great War. The maintenance of peace will then depend upon there
being no causes of exasperation constantly stirring up the spirit of
patriotism, of justice or of fair play to achieve redress. Our terms
may be severe, they may be stern and even ruthless, but at the same
time they can be so just that the country on which they are imposed
will feel in its heart that it has no right to complain. But
injustice, arrogance, displayed in the hour of triumph, will never be
forgotten nor forgiven.

For these reasons I am, therefore, strongly averse to transferring
more Germans from German rule to the rule of some other nation than
can possibly be helped. I cannot conceive any greater cause of future
war than that the German people, who have certainly proved themselves
one of the most vigorous and powerful races in the world, should be
surrounded by a number of small states, many of them consisting of
people who have never previously set up a stable government for
themselves, but each of them containing large masses of Germans
clamouring for reunion with their native land. The proposal of the
Polish Commission that we should place 2,100,000 Germans under the
control of a people of a different religion and which has never proved
its capacity for stable self-government throughout its history, must,
in my judgment, lead sooner or later to a new war in the East of
Europe. What I have said about the Germans is equally true about the
Magyars. There will never be peace in South-Eastern Europe if every
little state now coming into being is to have a large Magyar Irredenta
within its borders.

I would therefore take as a guiding principle of the peace that as
far as is humanly possible the different races should be allocated
to their motherlands, and that this human criterion should have
precedence over considerations of strategy or economics or
communications, which can usually be adjusted by other means.

Secondly, I would say that the duration for the payments of reparation
ought to disappear if possible with the generation which made the war.

But there is a consideration in favour of a long-sighted peace which
influences me even more than the desire to leave no causes justifying
a fresh outbreak thirty years hence. There is one element in the
present condition of nations which differentiates it from the
situation as it was in 1815. In the Napoleonic Wars the countries were
equally exhausted, but the revolutionary spirit had spent its force
in the country of its birth, and Germany had satisfied the legitimate
popular demands for the time being by a series of economic changes
which were inspired by courage, foresight and high statesmanship. Even
in Russia the Tsar had effected great reforms which were probably
at that time even too advanced for the half-savage population. The
situation is very different now. The revolution is still in its
infancy. The extreme figures of the Terror are still in command in
Russia. The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution.
There is a deep sense not only of discontent, but of anger and revolt
among the workmen against pre-war conditions. The whole existing
order, in its political, social and economic aspects is questioned by
the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other. In
some countries, like Germany and Russia, the unrest takes the form of
open rebellion, in others, like France, Great Britain and Italy, it
takes the shape of strikes and of general disinclination to settle
down to work, symptoms which are just as much concerned with the
desire for political and social change as with wage demands.

Much of this unrest is healthy. We shall never make a lasting peace by
attempting to restore the conditions of 1914. But there is a danger
that we may throw the masses of the population throughout Europe into
the arms of the extremists, whose only idea for regenerating mankind
is to destroy utterly the whole existing fabric of society. These
men have triumphed in Russia. They have done so at a terrible price.
Hundreds and thousands of the population have perished. The railways,
the roads, the towns, the whole structural organization of Russia has
been almost destroyed, but somehow or other they seem to have managed
to keep their hold upon the masses of the Russian people, and what is
much more significant, they have succeeded in creating a large army
which is apparently well directed and well disciplined, and is, as to
a great part of it, prepared to die for its ideals. In another year
Russia, inspired by a new enthusiasm, may have recovered from her
passion for peace and have at her command the only army eager to
fight, because it is the only army that believes that it has any cause
to fight for.

The greatest danger that I see in the present situation is that
Germany may throw in her lot with Bolshevism and place her resources,
her brains, her vast organizing power at the disposal of the
revolutionary fanatics whose dream it is to conquer the world for
Bolshevism by force of arms. This danger is no mere chimera. The
present government in Germany is weak; its authority is challenged; it
lingers merely because there is no alternative but the Spartacists,
and Germany is not ready for Spartacism, as yet. But the argument
which the Spartacists are using with great effect at this very time is
that they alone can save Germany from the intolerable conditions which
have been bequeathed her by the War. They offer to free the German
people from indebtedness to the Allies and indebtedness to their own
richer classes. They offer them complete control of their own affairs
and the prospect of a new heaven and earth. It is true that the price
will be heavy. There will be two or three years of anarchy, perhaps
of bloodshed, but at the end the land will remain, the people will
remain, the greater part of the houses and the factories will remain,
and the railways and the roads will remain, and Germany, having thrown
off her burdens, will be able to make a fresh start.

