← catalogue

The Inside Story of the Peace Conference

by Emile Joseph Dillon · English · Gutenberg #14477 · 983,078 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Inside Story of the Peace Conference
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Inside Story of the Peace Conference

Author: Emile Joseph Dillon


        
Release date: December 26, 2004 [eBook #14477]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14477

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Martin Pettit and the PG Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE ***

_The Inside Story of

The Peace Conference_


_by

Dr. E.J. Dillon_



HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

_NEW YORK AND LONDON_

THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE

Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers

Printed in the United States of America

Published February, 1920

_To
C.W. BARRON

in memory of interesting conversations

on historic occasions

These pages are inscribed._




CONTENTS

CHAP.                                   PAGE

FOREWORD                                  ix

I.    THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE           1

II.   SIGNS OF THE TIMES                  45

III.  THE DELEGATES                       58

IV.   CENSORSHIP AND SECRECY             117

V.    AIMS AND METHODS                   136

VI.   THE LESSER STATES                  184

VII.  POLAND'S OUTLOOK IN THE FUTURE     264

VIII. ITALY                              272

IX.   JAPAN                              322

X.    ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA             344

XI.   BOLSHEVISM                         376

XII.  HOW BOLSHEVISM WAS FOSTERED        399

XIII. SIDELIGHTS ON THE TREATY           407

XIV.  THE TREATY WITH GERMANY            455

XV.   THE TREATY WITH BULGARIA           464

XVI.  THE COVENANT AND MINORITIES        469




FOREWORD

It is almost superfluous to say that this book does not claim to be a
history, however summary, of the Peace Conference, seeing that such a
work was made sheer impossible now and forever by the chief delegates
themselves when they decided to dispense with records of their
conversations and debates. It is only a sketch--a sketch of the problems
which the war created or rendered pressing--of the conditions under
which they cropped up; of the simplicist ways in which they were
conceived by the distinguished politicians who volunteered to solve
them; of the delegates' natural limitations and electioneering
commitments and of the secret influences by which they were swayed; of
the peoples' needs and expectations; of the unwonted procedure adopted
by the Conference and of the fateful consequences of its decisions to
the world.

In dealing with all those matters I aimed at impartiality, which is an
unattainable ideal, but I trust that sincerity and detachment have
brought me reasonably close to it. Having no pet theories of my own to
champion, my principal standard of judgment is derived from the law of
causality and the rules of historical criticism.

The fatal tactical mistake chargeable to the Conference lay in its
making the charter of the League of Nations and the treaty of peace with
the Central Powers interdependent. For the maxims that underlie the
former are irreconcilable with those that should determine the latter,
and the efforts to combine them must, among other untoward results,
create a sharp opposition between the vital interests of the people of
the United States and the apparent or transient interests of their
associates. The outcome of this unnatural union will be to damage the
cause of stable peace which it was devised to further.

But the surest touchstone by which to test the capacity and the
achievements of the world-legislators is their attitude toward Russia in
the political domain and toward the labor problem in the economic
sphere. And in neither case does their action or inaction appear to have
been the outcome of statesman-like ideas, or, indeed, of any higher
consideration than that of evading the central issue and transmitting
the problem to the League of Nations. The results are manifest to all.

The continuity of human progress depends at bottom upon labor, and it is
becoming more and more doubtful whether the civilized races of mankind
can be reckoned on to supply it for long on conditions akin to those
which have in various forms prevailed ever since the institutions of
ancient times and which alone render the present social structure
viable. If this forecast should prove correct, the only alternative to a
break disastrous in the continuity of civilization is the frank
recognition of the principle that certain inferior races are destined to
serve the cause of mankind in those capacities for which alone they are
qualified and to readjust social institutions to this axiom.

In the meanwhile the Conference which ignored this problem of problems
has transformed Europe into a seething mass of mutually hostile states
powerless to face the economic competition of their overseas rivals and
has set the very elements of society in flux.

E.J. DILLON.




THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE

I

THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE


The choice of Paris for the historic Peace Conference was an
afterthought. The Anglo-Saxon governments first favored a neutral
country as the most appropriate meeting-ground for the world's
peace-makers. Holland was mentioned only to be eliminated without
discussion, so obvious and decisive were the objections. French
Switzerland came next in order, was actually fixed upon, and for a time
held the field. Lausanne was the city first suggested and nearly chosen.
There was a good deal to be said for it on its own merits, and in its
suburb, Ouchy, the treaty had been drawn up which terminated the war
between Italy and Turkey. But misgivings were expressed as to its
capacity to receive and entertain the formidable peace armies without
whose co-operation the machinery for stopping all wars could not well be
fabricated. At last Geneva was fixed upon, and so certain were
influential delegates of the ratification of their choice by all the
Allies, that I felt justified in telegraphing to Geneva to have a house
hired for six months in that picturesque city.

But the influential delegates had reckoned without the French, who in
these matters were far and away the most influential. Was it not in the
Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, they asked, that Teuton militarism had
received its most powerful impulse? And did not poetic justice, which
was never so needed as in these evil days, ordain that the chartered
destroyer who had first seen the light of day in that hall should also
be destroyed there? Was this not in accordance with the eternal fitness
of things? Whereupon the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon mind, unable to
withstand the force of this argument and accustomed to give way on
secondary matters, assented, and Paris was accordingly fixed upon....

"Paris herself again," tourists remarked, who had not been there since
the fateful month when hostilities began--meaning that something of the
wealth and luxury of bygone days was venturing to display itself anew as
an afterglow of the epoch whose sun was setting behind banks of
thunder-clouds. And there was a grain of truth in the remark. The Ville
Lumière was crowded as it never had been before. But it was mostly
strangers who were within her gates. In the throng of Anglo-Saxon
warriors and cosmopolitan peace-lovers following the trailing skirts of
destiny, one might with an effort discover a Parisian now and again. But
they were few and far between.

They and their principal European guests made some feeble attempts to
vie with the Vienna of 1814-15 in elegance and taste if not in pomp and
splendor. But the general effect was marred by the element of the
_nouveaux-riches_ and _nouveaux-pauvres_ which was prominent, if not
predominant. A few of the great and would-be great ladies outbade one
another in the effort to renew the luxury and revive the grace of the
past. But the atmosphere was numbing, their exertions half-hearted, and
the smile of youth and beauty was cold like the sheen of winter ice.
The shadow of death hung over the institutions and survivals of the
various civilizations and epochs which were being dissolved in the
common melting-pot, and even the man in the street was conscious of its
chilling influence. Life in the capital grew agitated, fitful,
superficial, unsatisfying. Its gaiety was forced--something between a
challenge to the destroyer and a sad farewell to the past and present.
Men were instinctively aware that the morrow was fraught with bitter
surprises, and they deliberately adopted the maxim, "Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die." None of these people bore on their
physiognomies the dignified impress of the olden time, barring a few
aristocratic figures from the Faubourg St.-Germain, who looked as though
they had only to don the perukes and the distinctive garb of the
eighteenth century to sit down to table with Voltaire and the Marquise
du Châtelet. Here and there, indeed, a coiffure, a toilet, the bearing,
the gait, or the peculiar grace with which a robe was worn reminded one
that this or that fair lady came of a family whose life-story in the
days of yore was one of the tributaries to the broad stream of European
history. But on closer acquaintanceship, especially at conversational
tournaments, one discovered that Nature, constant in her methods,
distributes more gifts of beauty than of intellect.

Festive banquets, sinful suppers, long-spun-out lunches were as frequent
and at times as Lucullan as in the days of the Regency. The outer,
coarser attributes of luxury abounded in palatial restaurants, hotels,
and private mansions; but the refinement, the grace, the brilliant
conversation even of the Paris of the Third Empire were seen to be
subtle branches of a lost art. The people of the armistice were weary
and apprehensive--weary of the war, weary of politics, weary of the
worn-out framework of existence, and filled with a vague, nameless
apprehension of the unknown. They feared that in the chaotic slough into
which they had fallen they had not yet touched bottom. None the less,
with the exception of fervent Catholics and a number of earnest
sectarians, there were few genuine seekers after anything essentially
better.

Not only did the general atmosphere of Paris undergo radical changes,
together with its population, but the thoroughfares, many of them,
officially changed their names since the outbreak of the war.

The Paris of the Conference ceased to be the capital of France. It
became a vast cosmopolitan caravanserai teeming with unwonted aspects of
life and turmoil, filled with curious samples of the races, tribes, and
tongues of four continents who came to watch and wait for the mysterious
to-morrow. The intensity of life there was sheer oppressive; to the
tumultuous striving of the living were added the silent influences of
the dead. For it was also a trysting-place for the ghosts of
sovereignties and states, militarisms and racial ambitions, which were
permitted to wander at large until their brief twilight should be
swallowed up in night. The dignified Turk passionately pleaded for
Constantinople, and cast an imploring look on the lone Armenian whose
relatives he had massacred, and who was then waiting for political
resurrection. Persian delegates wandered about like souls in pain,
waiting to be admitted through the portals of the Conference Paradise.
Beggared Croesus passed famishing Lucullus in the street, and once
mighty viziers shivered under threadbare garments in the biting frost as
they hurried over the crisp February snow. Waning and waxing Powers,
vacant thrones, decaying dominations had, each of them, their accusers,
special pleaders, and judges, in this multitudinous world-center on
which tragedy, romance, and comedy rained down potent spells. For the
Conference city was also the clearing-house of the Fates, where the
accounts of a whole epoch, the deeds and misdeeds of an exhausted
civilization, were to be balanced and squared.

Here strange yet familiar figures, survivals from the past, started up
at every hand's turn and greeted one with smiles or sighs. Men on whom I
last set eyes when we were boys at school, playing football together in
the field or preparing lessons in the school-room, would stop me in the
street on their way to represent nations or peoples whose lives were out
of chime, or to inaugurate the existence of new republics. One face I
shall never forget. It was that of the self-made temporary dictator of a
little country whose importance was dwindling to the dimensions of a
footnote in the history of the century. I had been acquainted with him
personally in the halcyon day of his transient glory. Like his
picturesque land, he won the immortality of a day, was courted and
subsidized by competing states in turn, and then suddenly cast aside
like a sucked orange. Then he sank into the depths of squalor. He was
eloquent, resourceful, imaginative, and brimful of the poetry of
untruth. One day through the asphalt streets of Paris he shuffled along
in the procession of the doomed, with wan face and sunken eyes, wearing
a tragically mean garb. And soon after I learned that he had vanished
unwept into eternal oblivion.