If Germany goes over to the Spartacists it is inevitable that she
should throw in her lot with the Russian Bolshevists. Once that
happens all Eastern Europe will be swept into the orbit of the
Bolshevik revolution, and within a year we may witness the spectacle
of nearly three hundred million people organized into a vast red army
under German instructors and German generals, equipped with German
cannon and German machine guns and prepared for a renewal of the
attack on Western Europe. This is a prospect which no one can face
with equanimity. Yet the news which came from Hungary yesterday shows
only too clearly that this danger is no fantasy. And what are the
reasons alleged for this decision? They are mainly the belief that
large numbers of Magyars are to be handed over to the control of
others. If we are wise, we shall offer to Germany a peace, which,
while just, will be preferable for all sensible men to the alternative
of Bolshevism. I would therefore put it in the forefront of the peace
that once she accepts our terms, especially reparation, we will open
to her the raw materials and markets of the world on equal terms with
ourselves, and will do everything possible to enable the German people
to get upon their legs again. We cannot both cripple her and expect
her to pay.

Finally, we must offer terms which a responsible government in Germany
can expect to be able to carry out. If we present terms to Germany
which are unjust, or excessively onerous, no responsible government
will sign them; certainly the present weak administration will not.
If it did, I am told that it would be swept away within twenty-four
hours. Yet if we can find nobody in Germany who will put his hand to
a peace treaty, what will be the position? A large army of occupation
for an indefinite period is out of the question. Germany would not
mind it. A very large number of people in that country would welcome
it, as it would be the only hope of preserving the existing order of
things. The objection would not come from Germany, but from our own
countries. Neither the British Empire nor America would agree to
occupy Germany. France by itself could not bear the burden of
occupation. We should therefore be driven back on the policy of
blockading the country. That would inevitably mean Spartacism from the
Urals to the Rhine, with its inevitable consequence of a huge red army
attempting to cross the Rhine. As a matter of fact, I am doubtful
whether public opinion would allow us deliberately to starve Germany.
If the only difference between Germany and ourselves were between
onerous terms and moderate terms, I very much doubt if public opinion
would tolerate the deliberate condemnation of millions of women and
children to death by starvation. If so, the Allies would have incurred
the moral defeat of having attempted to impose terms on Germany which
Germany had successfully resisted.

From every point of view, therefore, it seems to me that we ought
to endeavour to draw up a peace settlement as if we were impartial
arbiters, forgetful of the passions of the war. This settlement ought
to have three ends in view.

First of all it must do justice to the Allies, by taking into account
Germany's responsibility for the origin of the War, and for the way in
which it was fought.

Secondly, it must be a settlement which a responsible German
government can sign in the belief that it can fulfil the obligations
it incurs.

Thirdly, it must be a settlement which will contain in itself no
provocations for future wars, and which will constitute an alternative
to Bolshevism, because it will commend itself to all reasonable
opinion as a fair settlement of the European problem.


II

It is not, however, enough to draw up a just and far-sighted peace
with Germany. If we are to offer Europe an alternative to Bolshevism
we must make the League of Nations into something which will be both
a safeguard to those nations who are prepared for fair dealing with
their neighbours and a menace to those who would trespass on the
rights of their neighbours, whether they are imperialist empires or
imperialist Bolshevists. An essential element, therefore, in the
peace settlement is the constitution of the League of Nations as the
effective guardian of international right and international liberty
throughout the world. If this is to happen the first thing to do is
that the leading members of the League of Nations should arrive at an
understanding between themselves in regard to armaments. To my mind
it is idle to endeavour to impose a permanent limitation of armaments
upon Germany unless we are prepared similarly to impose a limitation
upon ourselves. I recognize that until Germany has settled down
and given practical proof that she has abandoned her imperialist
ambitions, and until Russia has also given proof that she does not
intend to embark upon a military crusade against her neighbours, it
is essential that the leading members of the League of Nations should
maintain considerable forces both by land and sea in order to preserve
liberty in the world. But if they are to present a united front to the
forces both of reaction and revolution, they must arrive at such an
agreement in regard to armaments among themselves as would make it
impossible for suspicion to arise between the members of the League
of Nations in regard to their intentions towards one another. If the
League is to do its work for the world it will only be because the
members of the League trust it themselves and because there are no
rivalries and jealousies in the matter of armaments between them. The
first condition of success for the League of Nations is, therefore, a
firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States
of America and France and Italy, that there will be no competitive
building up of fleets or armies between them. Unless this is arrived
at before the Covenant is signed the League of Nations will be a sham
and a mockery. It will be regarded, and rightly regarded, as a proof
that its principal promoters and patrons repose no confidence in its
efficacy. But once the leading members of the League have made it
clear that they have reached an understanding which will both secure
to the League of Nations the strength which is necessary to enable
it to protect its members and which at the same time will make
misunderstanding and suspicion with regard to competitive armaments
impossible between them its future and its authority will be assured.
It will then be able to ensure as an essential condition of peace that
not only Germany, but all the smaller States of Europe, undertake to
limit their armaments and abolish conscription. If the small nations
are permitted to organize and maintain conscript armies running each
to hundreds of thousands, boundary wars will be inevitable, and all
Europe will be drawn in. Unless we secure this universal limitation we
shall achieve neither lasting peace nor the permanent observance of
the limitation of German armaments which we now seek to impose.