An Arabian Nights touch was imparted to the dissolving panorama by
strange visitants from Tartary and Kurdistan, Korea and Aderbeijan,
Armenia, Persia, and the Hedjaz--men with patriarchal beards and
scimitar-shaped noses, and others from desert and oasis, from Samarkand
and Bokhara. Turbans and fezzes, sugar-loaf hats and headgear resembling
episcopal miters, old military uniforms devised for the embryonic armies
of new states on the eve of perpetual peace, snowy-white burnooses,
flowing mantles, and graceful garments like the Roman toga, contributed
to create an atmosphere of dreamy unreality in the city where the
grimmest of realities were being faced and coped with.

Then came the men of wealth, of intellect, of industrial enterprise, and
the seed-bearers of the ethical new ordering, members of economic
committees from the United States, Britain, Italy, Poland, Russia,
India, and Japan, representatives of naphtha industries and far-off coal
mines, pilgrims, fanatics, and charlatans from all climes, priests of
all religions, preachers of every doctrine, who mingled with princes,
field-marshals, statesmen, anarchists, builders-up, and pullers-down.
All of them burned with desire to be near to the crucible in which the
political and social systems of the world were to be melted and recast.
Every day, in my walks, in my apartment, or at restaurants, I met
emissaries from lands and peoples whose very names had seldom been heard
of before in the West. A delegation from the Pont-Euxine Greeks called
on me, and discoursed of their ancient cities of Trebizond, Samsoun,
Tripoli, Kerassund, in which I resided many years ago, and informed me
that they, too, desired to become welded into an independent Greek
republic, and had come to have their claims allowed. The Albanians were
represented by my old friend Turkhan Pasha, on the one hand, and by my
friend Essad Pasha, on the other--the former desirous of Italy's
protection, the latter demanding complete independence. Chinamen,
Japanese, Koreans, Hindus, Kirghizes, Lesghiens, Circassians,
Mingrelians, Buryats, Malays, and Negroes and Negroids from Africa and
America were among the tribes and tongues forgathered in Paris to watch
the rebuilding of the political world system and to see where they "came
in."

One day I received a visit from an Armenian deputation; its chief was
described on his visiting-card as President of the Armenian Republic of
the Caucasus. When he was shown into my apartment in the Hôtel Vendôme,
I recognized two of its members as old acquaintances with whom I had
occasional intercourse in Erzerum, Kipri Keui, and other places during
the Armenian massacres of the year 1895. We had not met since then. They
revived old memories, completed for me the life-stories of several of
our common friends and acquaintances, and narrated interesting episodes
of local history. And having requested my co-operation, the President
and his colleagues left me and once more passed out of my life.

Another actor on the world-stage whom I had encountered more than once
before was the "heroic" King of Montenegro. He often crossed my path
during the Conference, and set me musing on the marvelous ups and downs
of human existence. This potentate's life offers a rich field of
research to the psychologist. I had watched it myself at various times
and with curious results. For I had met him in various European capitals
during the past thirty years, and before the time when Tsar Alexander
III publicly spoke of him as Russia's only friend. King Nikita owes such
success in life as he can look back on with satisfaction to his
adaptation of St. Paul's maxim of being all things to all men. Thus in
St. Petersburg he was a good Russian, in Vienna a patriotic Austrian, in
Rome a sentimental Italian. He was also a warrior, a poet after his own
fashion, a money-getter, and a speculator on 'Change. His alleged
martial feats and his wily, diplomatic moves ever since the first Balkan
war abound in surprises, and would repay close investigation. The ease
with which the Austrians captured Mount Lovtchen and his capital made a
lasting impression on those of his allies who were acquainted with the
story, the consequences of which he could not foresee. What everybody
seemed to know was that if the Teutons had defeated the Entente, King
Nikita's son Mirko, who had settled down for the purpose in Vienna,
would have been set on the throne in place of his father by the
Austrians; whereas if the Allies should win, the worldly-wise monarch
would have retained his crown as their champion. But these well-laid
plans went all agley. Prince Mirko died and King Nikita was deposed. For
a time he resided at a hotel, a few houses from me, and I passed him now
and again as he was on his way to plead his lost cause before the
distinguished wreckers of thrones and régimes.

It seemed as though, in order to provide Paris with a cosmopolitan
population, the world was drained of its rulers, of its prosperous and
luckless financiers, of its high and low adventurers, of its tribe of
fortune-seekers, and its pushing men and women of every description. And
the result was an odd blend of classes and individuals worthy, it may
be, of the new democratic era, but unprecedented. It was welcomed as of
good augury, for instance, that in the stately Hôtel Majestic, where the
spokesmen of the British Empire had their residence, monocled
diplomatists mingled with spry typewriters, smart amanuenses, and even
with bright-eyed chambermaids at the evening dances.[1] The British
Premier himself occasionally witnessed the cheering spectacle with
manifest pleasure. Self-made statesmen, scions of fallen dynasties,
ex-premiers, and ministers, who formerly swayed the fortunes of the
world, whom one might have imagined _capaces imperii nisi imperassent_,
were now the unnoticed inmates of unpretending hotels. Ambassadors whose
most trivial utterances had once been listened to with concentrated
attention, sued days and weeks for an audience of the greater
plenipotentiaries, and some of them sued in vain. Russian diplomatists
were refused permission to travel in France or were compelled to
undergo more than average discomfort and delay there. More than once I
sat down to lunch or dinner with brilliant commensals, one of whom was
understood to have made away with a well-known personage in order to rid
the state of a bad administrator, and another had, at a secret
_Vehmgericht_ in Turkey, condemned a friend of mine, now a friend of
his, to be assassinated.

In Paris, this temporary capital of the world, one felt the repercussion
of every event, every incident of moment wheresoever it might have
occurred. To reside there while the Conference was sitting was to occupy
a comfortable box in the vastest theater the mind of men has ever
conceived. From this rare coign of vantage one could witness
soul-gripping dramas of human history, the happenings of years being
compressed within the limits of days. The revolution in Portugal, the
massacre of Armenians, Bulgaria's atrocities, the slaughter of the
inhabitants of Saratoff and Odessa, the revolt of the Koreans--all
produced their effect in Paris, where official and unofficial exponents
of the aims and ambitions, religions and interests that unite or divide
mankind were continually coming or going, working aboveground or
burrowing beneath the surface.

It was within a few miles of the place where I sat at table with the
brilliant company alluded to above that a few individuals of two
different nationalities, one of them bearing, it was said, a well-known
name, hatched the plot that sent Portugal's strong man, President
Sidonio Paes, to his last account and plunged that ill-starred land into
chaotic confusion. The plan was discovered by the Portuguese military
attaché, who warned the President himself and the War Minister. But
Sidonio Paes, quixotic and foolhardy, refused to take or brook
precautions. A few weeks later the assassin, firing three shots, had no
difficulty in taking aim, but none of them took effect. The reason was
interesting: so determined were the conspirators to leave nothing to
chance, they had steeped the cartridges in a poisonous preparation,
whereby they injured the mechanism of the revolver, which, in
consequence, hung fire. But the adversaries of the reform movement which
the President had inaugurated again tried and planned another attempt,
and Sidonio Paes, who would not be taught prudence, was duly shot, and
his admirable work undone[2] by a band of semi-Bolshevists.

Less than six months later it was rumored that a number of specially
prepared bombs from a certain European town had been sent to Moscow for
the speedy removal of Lenin. The casual way in which these and kindred
matters were talked of gave one the measure of the change that had come
over the world since the outbreak of the war. There was nobody left in
Europe whose death, violent or peaceful, would have made much of an
impression on the dulled sensibilities of the reading public. All values
had changed, and that of human life had fallen low.

To follow these swiftly passing episodes, occasionally glancing behind
the scenes, during the pauses of the acts, and watch the unfolding of
the world-drama, was thrillingly interesting. To note the dubious
source, the chance occasion of a grandiose project of world policy, and
to see it started on its shuffling course, was a revelation in politics
and psychology, and reminded one of the saying mistakenly attributed to
the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstjern, "_Quam parva sapientia regitur
mundus_."[3]

The wire-pullers were not always the plenipotentiaries. Among those were
also outsiders of various conditions, sometimes of singular ambitions,
who were generally free from conventional prejudices and conscientious
scruples. As traveling to Paris was greatly restricted by the
governments of the world, many of these unofficial delegates had come in
capacities widely differing from those in which they intended to act. I
confess I was myself taken in by more than one of these secret
emissaries, whom I was innocently instrumental in bringing into close
touch with the human levers they had come to press. I actually went to
the trouble of obtaining for one of them valuable data on a subject
which did not interest him in the least, but which he pretended he had
traveled several thousand miles to study. A zealous prelate, whose
business was believed to have something to do with the future of a
certain branch of the Christian Church in the East, in reality held a
brief for a wholly different set of interests in the West. Some of these
envoys hoped to influence decisions of the Conference, and they
considered they had succeeded when they got their points of view brought
to the favorable notice of certain of its delegates. What surprised me
was the ease with which several of these interlopers moved about,
although few of them spoke any language but their own.

Collectivities and religious and political associations, including that
of the Bolshevists, were represented in Paris during the Conference. I
met one of the Bolshevists, a bright youth, who was a veritable apostle.
He occupied a post which, despite its apparent insignificance, put him
occasionally in possession of useful information withheld from the
public, which he was wont to communicate to his political friends. His
knowledge of languages and his remarkable intelligence had probably
attracted the notice of his superiors, who can have had no suspicion of
his leanings, much less of his proselytizing activity. However this may
have been, he knew a good deal of what was going on at the Conference,
and he occasionally had insight into documents of a certain interest. He
was a seemingly honest and enthusiastic Bolshevik, who spread the
doctrine with apostolic zeal guided by the wisdom of the serpent. He was
ever ready to comment on events, but before opening his mind fully to a
stranger on the subject next to his heart, he usually felt his way, and
only when he had grounds for believing that the fortress was not
impregnable did he open his batteries. Even among the initiated, few
would suspect the rôle played by this young proselytizer within one of
the strongholds of the Conference, so naturally and unobtrusively was
the work done. I may add that luckily he had no direct intercourse with
the delegates.