I should like to ask why Germany, if she accepts the terms we consider
just and fair, should not be admitted to the League of Nations, at
any rate as soon as she has established a stable and democratic
government? Would it not be an inducement to her both to sign the
terms and to resist Bolshevism? Might it not be safer that she should
be inside the League than that she should be outside it?

Finally, I believe that until the authority and effectiveness of the
League of Nations has been demonstrated, the British Empire and the
United States ought to give France a guarantee against the possibility
of a new German aggression. France has special reason for asking for
such a guarantee. She has twice been attacked and twice invaded by
Germany in half a century. She has been so attacked because she has
been the principal guardian of liberal and democratic civilization
against Central European autocracy on the continent of Europe. It is
right that the other great Western democracies should enter into an
undertaking which will ensure that they stand by her side in time to
protect her against invasion should Germany ever threaten her again,
or until the League of Nations has proved its capacity to preserve the
peace and liberty of the world.

III

If, however, the Peace Conference is really to secure peace and prove
to the world a complete plan of settlement which all reasonable men
will recognize as an alternative preferable to anarchy, it must deal
with the Russian situation. Bolshevik imperialism does not merely
menace the States on Russia's borders. It threatens the whole of Asia,
and is as near to America as it is to France. It is idle to think that
the Peace Conference can separate, however sound a peace it may have
arranged with Germany, if it leaves Russia as it is to-day. I do not
propose, however, to complicate the question of the peace with Germany
by introducing a discussion of the Russian problem. I mention it
simply in order to remind ourselves of the importance of dealing with
it as soon as possible.

The memorandum is followed by some proposals entitled "General Lines
of the Peace Conditions," which would tend to make the peace less
severe. It is hardly worth while reproducing them. As in many points
the decisions taken were in the opposite sense it is better not to go
beyond the general considerations.

Mr. Lloyd George's memorandum is a secret document. But as the English
and American Press have already printed long passages from it, it
is practically possible to give it in its entirety without adding
anything to what has already been printed.

M. Tardieu has published M. Clemenceau's reply, drawn up by M. Tardieu
himself and representing the French point of view:

I

The French Government is in complete agreement with the general
purpose of Mr. Lloyd George's Note: to make a lasting peace, and for
that reason a just peace.

But, on the other hand, it does not think that this principle, which
is its own, really leads to the conclusions arrived at in the Note in
question.

II

The Note suggests that the territorial conditions laid down for
Germany in Europe shall be moderate in order that she may not feel
deeply embittered after peace.

The method would be sound if the recent War had been nothing but a
European war for Germany; but that is not the case.

Previous to the War Germany was a great world Power whose _future
was on the sea_. This was the power of which she was so inordinately
proud. For the loss of this world power she will never be consoled.

The Allies have taken from her--or are going to take from her--without
being deterred by fear of her resentment, all her colonies, all her
ships of war, a great part of her commercial fleet (as reparations),
the foreign markets which she controlled.

That is the worst blow that could be inflicted on her, and it is
suggested that she can be pacified by some improvements in territorial
conditions. That is a pure illusion. The remedy is not big enough for
the thing it is to cure.

If there is any desire, for general reasons, to give Germany some
satisfaction, it must not be sought in Europe. Such help will be vain
as long as Germany has lost her world policy.

To pacify her (if there is any interest in so doing) she must have
satisfaction given her in colonies, in ships, in commercial expansion.
The Note of March 26 thinks of nothing but satisfaction in European
territory.

III

Mr. Lloyd George fears that unduly severe territorial conditions
imposed on Germany will play into the hands of Bolshevism. Is there
not cause for fear, on the other hand, that the method he suggests
will have that very result?

The Conference has decided to call into being a certain number of new
States. Is it possible without being unjust to them to impose on them
inacceptable frontiers towards Germany? If these people--Poland and
Bohemia above all--have resisted Bolshevism up to now it is through
national sentiment. If this sentiment is violated Bolshevism will find
an easy prey in them, and the only existing barrier between Russian
and German Bolshevism will be broken.

The result will be either a Confederation of Eastern and Central
Europe under the direction of a Bolshevik Germany or the enslavery of
those countries to a Germany become reactionary again, thanks to the
general anarchy. In either case the Allies will have lost the War.

The policy of the French Government, on the other hand, is to give
the fullest aid to those young peoples with the support of everything
liberal in Europe, and not to try to introduce at their expense
abatements--which in any case would be useless--of the colonial, naval
and commercial disaster which the peace imposes on Germany.

If it is necessary, in giving these young peoples frontiers without
which they cannot live, to transfer under their sovereignty some
Germans, sons of the men who enslaved them, we may regret the
necessity, and we should do it with moderation, but it cannot be
avoided.

Further, when all the German colonies are taken from her entirely and
definitely, because she ill-treated the natives, what right is there
to refuse normal frontiers to Poland and Bohemia because Germans
installed themselves in those countries as precursors of the tyrant
Pan-Germanism?

IV

The Note of March 26 insists on the necessity of a peace which will
appear to Germany as a just peace, and the French Government agrees.

It may be observed, however, that, given the German mentality, their
conception of justice may not be the same as that of the Allies.

And, also, surely the Allies as well as Germany, even before Germany,
should feel this impression of justice. The Allies who fought together
should conclude the War with a peace equal for all.

Now, following the method suggested in the Note of March 26, what will
be the result?

A certain number of total and definite guarantees will be given to
maritime nations whose countries were not invaded.

Total and definite, the surrender of the German colonies.

Total and definite, the surrender of the German war fleet.

Total and definite, the surrender of a large part of the German
commercial fleet.

Total and lasting, if not definite, the exclusion of Germany from
foreign markets.

For the Continental countries, on the other hand--that is to say, for
the countries which have suffered most from the War--would be reserved
partial and transitory solutions:

Partial solution, the modified frontiers suggested for Poland and
Bohemia.

Transitory solution, the defensive pledge offered France for the
protection of her territory.

Transitory solution, the regime proposed for the Saar coal.

There is an evident inequality which might have a bad influence on
the after-war relations among the Allies, more important than the
after-war relations of Germany with them.

It has been shown in Paragraph I that it would be an illusion to hope
that territorial satisfaction offered to Germany would compensate
her sufficiently for the world disaster she has suffered. And it may
surely be added that it would be an injustice to lay the burden of
such compensation on the shoulders of those countries among the Allies
which have had to bear the heaviest burden of the War.

After the burdens of the War, these countries cannot bear the burdens
of the peace. It is essential that they should feel that the peace is
just and equal for all.

And unless that be assured it is not only in Central Europe that there
will be fear of Bolshevism, for nowhere does it propagate so easily,
as has been seen, as amid national disillusionment.

V

The French Government desires to limit itself for the moment to these
observations of a general character. It pays full homage to the
intentions which inspired Mr. Lloyd George's memorandum. But it
considers that the inductions that can be drawn from the present Note
are in consonance with justice and the general interests.

And those are the considerations by which the French Government will
be inspired in the coming exchange of ideas for the discussion of
conditions suggested by the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

These two documents are of more than usual interest.

The British Prime Minister, with his remarkable insight, at once notes
the seriousness of the situation. He sees the danger to the peace
of the world in German depression. Germany oppressed does not mean
Germany subjected. Every year France becomes numerically weaker,
Germany stronger. The horrors of war will be forgotten and the
maintenance of peace will depend on the creation of a situation which
makes life possible, does not cause exasperation to come into public
feeling or into the just claims of Germans desirous of independence.
Injustice in the hour of triumph will never be pardoned, can never be
atoned.

So the idea of handing over to other States numbers of Germans is not
only an injustice, but a cause of future wars, and what can be said
of Germans is also true of Magyars. No cause of future wars must be
allowed to remain. Putting millions of Germans under Polish rule--that
is, under an inferior people which has never shown any capacity for
stable self-government--must lead to a new war sooner or later. If
Germany in exasperation became a country of revolution, what would
happen to Europe? You can impose severe conditions, but that does not
mean that you can enforce them; the conditions to be imposed must be
such that a responsible German Government can in good faith assume the
obligation of carrying them out.

Neither Great Britain nor the United States of America can assume
the obligation of occupying Germany if it does not carry out the
excessively severe conditions which it is desired to impose. Can
France occupy Germany alone?