Of all the collectivities whose interests were furthered at the
Conference, the Jews had perhaps the most resourceful and certainly the
most influential exponents. There were Jews from Palestine, from Poland,
Russia, the Ukraine, Rumania, Greece, Britain, Holland, and Belgium; but
the largest and most brilliant contingent was sent by the United States.
Their principal mission, with which every fair-minded man sympathized
heartily, was to secure for their kindred in eastern Europe rights equal
to those of the populations in whose midst they reside.[4] And to the
credit of the Poles, Rumanians, and Russians, who were to be constrained
to remove all the existing disabilities, they enfranchised the Hebrew
elements spontaneously. But the Western Jews, who championed their
Eastern brothers, proceeded to demand a further concession which many of
their own co-religionists hastened to disclaim as dangerous--a kind of
autonomy which Rumanian, Polish, and Russian statesmen, as well as many
of their Jewish fellow-subjects, regarded as tantamount to the creation
of a state within the state. Whether this estimate is true or erroneous,
the concessions asked for were given, but the supplementary treaties
insuring the protection of minorities are believed to have little chance
of being executed, and may, it is feared, provoke manifestations of
elemental passions in the countries in which they are to be applied.

Twice every day, before and after lunch, one met the "autocrats," the
world's statesmen whose names were in every mouth--the wise men who
would have been much wiser than they were if only they had credited
their friends and opponents with a reasonable measure of political
wisdom. These individuals, in bowler hats, sweeping past in sumptuous
motors, as rarely seen on foot as Roman cardinals, were the destroyers
of thrones, the carvers of continents, the arbiters of empires, the
fashioners of the new heaven and the new earth--or were they only the
flies on the wheel of circumstance, to whom the world was unaccountably
becoming a riddle?

This commingling of civilizations and types brought together in Paris by
a set of unprecedented conditions was full of interest and instruction
to the observer privileged to meet them at close quarters. The average
observer, however, had little chance of conversing with them, for, as
these foreigners had no common meeting-place, they kept mostly among
their own folk. Only now and again did three or four members of
different races, when they chanced to speak some common language, get
an opportunity of enjoying their leisure together. A friend of mine, a
highly gifted Frenchman of the fine old type, a descendant of
Talleyrand, who was born a hundred and fifty years too late, opened his
hospitable house once a week to the élite of the world, and partially
met the pressing demand.

To the gaping tourist the Ville Lumière resembled nothing so much as a
huge world fair, with enormous caravanserais, gigantic booths, gaudy
merry-go-rounds, squalid taverns, and huge inns. Every place of
entertainment was crowded, and congregations patiently awaited their
turn in the street, undeterred by rain or wind or snow, offering
absurdly high prices for scant accommodation and disheartened at having
their offers refused. Extortion was rampant and profiteering went
unpunished. Foreigners, mainly American and British, could be seen
wandering, portmanteau in hand, from post to pillar, anxiously seeking
where to lay their heads, and made desperate by failure, fatigue, and
nightfall. The cost of living which harassed the bulk of the people was
fast becoming the stumbling-block of governments and the most powerful
lever of revolutionaries. The chief of the peace armies resided in
sumptuous hotels, furnished luxuriously in dubious taste, flooded after
sundown with dazzling light, and filled by day with the buzz of idle
chatter, the shuffling of feet, the banging of doors, and the ringing of
bells. Music and dancing enlivened the inmates when their day's toil was
over and time had to be killed. Thus, within, one could find anxious
deliberation and warm debate; without, noisy revel and vulgar brawl.
"Fate's a fiddler; life's a dance."

To few of those visitors did Paris seem what it really was--a nest of
golden dreams, a mist of memories, a seed-plot of hopes, a storehouse of
time's menaces.


THE PARIS CONFERENCE AND THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA

There were no solemn pageants, no impressive ceremonies, such as those
that rejoiced the hearts of the Viennese in 1814-15 until the triumphal
march of the Allied troops.

The Vienna of Congress days was transformed into a paradise of delights
by a brilliant court which pushed hospitality to the point of
lavishness. In the burg alone were two emperors, two empresses, four
kings, one queen, two crown-princes, two archduchesses, and three
princes. Every day the Emperor's table cost fifty thousand gulden--every
Congress day cost him ten times that sum. Galaxies of Europe's eminent
personages flocked to the Austrian capital, taking with them their
ministers, secretaries, favorites, and "confidential agents." So eager
were these world-reformers to enjoy themselves that the court did not go
into mourning for Queen Marie Caroline of Naples, the last of Marie
Theresa's daughters. Her death was not even announced officially lest it
should trouble the festivities of the jovial peace-makers!

The Paris of the Conference, on the other hand, was democratic, with a
strong infusion of plutocracy. It attempted no such brilliant display as
that which flattered the senses or fired the imagination of the
Viennese. In 1919 mankind was simpler in its tastes and perhaps less
esthetic. It is certain that the froth of contemporary frivolity had
lost its sparkling whiteness and was grown turbid. In Vienna, balls,
banquets, theatricals, military reviews, followed one another in dizzy
succession and enabled politicians and adventurers to carry on their
intrigues and machinations unnoticed by all except the secret police.
And, as the Congress marked the close of one bloody campaign and ushered
in another, one might aptly term it the interval between two tragedies.
For a time it seemed as though this part of the likeness might become
applicable to the Conference of Paris.

Moving from pleasure to politics, one found strong contrasts as well as
surprising resemblances between the two peace-making assemblies, and, it
was assumed, to the advantage of the Paris Conference. Thus, at the
Austrian Congress, the members, while seemingly united, were pulling
hard against one another, each individual or group tugging in a
different direction. The Powers had been compelled by necessity to unite
against a common enemy and, having worsted him on the battlefield, fell
to squabbling among themselves in the Council Chamber as soon as they
set about dividing the booty. In this respect the Paris Conference--the
world was assured in the beginning--towered aloft above its historic
predecessor. Men who knew the facts declared repeatedly that the
delegates to the Quai d'Orsay were just as unanimous, disinterested, and
single-minded during the armistice as they were through the war.
Probably they were.

Another interesting point of comparison was supplied by the _dramatis
personæ_? of both illustrious companies. They were nearly all
representatives of old states, but there was one exception.


THE CONGRESS CHIEF

_Mistrusted, Feared, Humored, and Obeyed_

A relatively new Power took part in the deliberations of the Vienna
Congress, and, perhaps, because of its loftier intentions, introduced a
jarring note into the concert of nations. Russia was then a newcomer
into the European councils; indeed she was hardly yet recognized as
European. Her gifted Tsar, Alexander I, was an idealist who wanted, not
so much peace with the vanquished enemy as a complete reform of the
ordering of the whole world, so that wars should thenceforward be
abolished and the welfare of mankind be set developing like a sort of
pacific _perpetuum mobile_. This blessed change, however, was to be
compassed, not by the peoples or their representatives, but by the
governments, led by himself and deliberating in secret. At the Paris
Conference it was even so.

This curious type of public worker--a mixture of the mystical and the
practical--was the terror of the Vienna delegates. He put spokes in
everybody's wheel, behaved as the autocrat of the Congress and felt as
self-complacent as a saint. Countess von Thurheim wrote of him: "He
mistrusted his environment and let himself be led by others. But he was
thoroughly good and high-minded and sought after the weal, not merely of
his own country, but of the whole world. _Son coeur eût embrassé le
bonheur du monde_." He realized in himself the dreams of the
philosophers about love for mankind, but their Utopias of human
happiness were based upon the perfection both of subjects and of
princes, and, as Alexander could fulfil only one-half of these
conditions, his work remained unfinished and the poor Emperor died, a
victim of his high-minded illusions.[5]

The other personages, Metternich in particular, were greatly put out by
Alexander's presence. They labeled him a marplot who could not and would
not enter into the spirit of their game, but they dared not offend him.
Without his brave troops they could not have been victorious and they
did not know how soon they might need him again, for he represented a
numerous and powerful people whose economic and military resources
promised it in time the hegemony of the world. So, while they heartily
disliked the chief of this new great country, they also feared and,
therefore, humored him. They all felt that the enemy, although defeated
and humbled, was not, perhaps, permanently disabled, and might, at any
moment, rise, phoenix-like and soar aloft again. The great visionary was
therefore fêted and lauded and raised to a dizzy pedestal by men who, in
their hearts, set him down as a crank. His words were reverently
repeated and his smiles recorded and remembered. Hardly any one had the
bad taste to remark that even this millennial philosopher in the
statesman's armchair left unsightly flaws in his system for the welfare
of man. Thus, while favoring equality generally, he obstinately refused
to concede it to one race, in fact, he would not hear of common fairness
being meted out to that race. It was the Polish people which was treated
thus at the Vienna Congress, and, owing to him, Poland's just claims
were ignored, her indefeasible rights were violated, and the work of the
peace-makers was botched....

Happily, optimists said, the Paris Conference was organized on a wholly
different basis. Its members considered themselves mere servants of the
public--stewards, who had to render an account of their stewardship and
who therefore went in salutary fear of the electorate at home. This
check was not felt by the plenipotentiaries in Vienna. Again, everything
the Paris delegates did was for the benefit of the masses, although most
of it was done by stealth and unappreciated by them.

The remarkable document which will forever be associated with the name
of President Wilson was the _clou_ of the Conference. The League of
Nations scheme seemed destined to change fundamentally the relations of
peoples toward one another, and the change was expected to begin
immediately after the Covenant had been voted, signed, and ratified. But
it was not relished by any government except that of the United States,
and it was in order to enable the delegates to devise such a wording of
the Covenant as would not bind them to an obnoxious principle or commit
their electorates to any irksome sacrifice, that the peace treaty with
Germany and the liquidation of the war were postponed. This delay caused
profound dissatisfaction in continental Europe, but it had the
incidental advantage of bringing home to the victorious nations the
marvelous recuperative powers of the German race. It also gave time for
the drafting of a compact so admirably tempered to the human weaknesses
of the rival signatory nations, whose passions were curbed only by sheer
exhaustion, that all their spokesmen saw their way to sign it. There was
something almost genial in the simplicity of the means by which the
eminent promoter of the Covenant intended to reform the peoples of the
world. He gave them credit for virtues which would have rendered the
League unnecessary and displayed indulgence for passions which made its
speedy realization hopeless, thus affording a _superfluous_ illustration
of the truth that the one deadly evil to be shunned by those who would
remain philanthropists is a practical knowledge of men, and of the
truism that the statesman's bane is an inordinate fondness for abstract
ideas.