From that moment Lloyd George saw the necessity of admitting Germany
into the League of Nations _at once_, and proposed a scheme of treaty
containing conditions which, while very severe, were in part tolerable
for the German people.

Clemenceau's reply, issued a few days later, contains the French point
of view, and has an ironical note when it touches on the weak points
in Lloyd George's argument. The War, says the French note, was not a
European war; Germany's eyes were fixed on world power, and she
saw that her future was on the sea. There is no necessity to show
consideration regarding territorial conditions in Europe. By taking
away her commercial fleet, her colonies and her foreign markets more
harm is done to Germany than by taking European territory. To pacify
her (if there is any occasion for doing so) she must be offered
commercial satisfaction. At this point the note, in considering
questions of justice and of mere utility, becomes distinctly ironical.

Having decided to bring to life new States, especially Poland and
Czeko-Slovakia, why not give them safe frontiers even if some Germans
or Magyars have to be sacrificed?

One of Clemenceau's fixed ideas is that criterions of justice must not
be applied to Germans. The note says explicitly that, given the German
mentality, it is by no means sure that the conception of justice of
Germany will be the same as that of the Allies.

On another occasion, after the signing of the treaty, when Lloyd
George pointed out the wisdom of not claiming from Germany the
absurdity of handing over thousands of officers accused of cruelty
for judgment by their late enemies, and recognized frankly the
impossibility of carrying out such a stipulation in England,
Clemenceau replied simply that the Germans are not like the English.

The delicate point in Clemenceau's note is the contradiction in which
he tries to involve the British Prime Minister between the clauses of
the treaty concerning Germany outside Europe, in which no moderation
had been shown, and those regarding Germany in Europe, in which he
himself did not consider moderation either necessary or opportune.

There was an evident divergence of views, clearing the way for a calm
review of the conditions to be imposed, and here two countries could
have exercised decisive action: the United States and Italy.

But the United States was represented by Wilson, who was already in a
difficult situation. By successive concessions, the gravity of which
he had not realized, he found himself confronted by drafts of treaties
which in the end were contradictions of all his proposals, the
absolute antithesis of the pledges he had given. It is quite possible
that he had not seen where he was going, but his frequent irritation
was the sign of his distress. Still, in the ship-wreck of his whole
programme, he had succeeded in saving one thing, the Statute of the
League of Nations which was to be prefaced to all the treaties.
He wanted to go back to America and meet the Senate with at least
something to show as a record of the great undertaking, and he hoped
and believed in good faith that the Covenant of the League of Nations
would sooner or later have brought about agreement and modified the
worst of the mistakes made. His conception of things was academic,
and he had not realized that there was need to constitute the nations
before laying down rules for the League; he trusted that bringing them
together with mutual pledges would further most efficiently the cause
of peace among the peoples. On the other hand, there was diffidence,
shared by both, between Wilson and Lloyd George, and there was little
likelihood of the British Prime Minister's move checking the course
the Conference had taken.

Italy might have done a great work if its representatives had had
a clear policy. But, as M. Tardieu says, they had no share in the
effective doings of the Conference, and their activity was almost
entirely absorbed in the question of Fiume. The Conference was a
three-sided conversation between Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George,
and the latter had hostility and diffidence on each side of him, with
Italy--as earlier stated--for the most part absent. Also, it was
just then that the divergence between Wilson and the Italian
representatives reached its acute stage. The essential parts of the
treaty were decided in April and the beginning of May, on April 22
the question of the right bank of the Rhine, on the 23rd or 24th the
agreement about reparations. Italy was absent, and when the Italian
delegates returned to Paris without being asked on May 6, the text of
the treaty was complete, in print. In actual fact, only one person did
really effective work and directed the trend of the Conference, and
that person was Clemenceau.

The fact that the Conference met in Paris, that everything that was
done by the various delegations was known, even foreseen so that
it could be opposed, discredited, even destroyed by the Press
beforehand--a thing which annoyed Lloyd George so much that at one
time he thought seriously of leaving the Conference--all this gave
an enormous advantage to the French delegation and especially to
Clemenceau who directed the Conference's work.