One of the decided triumphs of the Paris Peace Conference over the
Vienna Congress lay in the amazing speed with which it got through the
difficult task of solving offhandedly some of the most formidable
problems that ever exercised the wit of man. One of the Paris journals
contained the following remarkable announcement: "The actual time
consumed in constituting the League of Nations, which it is hoped will
be the means of keeping peace in the world, was thirty hours. This
doesn't seem possible, but it is true."[6]

How provokingly slowly the dawdlers of Vienna moved in comparison may
be read in the chronicles of that time. The peoples hoped and believed
that the Congress would perform its tasks in a short period, but it was
only after nine months' gestation and sore travail that it finally
brought forth its offspring--a mountain of Acts which have been
moldering in dust ever since.

The Wilsonian Covenant, which bound together thirty-two states--a league
intended to be incomparably more powerful than was the Holy
Alliance--will take rank as the most rapid improvisation of its kind in
diplomatic history.

A comparison between the features common to the two international
legislatures struck many observers as even more reassuring than the
contrast between their differences. Both were placed in like
circumstances, faced with bewildering and fateful problems to which an
exhausting war, just ended, had imparted sharp actuality. One of the
delegates to the Vienna Congress wrote:

"Everything had to be recast and made new, the destinies of Germany,
Italy, and Poland settled, a solid groundwork laid for the future, and a
commercial system to be outlined."[7] Might not those very words have
been penned at any moment during the Paris Conference with equal
relevance to its undertakings?

Or these: "However easily and gracefully the fine old French wit might
turn the topics of the day, people felt vaguely beneath it all that
these latter times were very far removed from the departed era and, in
many respects, differed from it to an incomprehensible degree."[8] And
the veteran Prince de Ligne remarked to the Comte de la Garde: "From
every side come cries of Peace, Justice, Equilibrium, Indemnity.... Who
will evolve order from this chaos and set a dam to the stream of
claims?" How often have the same cries and queries been uttered in
Paris?

When the first confidential talks began at the Vienna Congress, the same
difficulties arose as were encountered over a century later in Paris
about the number of states that were entitled to have representatives
there. At the outset, the four Cabinet Ministers of Austria, Russia,
England, and Prussia kept things to themselves, excluding vanquished
France and the lesser Powers. Some time afterward, however, Talleyrand,
the spokesman of the worsted nation, accompanied by the Portuguese
Minister, Labrador, protested vehemently against the form and results of
the deliberations. At one sitting passion rose to white heat and
Talleyrand spoke of quitting the Congress altogether, whereupon a
compromise was struck and eight nations received the right to be
represented. In this way the Committee of Eight was formed.[9] In Paris
discussion became to the full as lively, and on the first Saturday, when
the representatives of Belgium, Greece, Poland, and the other small
states delivered impassioned speeches against the attitude of the Big
Five they were maladroitly answered by M. Clemenceau, who relied, as the
source from which emanated the superior right of the Great Powers, upon
the twelve million soldiers they had placed in the field. It was
unfortunate that force should thus confer privileges at a Peace
Conference which was convoked to end the reign of force and privilege.
In Vienna it was different, but so were the times.

Many of the entries and comments of the chroniclers of 1815 read like
extracts from newspapers of the first three months of 1919. "About
Poland, they are fighting fiercely and, down to the present, with no
decisive result," writes Count Carl von Nostitz, a Russian military
observer.... "Concerning Germany and her future federative constitution,
nothing has yet been done, absolutely nothing."[10] Here is a gloss
written by Countess Elise von Bernstorff, wife of the Danish Minister:
"Most comical was the mixture of the very different individuals who all
fancied they had work to do at the Congress ... One noticed noblemen and
scholars who had never transacted any business before, but now looked
extremely consequential and took on an imposing bearing, and professors
who mentally set down their university chairs in the center of a
listening Congress, but soon turned peevish and wandered hither and
thither, complaining that they could not, for the life of them, make out
what was going on." Again: "It would have been to the interest of all
Europe--rightly understood--to restore Poland. This matter may be
regarded as the most important of all. None other could touch so nearly
the policy of all the Powers represented,"[11] wrote the Bavarian
Premier, Graf von Montgelas, just as the Entente press was writing in
the year 1919.

The plenipotentiaries of the Paris Conference had for a short period
what is termed a good press, and a rigorous censorship which never erred
on the side of laxity, whereas those of the Vienna Congress were
criticized without truth. For example, the population of Vienna, we are
told by Bavaria's chief delegate, was disappointed when it discerned in
those whom it was wont to worship as demigods, only mortals. "The
condition of state affairs," writes Von Gentz, one of the clearest heads
at the Congress, "is weird, but it is not, as formerly, in consequence
of the crushing weight that is hung around our necks, but by reason of
the mediocrity and clumsiness of nearly all the workers."[12] One
consequence of this state of things was the constant upspringing of new
and unforeseen problems, until, as time went on, the bewildered
delegates were literally overwhelmed. "So many interests cross each
other here," comments Count Carl von Nostitz, "which the peoples want to
have mooted at the long-wished-for League of Nations, that they fall
into the oddest shapes.... Look wheresoever you will, you are faced with
incongruity and confusion.... Daily the claims increase as though more
and more evil spirits were issuing forth from hell at the invocation of
a sorcerer who has forgotten the spell by which to lay them."[13] It was
of the Vienna Congress that those words were written.

In certain trivial details, too, the likeness between the two great
peace assemblies is remarkable. For example, Lord Castlereagh, who
represented England at Vienna, had to return to London to meet
Parliament, thus inconveniencing the august assembly, as Mr. Wilson and
Mr. George were obliged to quit Paris, with a like effect. Before
Castlereagh left the scene of his labors, uncharitable judgments were
passed on him for allowing home interests to predominate over his
international activities.

The destinies of Poland and of Germany, which were then about to become
a confederation, occupied the forefront of interest at the Congress as
they did at the Conference. A similarity is noticeable also in the state
of Europe generally, then and now. "The uncertain condition of all
Europe," writes a close observer in 1815, "is appalling for the peoples:
every country has mobilized ... and the luckless inhabitants are crushed
by taxation. On every side people complain that this state of peace is
worse than war ... individuals who despised Napoleon say that under him
the suffering was not greater ... every country is sapping its own
prosperity, so that financial conditions, in lieu of improving since
Napoleon's collapse, are deteriorating every where."[14]

In 1815, as in 1919, the world pacifiers had their court painters, and
Isabey, the French portraitist, was as much run after as was Sir William
Orpen in 1919. In some respects, however, there was a difference.
"Isabey," said the Prince de Ligne, "is the Congress become painter.
Come! His talk is as clever as his brush." But Sir William Orpen was so
absorbed by his work that he never uttered a word during a sitting. The
contemporaries of the Paris Conference were luckier than their forebears
of the Vienna Congress--for they could behold the lifelike features of
their benefactors in a cinema. "It is understood," wrote a Paris
journal, "that the necessity of preserving a permanent record of the
personalities and proceedings at the Peace Conference has not been lost
sight of. Very shortly a series of cinematographic films of the
principal delegates and of the commissions is to be made on behalf of
the British government, so that, side by side with the Treaty of Paris,
posterity will be able to study the physiognomy of the men who made
it."[15] In no case is it likely to forget them.

So the great heart of Paris, even to a greater degree than that of
Vienna over a hundred years ago, beat and throbbed to cosmic measures
while its brain worked busily at national, provincial, and economic
questions.

Side by side with the good cheer prevalent that kept the eminent
lawgivers of the Vienna Congress in buoyant spirits went the cost of
living, prohibitive outside the charmed circle in consequence of the
high and rising prices.

"Every article," writes the Comte de la Garde, one of the chroniclers
of the Vienna Congress, "but more especially fuel, soared to incredible
heights. The Austrian government found it necessary, in consequence, to
allow all its officials supplements to their salaries and
indemnities."[16] In Paris things were worse. Greed and disorganization
combined to make of the French capital a vast fleecing-machine. The sums
of money expended by foreigners in France during all that time and a
much longer period is said to have exceeded the revenue from foreign
trade. There was hardly any coal, and even the wood fuel gave out now
and again. Butter was unknown. Wine was bad and terribly dear. A public
conveyance could not be obtained unless one paid "double, treble, and
quintuple fares and a gratuity." The demand was great and the supply
sometimes abundant, but the authorities contrived to keep the two apart
systematically.

THE COST OF LIVING

In no European country did the cost of living attain the height it
reached in France in the year 1919. Not only luxuries and comforts, but
some of life's necessaries, were beyond the reach of home-coming
soldiers, and this was currently ascribed to the greed of merchants, the
disorganization of transports, the strikes of workmen, and the
supineness of the authorities, whose main care was to keep the nation
tranquil by suppressing one kind of news, spreading another, and giving
way to demands which could no longer be denied. There was another and
more effectual cause: the war had deprived the world of twelve million
workmen and a thousand milliard francs' worth of goods. But of this
people took no account. The demobilized soldiers who for years had been
well fed and relieved of solicitude for the morrow returned home,
flushed with victory, proud of the commanding position which they had
won in the state, and eager to reap the rewards of their sacrifices. But
they were bitterly disillusioned. They expected a country fit for heroes
to live in, and what awaited them was a condition of things to which
only a defeated people could be asked to resign itself. The food to
which the poilu had, for nearly five years, been accustomed at the front
was become, since the armistice, the exclusive monopoly of the
capitalist or the _nouveau-riche_ in the rear. To obtain a ration of
sugar he or his wife had to stand in a long queue for hours, perhaps go
away empty-handed and return on the following morning. When his
sugar-card was eventually handed to him he had again to stand in line
outside the grocer's door and, when his turn came to enter it, was
frequently told that the supply was exhausted and would not be
replenished for a week or longer. Yet his newspaper informed him that
there was plenty of colonial sugar, ready for shipment, but forbidden by
the authorities to be imported into France. I met many poor people from
the provinces and some resident in Paris who for four years had not once
eaten a morsel of sugar, although the well-to-do were always amply
supplied. In many places even bread was lacking, while biscuits,
shortbread, and fancy cakes, available at exorbitant prices, were
exhibited in the shop windows. Tokens of unbridled luxury and glaring
evidences of wanton waste were flaunted daily and hourly in the faces of
the humbled men who had saved the nation and wanted the nation to
realize the fact. Lucullan banquets, opulent lunches, all-night dances,
high revels of an exotic character testified to the peculiar psychic
temper as well as to the material prosperity of the passive elements of
the community and stung the poilus to the quick. "But what justice,"
these asked, "can the living hope for, when the glorious dead are so
soon forgotten?" For one ghastly detail remains to complete a picture to
which Boccaccio could hardly have done justice. "While all this wild
dissipation was going on among the moneyed class in the capital the
corpses of many gallant soldiers lay unburied and uncovered on the
shell-plowed fields of battle near Rheims, on the road to
Neuville-sur-Margival and other places--sights pointed out to visitors
to tickle their interest in the grim spectacle of war. In vain
individuals expostulated and the press protested. As recently as May
persons known to me--my English secretary was one--looked with the
fascination of horror on the bodies of men who, when they breathed, were
heroes. They lay there where they had fallen and agonized, and now, in
the heat of the May sun, were moldering in dust away--a couple of hours'
motor drive from Paris...."[17]

The soldiers mused and brooded. Since the war began they had undergone a
great psychic transformation. Stationed at the very center of a
sustained fiery crisis, they lost their feeling of acquiescence in the
established order and in the place of their own class therein. In the
sight of death they had been stirred to their depths and volcanic fires
were found burning there. Resignation had thereupon made way for a
rebellious mood and rebellion found sustenance everywhere. The poilu
demobilized retained his military spirit, nay, he carried about with him
the very atmosphere of the trenches. He had rid himself of the sentiment
of fear and the faculty of reverence went with it. His outlook on the
world had changed completely and his inner sense reversed the social
order which he beheld, as the eye reverses the object it apprehends.
Respect for persons and institutions survived in relatively few
instances the sacredness of life and the fear of death. He was
impressed, too, with the all-importance of his class, which he had
learned during the war to look upon as the Atlas on whose shoulders rest
the Republic and its empire overseas. He had saved the state in war and
he remained in peace-time its principal mainstay. With his value as
measured by these priceless services he compared the low estimate put
upon him by those who continued to identify themselves with the
state--the over-fed, lazy, self-seeking money-getters who reserved to
themselves the fruits of his toil.

One can well imagine--I have actually heard--the poilus putting their
case somewhat as follows: "So long as we filled the gap between the
death-dealing Teutons and our privileged compatriots we were well fed,
warmly clad, made much of. During the war we were raised to the rank of
pillars of the state, saviors of the nation, arbiters of the world's
destinies. So long as we faced the enemy's guns nothing was too good for
us. We had meat, white bread, eggs, wine, sugar in plenty. But, now that
we have accomplished our task, we have fallen from our high estate and
are expected to become pariahs anew. We are to work on for the old gang
and the class from which it comes, until they plunge us into another
war. For what? What is the reward for what we have achieved, what the
incentive for what we are expected to accomplish? We cannot afford as
much food as before the war, nor of the same quality. We are in want
even of necessaries. Is it for this that we have fought? A thousand
times no. If we saved our nation we can also save our class. We have the
will and the power. Why should we not exert them?" The purpose of the
section of the community to which these demobilized soldiers mainly
belonged grew visibly definite as consciousness of their collective
force grew and became keener. Occasionally it manifested itself openly
in symptomatic spurts.

One dismal night, at a brilliant ball in a private mansion, a select
company of both sexes, representatives of the world of rank and fashion,
were enjoying themselves to their hearts' content, while their
chauffeurs watched and waited outside in the cold, dark streets, chewing
the cud of bitter reflections. Between the hours of three and four in
the morning the latter held an open-air meeting, and adopted a
resolution which they carried out forthwith. A delegation was sent
upstairs to give notice to the light-hearted guests that they must be
down in their respective motors within ten minutes on pain of not
finding any conveyances to take them home. The mutineers were nearly all
private chauffeurs in the employ of the personages to whom they sent
this indelicate ultimatum. The resourceful host, however, warded off the
danger and placated the rebellious drivers by inviting them to an
improvised little banquet of _pâtés de foie gras_, dry champagne, and
other delicacies. The general temper of the proletariat remained
unchanged. Tales of rebellion still more disquieting were current in
Paris, which, whether true or false, were aids to a correct diagnosis of
the situation.

A dancing mania broke out during the armistice, which was not confined
to the French capital. In Berlin, Rome, London, it aroused the
indignation of those whose sympathy with the spiritual life of their
respective nations was still a living force. It would seem, however, to
be the natural reaction produced by a tremendous national calamity,
under which the mainspring of the collective mind temporarily gives way
and the psychical equilibrium is upset. Disillusion, despondency, and
contempt for the passions that lately stirred them drive the people to
seek relief in the distractions of pleasures, among which dancing is
perhaps one of the mildest. It was so in Paris at the close of the long
period of stress which ended with the rise of Napoleon. Dancing then
went on uninterruptedly despite national calamities and private
hardships. "Luxury," said Victor Hugo, "is a necessity of great states
and great civilizations, but there are moments when it must not be
exhibited to the masses." There was never a conjuncture when the danger
of such an exhibition was greater or more imminent than during the
armistice on the Continent--for it was the period of incubation
preceding the outbreak of the most malignant social disease to which
civilized communities are subject.

The festivities and amusements in the higher circles of Paris recall the
glowing descriptions of the fret and fever of existence in the Austrian
capital during the historic Vienna Congress a hundred years ago. Dancing
became epidemic and shameless. In some salons the forms it took were
repellent. One of my friends, the Marquis X., invited to a dance at the
house of a plutocrat, was so shocked by what he saw there that he left
almost at once in disgust. Madame Machin, the favorite teacher of the
choreographic art, gave lessons in the new modes of dancing, and her fee
was three hundred francs a lesson. In a few weeks she netted, it is
said, over one hundred thousand francs.

The Prince de Ligne said of the Vienna Congress: "Le Congrès danse mais
il ne marche pas." The French press uttered similar criticisms of the
Paris Conference, when its delegates were leisurely picking up
information about the countries whose affairs they were forgathered to
settle. The following paragraph from a Paris journal--one of many
such--describes a characteristic scene:

     The domestic staff at the Hôtel Majestic, the headquarters of the
     British Delegation at the Peace Conference, held a very successful
     dance on Monday evening, attended by many members of the British
     Mission and Staff. The ballroom was a medley of plenipotentiaries
     and chambermaids, generals and orderlies, Foreign Office attachés
     and waitresses. All the latest forms of dancing were to be seen,
     including the jazz and the hesitation waltz, and, according to the
     opinion of experts, the dancing reached an unusually high standard
     of excellence. Major Lloyd George, one of the Prime Minister's
     sons, was among the dancers. Mr. G.H. Roberts, the Food Controller,
     made a very happy little speech to the hotel staff.[18]

The following extract is also worth quoting:

     A packed house applauded 'Hullo, Paris!' from the rise of the
     curtain to the finale at the new Palace Theater (in the rue
     Mogador), Paris, last night.... President Wilson, Mr. A.J. Balfour,
     and Lord Derby all remained until the fall of the curtain at 12.15
     ... and ... were given cordial cheers from the dispersing audience
     as they passed through the line of Municipal Guards, who presented
     arms as the distinguished visitors made their way to their
     motor-cars.[19]

Juxtaposed with the grief, discontent, and physical hardships prevailing
among large sections of the population which had provided most of the
holocausts for the Moloch of War, the ostentatious gaiety of the
prosperous few might well seem a challenge. And so it was construed by
the sullen lack-alls who prowled about the streets of Paris and told one
another that their turn would come soon.

When the masses stare at the wealthy with the eyes one so often noticed
during the eventful days of the armistice one may safely conclude, in
the words of Victor Hugo, that "it is not thoughts that are harbored by
those brains; it is events."

By the laboring classes the round of festivities, the theatrical
representations, the various negro and other foreign dances, and the
less-refined pleasures of the world's blithest capital were watched with
ill-concealed resentment. One often witnessed long lines of motor-cars
driving up to a theater, fashionable restaurant, or concert-hall,
through the opening portals of which could be caught a glimpse of the
dazzling illumination within, while, a few yards farther off, queues of
anemic men and women were waiting to be admitted to the shop where milk
or eggs or fuel could be had at the relatively low prices fixed by the
state. The scraps of conversation that reached one's ears were far from
reassuring.

I have met on the same afternoon the international world-regenerators,
smiling, self-complacent, or preoccupied, flitting by in their motors to
the Quai d'Orsay, and also quiet, determined-looking men, trudging along
in the snow and slush, wending their way toward their labor
conventicles, where they, too, were drafting laws for a new and strange
era, and I voluntarily fell to gaging the distance that sundered the two
movements, and asked myself which of the inchoate legislations would
ultimately be accepted by the world. The question since then has been
partially answered. As time passed, the high cost of living was
universally ascribed, as we saw, to the insatiable greed of the
middlemen and the sluggishness of the authorities, whose incapacity to
organize and unwillingness to take responsibility increased and augured
ill of the future of the country unless men of different type should in
the meanwhile take the reins. Practically nothing was done to ameliorate
the carrying power of the railways, to utilize the waterways, to employ
the countless lorries and motor-vans that were lying unused, to
purchase, convey, and distribute the provisions which were at the
disposal of the government. Various ministerial departments would
dispute as to which should take over consignments of meat or vegetables,
and while reports, notes, and replies were being leisurely written and
despatched, weeks or months rolled by, during which the foodstuffs
became unfit for human consumption. In the middle of May, to take but
one typical instance, 2,401 eases of lard and 1,418 cases of salt meat
were left rotting in the docks at Marseilles. In the storage magazines
at Murumas, 6,000 tons of salt meat were spoiled because it was nobody's
business to remove and distribute them. Eighteen refrigerator-cars
loaded with chilled meat arrived in Paris from Havre in the month of
June. When they were examined at the cold-storage station it was
discovered that, the doors having been negligently left open, the
contents of the cases had to be destroyed.[20] From Belgium 108,000
kilos of potatoes were received and allowed to lie so long at one of the
stations that they went bad and had to be thrown away. When these and
kindred facts were published, the authorities, who had long been silent,
became apologetic, but remained throughout inactive. In other countries
the conditions, if less accentuated, were similar.

One of the dodges to which unscrupulous dealers resorted with impunity
and profit was particularly ingenious. At the central markets, whenever
any food is condemned, the public-health authorities seize it and pay
the owner full value at the current market rates. The marketmen often
turned this equitable arrangement to account by keeping back large
quantities of excellent vegetables, for which the population was
yearning, and when they rotted and had to be carted away, received their
money value from the Public Health Department, thus attaining their
object, which was to lessen the supply and raise the prices on what they
kept for sale.[21] The consequence was that Paris suffered from a
continual dearth of vegetables and fruits. Statistics published by the
United States government showed the maximum increase in the cost of
living in four countries as follows: France, 235 per cent.; Britain, 135
per cent.; Canada, 115 per cent.; and the United States, 107 per
cent.[22] But since these data were published prices continued to rise
until, at the beginning of July, they had attained the same level as
those of Russia on the eve of the revolution there. In Paris, Lyons,
Marseilles, the prices of various kinds of fish, shell-fish, jams,
apples, had gone up 500 per cent., cabbage over 900 per cent., and
celeriac 2,000 per cent. Anthracite coal, which in the year 1914 cost 56
francs a ton, could not be purchased in 1919 for less than 360 francs.