All his life Clemenceau has been a tremendous destroyer. For years and
years he has done nothing but overthrow Governments with a sort of
obstinate ferocity. He was an old man when he was called to lead the
country, but he brought with him all his fighting spirit. No one
detests the Church and detests Socialism more than he; both of these
moral forces are equally repulsive to his individualistic spirit. I do
not think there is any man among the politicians I have known who is
more individualistic than Clemenceau, who remains to-day the man of
the old democracy. In time of war no one was better fitted than he to
lead a fighting Ministry, fighting at home, fighting abroad, with
the same feeling, the same passion. When there was one thing only
necessary in order to beat the enemy, never to falter in hatred, never
to doubt the sureness of victory, no one came near him, no one could
be more determined, no one more bitter. But when War was over, when it
was peace that had to be ensured, no one could be less fitted for the
work. He saw nothing beyond his hatred for Germany, the necessity
for destroying the enemy, sweeping away every bit of his activity,
bringing him into subjection. On account of his age he could not
visualize the problems of the future; he could only see one thing
necessary, and that was immediate, to destroy the enemy and either
destroy or confiscate all his means of development. He was not
nationalist or imperialist like his collaborators, but before all
and above all one idea lived in him, hatred for Germany; she must be
rendered barren, disembowelled, annihilated.

He had said in the French Parliament that treaties of peace were
nothing more than a way of going on with war, and in September, 1920,
in his preface to M. Tardieu's book, he said that France must get
reparation for Waterloo and Sedan. Even Waterloo: _Waterloo et Sedan,
pour ne pas remonter plus haut, nous imposaient d'abord les douloureux
soucis d'une politique de réparation_.

Tardieu noted, as we have seen, that there were only three people
in the Conference: Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George. Orlando, he
remarks, spoke little, and Italy had no importance. With subtle irony
he notes that Wilson talked like a University don criticizing an essay
with the didactic logic of the professor. The truth is that after
having made the mistake of staying in the Conference he did not
see that his whole edifice was tumbling down, and he let mistakes
accumulate one after the other, with the result that treaties were
framed which, as already pointed out, actually destroyed all the
principles he had declared to the world.

Things being as they were in Paris, Clemenceau's temperament, the
pressure of French industry and of the newspapers, the real anxiety to
make the future safe, and the desire on that account to exterminate
the enemy, France naturally demanded, through its representatives,
the severest sanctions. England, given the realistic nature of its
representatives and the calm clear vision of Lloyd George, always
favoured in general the more moderate solutions as those which were
more likely to be carried out and would least disturb the equilibrium
of Europe. So it came about that the decisions seemed to be a
compromise, but were, on the other hand, actually so hard and so stern
that they were impossible of execution.

Without committing any indiscretion it is possible to see now from
the publications of the French representatives at the Conference
themselves what France's claims were.

Let us try to sum them up.

As regards disarmament and control there could have been and there
ought to have been no difficulty about agreement. I am in favour
of the reduction of all armaments, but I regard it as a perfectly
legitimate claim that the country principally responsible for the War,
and in general the conquered countries, should be obliged to disarm.

No one would regard it as unfair that Germany and the conquered
countries should be compelled to reduce their armaments to the measure
necessary to guarantee internal order only.

But a distinction must be drawn between military sanctions meant to
guarantee peace and those which have the end of ruining the enemy.
In actual truth, in his solemn pronouncements after the entry of the
United States into the War, President Wilson had never spoken of a
separate disarmament of the conquered countries, but of adequate
guarantees _given and received_ that national armaments should
be reduced to the smallest point compatible with internal order.
Assurances given and received: that is to say an identical situation
as between conquerors and conquered.

No one can deny the right of the conqueror to compel the conquered
enemy to give up his arms and reduce his military armaments, at any
rate for some time. But on this point too there was useless excess.

I should never have thought of publishing France's claims. Bitterness
comes that way, responsibility is incurred, in future it may be an
argument in your adversary's hands. But M. Tardieu has taken this
office on himself and has told us all France did, recounting her
claims from the acts of the Conference itself. Reference is easy to
the story written by one of the representatives of France, possibly
the most efficient through having been in America a long time
and having fuller and more intimate knowledge of the American
representatives, particularly Colonel House.

Generally speaking, in every claim the French representatives started
from an extreme position, and that was not only a state of mind, it
was a tactical measure. Later on, if they gave up any part of their
claim, they had the air of yielding, of accepting a compromise. When
their claims were of such an extreme nature that the anxiety they
caused, the opposition they raised, was evident, Clemenceau put on
an air of moderation and gave way at once. Sometimes, too, he showed
moderation himself, when it suited his purpose, but in reality he only
gave way when he saw that it was impossible to get what he wanted.

In points where English and American interests were not involved,
given the difficult position in which Lloyd George was placed and
Wilson's utter ignorance of all European questions, with Italy keeping
almost entirely apart, the French point of view always came out on
top, if slightly modified. But the original claim was always so
extreme that the modification left standing the most radically severe
measure against the conquered countries.