The restaurants and hotels waged a veritable war of plunder on their
guests, most of whom, besides the scandalous prices, which bore no
reasonable relation to the cost of production, had to pay the government
luxury tax of 10 per cent, over and above. A well-known press
correspondent, who entertained seven friends to a simple dinner in a
modest restaurant, was charged 500 francs, 90 francs being set down for
one chicken, and 28 for three cocktails. The _maître d'hotel_, in
response to the pressman's expostulations, assured him that these
charges left the proprietor hardly any profit. As it chanced, however,
the journalist had just been professionally investigating the cost of
living, and had the data at his finger-ends. As he displayed his
intimate knowledge to his host, and obviously knew where to look for
redress, he had the satisfaction of obtaining a rebate of 150
francs.[23]

Nothing could well be more illuminating than the following curious
picture contributed by a journal whose representative made a special
inquiry into the whole question of the cost of living.[24] "I was dining
the other day at a restaurant of the Bois de Boulogne. There was a long
queue of people waiting at the door, some sixty persons all told, mostly
ladies, who pressed one another closely. From time to time a voice
cried: 'Two places,' whereupon a door was held opened, two patients
entered, and then it was loudly slammed, smiting some of those who stood
next to it. At last my turn came, and I went in. The guests were sitting
so close to one another that they could not move their elbows. Only the
hands and fingers were free. There sat women half naked, and men whose
voices and dress betrayed newly acquired wealth. Not one of them
questioned the bills which were presented. And what bills! The _hors
d'oeuvre_, 20 francs. Fish, 90 francs. A chicken, 150 francs. Three
cigars, 45 francs. The repast came to 250 francs a person at the very
lowest." Another journalist commented upon this story as follows: "Since
the end of last June," he said, "445,000 quintals of vegetables, the
superfluous output of the Palatinate, were offered to France at nominal
prices. And the cost of vegetables here at home is painfully notorious.
Well, the deal was accepted by the competent Commission in Paris.
Everything was ready for despatching the consignment. The necessary
trains were secured. All that was wanting was the approval of the French
authorities, who were notified. Their answer has not yet been given and
already the vegetables are rotting in the magazines."

The authorities pleaded the insufficiency of rolling stock, but the
press revealed the hollowness of the excuse and the responsibility of
those who put it forward, and showed that thousands of wagons, lorries,
and motor-vans were idle, deteriorating in the open air. For instance,
between Cognac and Jarnac the state railways had left about one
thousand wagons unused, which were fast becoming unusable.[25] And this
was but one of many similar instances.

It would be hard to find a parallel in history for the rapacity combined
with unscrupulousness and ingenuity displayed during that fateful period
by dishonest individuals, and left unpunished by the state. Doubtless
France was not the only country in which greed was insatiable and its
manifestations disastrous. From other parts of the Continent there also
came bitter complaints of the ruthlessness of profiteers, and in Italy
their heartless vampirism contributed materially to the revolutionary
outbreaks throughout that country in July. Even Britain was not exempt
from the scourge. But the presence of whole armies of well-paid,
easy-going foreign troops and officials on French soil stimulated greed
by feeding it, and also their complaints occasionally bared it to the
world. The impression it left on certain units of the American forces
was deplorable. When United States soldiers who had long been stationed
in a French town were transferred to Germany, where charges were low,
the revulsion of feeling among the straightforward, honest Yankees was
complete and embarrassing. And by way of keeping it within the bounds of
political orthodoxy, they were informed that the Germans had conspired
to hoodwink them by selling at undercost prices, in order to turn them
against the French. It was an insidious form of German propaganda!

On the other hand, the experience of British and American warriors in
France sometimes happened to be so unfortunate that many of them gave
credence to the absurd and mischievous legend that their governments
were made to pay rent for the trenches in which their troops fought and
died, and even for the graves in which the slain were buried.

An acquaintance of mine, an American delegate, wanted an abode to
himself during the Conference, and, having found one suitable for which
fifteen to twenty-five thousand francs a year were deemed a fair rent,
he inquired the price, and the proprietor, knowing that he had to do
with a really wealthy American, answered, "A quarter of a million
francs." Subsequently the landlord sent to ask whether the distinguished
visitor would take the place; but the answer he received ran, "No, I
have too much self-respect."

Hotel prices in Paris, beginning from December, 1918, were prohibitive
to all but the wealthy. Yet they were raised several times during the
Conference. Again, despite the high level they had reached by the
beginning of July, they were actually quintupled in some hotels and
doubled in many for about a week at the time of the peace celebrations.
Rents for flats and houses soared proportionately.

One explanation of the fantastic rise in rents is characteristic. During
the war and the armistice, the government--and not only the French
government--proclaimed a moratorium, and no rents at all were paid, in
consequence of which many house-owners were impoverished and others
actually beggared. And it was with a view to recoup themselves for these
losses that they fleeced their tenants, French and foreign, as soon as
the opportunity presented itself. An amusing incident arising out of the
moratorium came to light in the course of a lawsuit. An ingenious
tenant, smitten with the passion of greed, not content with occupying
his flat without paying rent, sublet it at a high figure to a man who
paid him well and in advance, but by mischance set fire to the place and
died. Thereupon the _tenant_ demanded and received a considerable sum
from the insurance company in which the defunct occupant had had to
insure the flat and its contents. He then entered an action at law
against the proprietor of the house for the value of the damage caused
by the fire, and he won his case. The unfortunate owner was condemned to
pay the sum claimed, and also the costs of the action.[26] But he could
not recover his rent.

Disorganization throughout France, and particularly in Paris, verged on
the border of chaos. Every one felt its effects, but none so severely as
the men who had won the war. The work of demobilization, which began
soon after the armistice, but was early interrupted, proceeded at
snail-pace. The homecoming soldiers sent hundreds of letters to the
newspapers, complaining of the wearisome delays on the journey and the
sharp privations which they were needlessly forced to endure. Thus,
whereas they took but twenty-eight hours to travel from Hanover to
Cologne--the lines being German, and therefore relatively well
organized--they were no less than a fortnight on the way between Cologne
and Marseilles.[27] During the German section of the journey they were
kept warm, supplied with hot soup and coffee twice daily; but during the
second half, which lasted fourteen days, they received no beverage, hot
or cold. "The men were cared for much less than horses." That these
poilus turned against the government and the class responsible for this
gross neglect was hardly surprising. One of them wrote: "They [the
authorities] are frightened of Bolshevism. But we who have not got home,
we all await its coming. I don't, of course, mean the real Bolshevism,
but even that kind which they paint in such repellent hues."[28] The
conditions of telegraphic and postal communications were on a par with
everything else. There was no guarantee that a message paid for would
even be sent by the telegraph-operators, or, if withheld, that the
sender would be apprised of its suppression. The war arrangements were
retained during the armistice. And they were superlatively bad. A
committee appointed by the Chamber of Deputies to inquire into the
matter officially, reported that,[29] at the Paris Telegraph Bureau
alone, 40,000 despatches were held back every day--40,000 a day, or
58,400,000 in four years! And from the capital alone. The majority of
them were never delivered, and the others were distributed after great
delay. The despatches which were retained were, in the main, thrown into
a basket, and, when the accumulation had become too great, were
destroyed. The Control Section never made any inquiry, and neither the
senders nor those to whom the despatches were addressed were ever
informed.[30] Even important messages of neutral ambassadors in Rome and
London fell under the ban. The recklessness of these censors, who ceased
even to read what they destroyed, was such that they held up and made
away with state orders transmitted by the great munitions factories, and
one of these was constrained to close down because it was unable to
obtain certain materials in time.

The French Ambassador in Switzerland reported that, owing to these
holocausts, important messages from that country, containing orders for
the French national loan, never reached their destination, in
consequence of which the French nation lost from ten to twenty million
francs. And even the letters and telegrams that were actually passed
were so carelessly handled that many of them were lost on the way or
delayed until they became meaningless to the addressee. So, for
instance, an official letter despatched by the Minister of Commerce to
the Minister of Finance in Paris was sent to Calcutta, where the French
Consul-General came across it, and had it directed back to Paris. The
correspondent of the _Echo de Paris_, who was sent to Switzerland by his
journal, was forbidden by law to carry more than one thousand francs
over the frontier, nor was the management of the journal permitted to
forward to him more than two hundred francs at a time. And when a
telegram was given up in Paris, crediting him with two hundred francs,
it was stopped by the censor. Eleven days were let go by without
informing the persons concerned. When the administrator of the journal
questioned the chief censor, he declined responsibility, having had
nothing to do with the matter, but he indicated the Central Telegraph
Control as the competent department. There, too, however, they were
innocent, having never heard of the suppression. It took another day to
elicit the fact that the economic section of the War Ministry was alone
answerable for the decision. The indefatigable manager of the _Echo de
Paris_ applied to the department in question, but only to learn that it,
too, was without any knowledge of what had happened, but it promised to
find out. Soon afterward it informed the zealous manager that the
department which had given the order could only be the Exchange
Commission of the Ministry of Finances. And during all the time the
correspondent was in Zurich without money to pay for telegrams or to
settle his hotel and restaurant bills.[31]

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, in a report on the whole
subject, characterized the section of Telegraphic Control as "an organ
of confusion and disorder which has engendered extraordinary abuses, and
risked compromising the government seriously."[32] It did not merely
risk, it actually went far to compromise the government and the entire
governing class as well.