Many decisions affecting France were not sufficiently criticized on
account of the relations in which the English and Americans stood
to France; objections would have looked like ill-will, pleading the
enemy's cause.

Previously, in nearly every case when peace was being made, the
representatives of the conquered countries had been called to state
their case, opportunity was given for discussion. The Russo-Japanese
peace is an example. Undoubtedly the aggression of Russia had been
unscrupulous and premeditated, but both parties participated in
drawing up the peace treaty. At Paris, possibly for the first time
in history, the destiny of the most cultured people in Europe was
decided--or rather it was thought that it was being decided--without
even listening to what they had to say and without hearing from their
representatives if the conditions imposed could or could not possibly
be carried out. Later on an exception, if only a purely formal one,
was made in the case of Hungary, whose delegates were heard; but it
will remain for ever a terrible precedent in modern history that,
against all pledges, all precedents and all traditions, the
representatives of Germany were never even heard; nothing was left to
them but to sign a treaty at a moment when famine and exhaustion and
threat of revolution made it impossible not to sign it.

If Germany had not signed she would have suffered less loss. But at
that time conditions at home with latent revolution threatening the
whole Empire, made it imperative to accept any solution, and all the
more as the Germans considered that they were not bound by their
signature, the decisions having been imposed by violence without any
hearing being given to the conquered party, and the most serious
decisions being taken without any real examination of the facts. In
the old law of the Church it was laid down that everyone must have a
hearing, even the devil: _Etiam diabulus audiatur_ (Even the devil
has the right to be heard). But the new democracy, which proposed to
install the society of the nations, did not even obey the precepts
which the dark Middle Ages held sacred on behalf of the accused.

Conditions in Germany were terribly difficult, and an army of two
hundred thousand men was considered by the military experts the
minimum necessary. The military commission presided over by Marshal
Foch left Germany an army of two hundred thousand men, recruited by
conscription, a Staff in proportion, service of one year, fifteen
divisions, 180 heavy guns, 600 field-guns. That is less than what
little States without any resources have now, three years after the
close of the War. But France at once imposed the reduction of the
German army to 100,000 men, no conscription but a twelve years'
service of paid soldiers, artillery reduced practically to nothing, no
heavy guns at all, very few field-guns. No opportunity was given for
discussion, nor was there any. Clemenceau put the problem in such a
way that discussion was out of the question: _C'est la France qui,
demain comme hier, sera face à l'Allemagne_. Lloyd George and Colonel
House confined themselves to saying that on this point France formally
expressed their views, Great Britain and the United States had no
right to oppose. Lloyd George was convinced that the measures were
too extreme and had tried on May 23, 1919, to modify them; but
France insisted on imposing on Germany this situation of tremendous
difficulty.

I have referred to the military conditions imposed on Germany:
destruction of all war material, fortresses and armament factories;
prohibition of any trade in arms; destruction of the fleet; occupation
of the west bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads for fifteen years;
allied control, with wide powers, over the execution of the military
and naval clauses of the treaty, with consequent subjection of
all public administrations and private companies to the will of a
foreigner, or rather of an enemy kept at the expense of Germany itself
and at no small expense, etc. In some of the inter-allied conferences
I have had to take note of what these commissions of control really
are, and their absurd extravagance, based on the argument that the
enemy must pay for everything.

The purport of France's action in the Conference was not to ensure
safe military guarantees against Germany but to destroy her, at any
rate to cut her up. And indeed, when she had got all she wanted and
Germany was helpless, she continued the same policy, even intensifying
it. Every bit of territory possible must be taken, German unity must
be broken, and not only military but industrial Germany must be
laid low under a series of controls and an impossible number of
obligations.

All know how, in Article 428 of the treaty, it is laid down, as a
guarantee of the execution of the treaty terms on the part of Germany,
or rather as a more extended military guarantee for France, that
German territory on the west bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads
are to be occupied by allied and associated troops for fifteen years,
methods and regulations for such occupation following in Articles 429
and 432.

This occupation not only gives deep offence to Germany (France has
always looked back with implacable bitterness on the few months'
military occupation by her Prussian conquerors in the war of 1870),
but it paralyses all her activity and is generally judged to be
completely useless.

All the Allies were ready to give France every military guarantee
against any unjust aggression by Germany, but France wanted in
addition the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine. It was a very
delicate matter, and the notes presented to the Conference by Great
Britain on March 26 and April 2, by the United States on March 28 and
April 12, show how embarrassed the two Governments were in considering
a question which France regarded as essential for her future. It has
to be added that the action of Marshal Foch in this matter was
not entirely constitutional. He claimed that, independently of
nationality, France and Belgium have the right to look on the Rhine as
the indispensable frontier for the nations of the west of Europe, _et
par là, de la civilisation_. Neither Lloyd George nor Wilson could
swallow the argument of the Rhine a frontier between the civilization
of France and Belgium, all civilization indeed, and Germany.

In the treaty the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and the
bridgeheads by the allied and associated powers for fifteen years
was introduced as a compromise. Such districts will be evacuated by
degrees every five years if Germany shall have faithfully carried out
the terms of the treaty. Now the conditions of the treaty are in large
measure impossible of execution, and in consequence no execution of
them can ever be described as faithful. Further, the occupying troops
are paid by Germany. It follows that the conception of the occupation
of the left bank of the Rhine was of a fact of unlimited duration.
The harm that would result from the occupation was pointed out at the
Conference by the American representatives and even more strongly by
the English. What was the use of it, they asked, if the German army
were reduced to 100,000 men? M. Tardieu himself tells the story of all
the efforts made, especially by Lloyd George and Bonar Law, to prevent
the blunder which later on was endorsed in the treaty as Article 428.
Lloyd George went so far as to complain of political intrigues for
creating disorder on the Rhine. But Clemenceau took care to put the
question in such a form that no discussion was possible. In the matter
of the occupation, he said to the English, you do not understand the
French point of view. You live in an island with the sea as defence,
we on the continent with a bad frontier. We do not look for an attack
by Germany but for systematic refusal to carry out the terms of
the treaty. Never was there a treaty with so many clauses, with,
consequently, so many opportunities for evasion. Against that risk the
material guarantee of occupation is necessary. There are two methods
in direct contrast: _En Angleterre on croit que le moyen d'y réussir
est de faire des concessions. En France nous croyons que c'est de
brusquer_.

On March 14 Lloyd George and Wilson had offered France the fullest
military guarantee in place of the occupation of the left bank of the
Rhine. France wanted, and in fact got, the occupation as well as the
alliances. "_Notre but_?" says Tardieu. "_Sceller la garantie offerte,
mais y ajouter l'occupation_." Outside the Versailles Treaty the
United States and Great Britain had made several treaties of alliance
with France for the event of unprovoked aggression by Germany. Later
on the French-English Treaty was approved by the House of Commons, the
French-American underwent the same fate as the Versailles Treaty. But
the treaty with Great Britain fell through also on account of the
provision that it should come into force simultaneously with the
American Treaty.

In a Paris newspaper Poincaré published in September, 1921, some
strictly reserved documents on the questions of the military
guarantees and the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine. He
wished to get the credit of having stood firm when Clemenceau himself
hesitated at the demand for an occupation of the left bank of the
Rhine for even a longer period than fifteen years. He has published
the letter he sent to Clemenceau to be shown to Wilson and Lloyd
George and the latter's reply.

He said that there must be no thought of giving up the occupation and
renouncing a guarantee until every obligation in the treaty should
have been carried out; he went so far as to claim that in occupation
regarded as a guarantee of a credit representing an indemnity for
damages, there is nothing contrary to the principles proclaimed by
President Wilson and recognized by the Allies. Nor would it suffice
even to have the faculty of reoccupation, because "this faculty" could
never be a valid substitute for occupation. As regards the suggestion
that a long occupation or one for an indeterminate period would cause
bad feeling, M. Poincaré was convinced that this was an exaggeration.
A short occupation causes more irritation on account of its arbitrary
limit; everyone understands an occupation without other limit than the
complete carrying out of the treaty. The longer the time that passes
the better would become the relations between the German populations
and the armies of occupation.

Clemenceau communicated Poincaré's letter to Lloyd George. The British
Prime Minister replied on May 6 in the clearest terms. In his eyes,
forcing Germany to submit to the occupation of the Rhine and the Rhine
Provinces for an unlimited period, was a provocation to renew the war
in Europe.

During the Conference France put forward some proposals the aim of
which was nothing less than to split up Germany. A typical example
is the memorandum presented by the French delegation claiming the
annexation of the Saar territory. This is completely German; in the
six hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants before the War there were
not a hundred French. Not a word had ever been said about annexation
of the Saar either in Government pronouncements or in any vote in the
French Parliament, nor had it been discussed by any political party.
No one had ever suggested such annexation, which certainly was a far
more serious thing than the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany,
as there was considerable German population in Alsace-Lorraine. The

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