It looked as though the rulers of France were still unconsciously guided
by the maxim of Richelieu, who wrote in his testament, "If the peoples
were too comfortable there would be no keeping them to the rules of
duty." The more urgent the need of resourcefulness and guidance, the
greater were the listlessness and confusion. "There is neither unity of
conduct," wrote a press organ of the masses, "nor co-ordination of the
Departments of War, Public Works, Revictualing, Transports. All these
services commingle, overlap, clash, and paralyze one another. There is
no method. Thus, whereas France has coffee enough to last her a
twelvemonth, she has not sufficient fuel for a week. Scruples, too, are
wanting, as are punishments; everywhere there is a speculator who offers
his purse, and an official, a station-master, or a subaltern to stretch
out his hand.... Shortsightedness, disorder, waste, the frittering away
of public moneys and irresponsibility: that is the balance...."[33]

That the spectacle of the country sinking in this administrative
quagmire was not conducive to the maintenance of confidence in its
ruling classes can well be imagined. On all sides voices were uplifted,
not merely against the Cabinet, whose members were assumed to be
actuated by patriotic motives and guided by their own lights, but
against the whole class from which they sprang, and not in France only,
but throughout Europe. Nothing, it was argued, could be worse than what
these leaders had brought upon the country, and a change from the
bourgeoisie to the proletariat could not well be inaugurated at a more
favorable conjuncture.

In truth the bourgeoisie were often as impatient of the restraints and
abuses as the homecoming poilu. The middle class during the armistice
was subjected to some of the most galling restraints that only the war
could justify. They were practically bereft of communications. To use
the telegraph, the post, the cable, or the telephone was for the most
part an exhibition of childish faith, which generally ended in the loss
of time and money.

This state of affairs called for an immediate and drastic remedy, for,
so long as it persisted, it irritated those whom it condemned to
avoidable hardship, and their name was legion. It was also part of an
almost imperceptible revolutionary process similar to that which was
going on in several other countries for transferring wealth and
competency from one class to another and for goading into rebellion
those who had nothing to lose by "violent change in the politico-social
ordering." The government, whose powers were concentrated in the hands
of M. Clemenceau, had little time to attend to these grievances. For its
main business was the re-establishment of peace. What it did not fully
realize was the gravity of the risks involved. For it was on the cards
that the utmost it could achieve at the Conference toward the
restoration of peace might be outweighed and nullified by the
consequences of what it was leaving undone and unattempted at home. At
no time during the armistice was any constructive policy elaborated in
any of the Allied countries. Rhetorical exhortations to keep down
expenditure marked the high-water level of ministerial endeavor there.

The strikes called by the revolutionary organizations whose aim was the
subversion of the regime under which those monstrosities flourished at
last produced an effect on the parliament. One day in July the French
Chamber left the Cabinet in a minority by proposing the following
resolution: "The Chamber, noting that the cost of living in Belgium has
diminished by a half and in England by a fourth since the armistice,
while it has continually increased in France since that date, judges the
government's economic policy by the results obtained and passes to the
order of the day."[34]

Shortly afterward the same Chamber recanted and gave the Cabinet a
majority. In Great Britain, too, the House of Commons put pressure on
the government, which at last was forced to act.

On the other hand, extravagance was systematically encouraged everywhere
by the shortsighted measures which the authorities adopted and
maintained as well as by the wanton waste promoted or tolerated by the
incapacity of their representatives. In France the moratorium and
immunity from taxation gave a fillip to recklessness. People who had
hoarded their earnings before the war, now that they were dispensed from
paying rent and relieved of fair taxes, paid out money ungrudgingly for
luxuries and then struck for higher salaries and wages.

Even the Deputies of the Chamber, which did nothing to mitigate the evil
complained of, manifested a desire to have their own salaries--six
hundred pounds a year--augmented proportionately to the increased cost
of living; but in view of the headstrong current of popular opinion
against parliamentarism the government deemed it impolitic to raise the
point at that conjuncture.

Most of the working-men's demands in France as in Britain were granted,
but the relief they promised was illusory, for prices still went up,
leaving the recipients of the relief no better off. And as the wages
payable for labor are limited, whereas prices may ascend to any height,
the embittered laborer fancied he could better his lot by an appeal to
the force which his organization wielded. The only complete solution of
the problem, he was assured, was to be found in the supersession of the
governing classes and the complete reconstruction of the social fabric
on wholly new foundations.[35] And some of the leaders rashly declared
that they were unable to discern the elements of any other.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 12,1919.

[2] On December 18, 1918.

[3] "With what little wisdom the world is governed."

[4] "Mr. Bernard Richards, Secretary of the delegation from the American
Jewish Congress to the Peace Conference, expressed much satisfaction
with the work done in Paris for the protection of Jewish rights and the
furtherance of the interests of other minorities involved in the peace
settlement." (_The New York Herald_, July 20, 1919.) How successful was
the influence of the Jewish community at the Peace Conference may be
inferred from the following: "Mr. Henry H. Rosenfelt, Director of the
American Jewish Relief Committee, announces that all New York agencies
engaged in Jewish relief work will join in a united drive in New York in
December to raise $7,500,000 (£1,500,000) to provide clothing, food, and
medicines for the six million Jews throughout Eastern Europe _as well as
to make possible a comprehensive programme for their complete
rehabilitation_.--American Radio News Service." Cf. _The Daily Mail_,
August 19, 1919.

[5] Countess Lulu von Thurheim, _My Life_, 1788-1852. German edition,
Munich, 1913-14.

[6] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), February 23, 1919.

[7] Grafen von Montgelas, _Denwürdigkeiten des bayrischen
Staatsministers Maximilian._ See also Dr. Karl Soll, _Der Wiener
Kongress_.

[8] Varnhagen von Ense.

[9] Friedrich von Gentz.

[10] Dr. Karl Soll, _Count Carl von Nostitz_.

[11] Cf. Dr. Karl Soll, _Der Wiener Kongress_.

[12] Dr. Karl Soll, _Friedrich von Gentz_.

[13] Dr. Karl Soll, _Count Carl von Nostitz_, p. 109.

[14] Jean Gabriel Eynard--the representative of Geneva.

[15] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 22, 1919.

[16] Count de la Garde.

[17] Cf. _Le Matin_, May 31, 1919. A noteworthy example of the
negligence of the authorities was narrated by this journal on the same
day. To a wooden cross with an inscription recording that the grave was
tenanted by "an unknown Frenchman" was hung a disk containing his name
and regiment! And here and there the skulls of heroes protruded from the
grass, but the German tombs were piously looked after by Boche
prisoners.

[18] _The Daily Mail_ (Continental edition), March 12, 1919.

[19] _Ibid._, April 23, 1919.

[20] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 8, 1919.

[21] Cf. _The New York Herald_, June 2, 1919.

[22] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 20, 1919.

[23] _Le Figaro_, June 8, 1919.

[24] _L'Humanité_, July 10, 1919.

[25] _La Democratie Nouvelle_, June 14, 1919.

[26] _Le Figaro_, March 6, 1919.

[27] _L'Humanité_, May 23, 1919.

[28] _3 Ibid._

[29] _Le Gaulois_, March 23, 1919. _The New York Herald_ (Paris
edition), March 22, 1919. _L'Echo de Paris_, June 12, 1919.

[30] _The New York Herald_, March 22, 1919.

[31] _L'Echo de Paris_, June 12, 1919.

[32] _The New York Herald_, March 22, 1919.

[33] _L'Humanité_, May 23, 1919.

[34] on July 18, 1919. Cf. _Matin, Echo de Paris, Figaro_, July 10,
1919.

[35] Cf. _L'Humanité_ (French Syndicalist organ), July 11, 1919.




II

SIGNS OF THEIR TIMES


Society during the transitional stage through which it has for some
years been passing underwent an unprecedented change the extent and
intensity of which are as yet but imperfectly realized. Its more
striking characteristics were determined by the gradual decomposition of
empires and kingdoms, the twilight of their gods, the drying up of their
sources of spiritual energy, and the psychic derangement of communities
and individuals by a long and fearful war. Political principles, respect
for authority and tradition, esteem for high moral worth, to say nothing
of altruism and public spirit, either vanished or shrank to shadowy
simulacra. In contemporary history currents and cross-currents, eddies
and whirlpools, became so numerous and bewildering that it is not easy
to determine the direction of the main stream. Unsocial tendencies
coexisted with collectivity of effort, both being used as weapons
against the larger community and each being set down as a manifestation
of democracy. Against every kind of authority the world, or some of its
influential sections, was up in revolt, and the emergence of the
passions and aims of classes and individuals had freer play than ever
before.

To this consummation conservative governments, and later on their chiefs
at the Peace Conference, systematically contributed with excellent
intentions and efficacious measures. They implicitly denied, and acted
on the denial, that a nation or a race, like an individual, has
something distinctive, inherent, and enduring that may aptly be termed
soul or character. They ignored the fact that all nations and races are
not of the same age nor endowed with like faculties, some being young
and helpless, others robust and virile, and a third category senescent
and decrepit, and that there are some races which Nature has wholly and
permanently unfitted for service among the pioneers of progress. In
consequence of these views, which I venture to think erroneous, they
applied the same treatment to all states. Just as President Wilson, by
striving to impose his pinched conception of democracy and his lofty
ideas of political morality on Mexico, had thrown that country into
anarchy, the two Anglo-Saxon governments by enforcing their theories
about the protection of minorities and other political conceptions in
various states of Europe helped to loosen the cement of the
politico-social structure there.

Through these as well as other channels virulent poison penetrated to
the marrow of the social organism. Language itself, on which all human
intercourse hinges, was twisted to suit unwholesome ambitions, further
selfish interests, and obscure the vision of all those who wanted real
reforms and unvarnished truth. During the war the armies were never told
plainly what they were struggling for; officially they were said to be
combating for justice, right, self-determination, the sacredness of
treaties, and other abstract nouns to which the heroic soldiers never
gave a thought and which a section of the civil population
misinterpreted. Indeed, so little were these shibboleths understood even
by the most intelligent among the politicians who launched them that one
half of the world still more or less conscientiously labors to establish
their contraries and is anathematizing the other half for championing
injustice, might, and unveracity--under various misnomers.

Anglo-Saxondom, taking the lead of humanity, imitated the Catholic
states of by-past days, and began to impose on other peoples its own
ideas, as well as its practices and institutions, as the best fitted to
awaken their dormant energies and contribute to the social
reconstruction of the world. In the interval, language, whether applied
to history, journalism, or diplomacy, was perverted and words lost their
former relations to the things connoted, and solemn promises were
solemnly broken in the name of truth, right, or equity. For the new era
of good faith, justice and morality was inaugurated, oddly enough, by a
general tearing up of obligatory treaties and an ethical violation of
the most binding compacts known to social man. This happened
coincidently to be in keeping with the general insurgence against all
checks and restraints, moral and social, for which the war is mainly
answerable, and to be also in harmony with the regular supersession of
right by might which characterizes the present epoch and with the
disappearance of the sense of law. In a word, under the auspices of the
amateur world-reformers, the tendency of Bolshevism throve and
spread--an instructive case of people serving the devil at the bidding
of God's best friends.

As in the days of the Italian despots, every individual has the chance
of rising to the highest position in many of the states, irrespective of
his antecedents and no matter what blots may have tarnished his
'scutcheon. Neither aristocratic descent, nor public spirit nor even a
blameless past is now an indispensable condition of advancement. In
Germany the head of the Republic is an honest saddler. In Austria the
chief of the government until recently was the assassin of a prime
minister. The chief of the Ukraine state was an ex-inmate of an asylum.
Trotzky, one of the Russian duumvirs, is said to have a record which
might of itself have justified his change of name from Braunstein. Bela
Kuhn, the Semitic Dictator of Hungary, had the reputation of a thief
before rising to the height of ruler of the Magyars.... In a word,
Napoleon's ideal is at last realized, "La carrière est ouverte aux
talents."

Among the peculiar traits of this evanescent epoch may be mentioned
inaccessibility to the teaching of facts which run counter to cherished
prejudices, aims, and interests. People draw from facts which they
cannot dispute only the inferences which they desire. An amusing
instance of this occurred in Paris, where a Syndicalist organ[36]
published an interesting and on the whole truthful account of the
chaotic confusion, misery, and discontent prevailing in Russia and of
the brutal violence and foxy wiles of Lenin. The dreary picture included
the cost of living; the disorganization of transports; the terrible
mortality caused by the after-effects of the war; the crowding of
prisons, theaters, cinemas, and dancing-saloons; the eagerness of
employers to keep their war prisoners employed while thousands of
demobilized soldiers were roaming about the cities and villages vainly
looking for work; the absence of personal liberty; the numerous arrests,
and the relative popularity withal of the Dictator. This popularity, it
was explained, the press contributed to keep alive, especially since the
abortive attempt made on his life, when the journals declared that he
was indispensable for the time being to his country.

He himself was described as a hard despot, ruthless as a tiger who
strikes his fellow-workers numb and dumb with fear. "But he is under no
illusions as to the real sentiments of the members of the Soviet who
back him, nor does he deign to conceal those which he entertains toward
them.... Whenever Lenin himself is concerned justice is expeditious.
Some men will be delivered from prison after many years of preventive
confinement without having been brought to trial, others who fired on
Kerensky will be kept untried for an indefinite period, whereas the
brave Russian patriot who aimed his revolver at Lenin, and whom the
French press so justly applauded, had only three weeks to wait for his
condemnation to death."

This article appearing in a Syndicalist organ seemed an event. Some
journals summarized and commented it approvingly, until it was
discovered to be a skit on the transient conditions in France, whereupon
the "admirable _exposé_ based upon convincing evidence" and the
"forcible arguments" became worthless.[37]

An object-lesson in the difficulty of legislating in Anglo-Saxon fashion
for foreign countries and comprehending their psychology was furnished
by two political trials which, taking place in Paris during the
Conference, enabled the delegates to estimate the distance that
separates the Anglo-Saxon from the Continental mode of thought and
action in such a fundamental problem as the administration of justice.
Raoul Villain, the murderer of Jean Jaurès--France's most eminent
statesman--was kept in prison for nearly five years without a trial. He
had assassinated his victim in cold blood. He had confessed and
justified the act. The eye-witnesses all agreed as to the facts. Before
the court, however, a long procession of ministers of state,
politicians, historians, and professors defiled, narrating in detail the
life-story, opinions, and strivings of the victim, who, in the eyes of a
stranger, unacquainted with its methods, might have seemed to be the
real culprit. The jury acquitted the prisoner.

The other accused man was a flighty youth who had fired on the French
Premier and wounded him. He, however, had not long to wait for his
trial. He was taken before the tribunal within three weeks of his arrest
and was promptly condemned to die.[38] Thus the assassin was justified
by the jury and the would-be assassin condemned to be shot. "Suppose
these trials had taken place in my country," remarked a delegate of an
Eastern state, "and that of the two condemned men one had been a member
of the privileged minority, what an uproar the incident would have
created in the United States and England! As it happened in western
Europe, it passed muster."

How far removed some continental nations are from the Anglo-Saxons in
their mode of contemplating and treating another momentous category of
social problems may be seen from the circumstance that the Great Council
in Basel adopted a bill brought in by the Socialist Welti, authorizing
the practice of abortion down to the third month, provided that the
husband and wife are agreed, and in cases where there is no marriage
provided it is the desire of the woman and that the operation is
performed by a regular physician.[39]

Another striking instance of the difference of conceptions between the
Anglo-Saxon and continental peoples is contained in the following
unsavory document, which the historian, whose business it is to flash
the light of criticism upon the dark nooks of civilization, can neither
ignore nor render into English. It embodies a significant decision taken
by the General Staff of the 256th Brigade of the Army of Occupation[40]
and was issued on June 21, 1919.[41]




     SIGNS OF THE TIMES

     EXPLOITATION ET POLICE DE LA MAISON PUBLIQUE DE MÜNCHEN-GLADBACH

     (1.) Les deux femmes composant l'unique personnel de la maison
     publique de Gladbach (2, Gasthausstrasse), sont venues en
     délégation déclarer qu'elles ne pouvaient suffire à la nombreuse
     clientèle, qui envahit leur maison, devant laquelle stationneraient
     en permanence de nombreux groupes de clients affamés.

     Elles déclarent que défalcation faite du service qu'elles doivent
     assurer à leurs abonnés belges et allemands, elles ne peuvent
     fournir à la division qu'un total de vingt entrées par jour (10
     pour chacune d'elle).

     L'établissement d'ailleurs ne travaille pas la nuit et observe
     strictement le repos dominical. D'autre part les ressources de la
     ville ne permettent pas, paraît-il, d'augmenter le personnel. Dans
     ces conditions, en vue d'éviter tout désordre et de ne pas demander
     à ces femmes un travail audessus de leurs forces, les mesures
     suivantes seront prises:

     (2.) JOURS DE TRAVAIL: Tous les jours de la semaine, sauf le
     dimanche.

     RENDEMENT MAXIMUM: Chaque jour chaque femme reçoit 10 hommes, soit
     20 pour les deux personnes, 120 par semaine.

     HEURES D'OUVERTURE: 17 heures à 21 heures. Aucune réception n'aura
     lieu en dehors de ces heures.

     TARIF: Pour un séjour d'un quart heure (entrée et sortie de
     l'établissement comprises) ... 5 marks.

     CONSOMMATIONS: La maison ne vend aucune boisson. Il n'y a pas de
     salle d'attente. Les clients doivent donc se présenter par deux.

     (3.) RÉPARTITION: Les 6 jours de la semaine sont donnés: Le
     lundi--1er bat. du 164 et C.H.R. Le mardi--1er bat. du 169 et
     C.H.R. Le mercredi--2e bat. du 164 et C.H.R. Le jeudi--2e bat. du
     169 et C.H.R. Le vendredi--3e bat. du 164. Le samedi--3e bat. du
     169.

     (4.) Dans chaque bataillon il sera établi le jour qui leur est
     fixé, 20 tickets déposés aux bureaux des sergents-majeur à raison
     de 5 par compagnie. Les hommes désireux de rendre visite à
     l'établissement réclamerout au bureau de leur sergent-majeur, 1
     ticket qui leur donnera driot de priorité.


The value of that document derives from its having been issued as an
ordinary regulation, from its having been reproduced in a widely
circulated journal of the capital without evolving comment, and from the
strong light which it projects upon one of the darkest corners of the
civilization which has been so often and so eloquently eulogized.

Manifestly the currents of the new moral life which the Conference was
to have set flowing are as yet somewhat weak, the new ideals are still
remote and the foreshadowings of a nobler future are faint. Another
token of the change which is going forward in the world was reported
from the Far East, but passed almost unnoticed in Europe. The Chinese
Ministry of Public Instruction, by an edict of November 3, 1919,
officially introduced in all secondary schools a phonetic system of
writing in place of the ideograms theretofore employed. This is
undoubtedly an event of the highest importance in the history of
culture, little though it may interest the Western world to-day. At the
same time, as a philologist by profession, I agree with a continental
authority[42] who holds that, owing to the monosyllabic character of the
Chinese language and to the further disadvantage that it lacks wholly or
partly several consonants,[43] it will be practically impossible, as the
Japanese have already found, to apply the new alphabet to the
traditional literary idiom. Neither can it be employed for the needs of
education, journalism, of the administration, or for telegraphing. It
will, however, be of great value for elementary instruction and for
postal correspondence. It is also certain to develop and extend. But its
main significance is twofold: as a sign of China's awakening and as an
innovation, the certain effect of which will be to weaken national unity
and extend regionalism at its expense. From this point of view the
reform is portentous.

Another of the signs of the new times which calls for mention is the
spread and militancy of the labor movement, to which the war and its
concomitants gave a potent impulse. It is differentiated from all
previous ferments by this, that it constitutes merely an episode in the
universal insurgency of the masses, who are fast breaking through the
thin social crust formed by the upper classes and are emerging rapidly
above the surface. One of the most impressive illustrations of this
general phenomenon is the rise of wages, which in Paris has set the
municipal street-sweepers above university professors, the former
receiving from 7,600 to 8,000 francs a year, whereas the salary of the
latter is some 500 francs less.[44]

This general disturbance is the outcome of many causes, among which are
the over-population of the world, the spread of education and of equal
opportunity, the anonymity of industrial enterprises, scientific and
unscientific theories, the specialization of labor and its depressing
influence.[45] These factors produced a labor organization which the
railways, newspapers, and telegraph contributed to perfect and transform
into a proletarian league, and now all progressive humanity is tending
steadily and painfully to become one vast collectivity for producing and
sharing on more equitable lines the means of living decently. This
consummation is coming about with the fatality of a natural law, and the
utmost the wisest of governments can do is to direct it through pacific
channels and dislodge artificial obstacles in its course.

One of the first reforms toward which labor is tending with more or
less conscious effort is the abolition of the hereditary principle in
the possession of wealth and influence and of the means of obtaining
them. The division of labor in the past caused the dissociation of the
so-called nobler avocations from manual work, and gradually those who
followed higher pursuits grew into a sort of hereditary caste which
bestowed relative immunity from the worst hardships of life's struggle
and formed a ruling class. To-day the masses have their hands on the
principal levers for shattering this top crust of the social sphere and
seem resolved to press them.

The problem for the solution of which they now menacingly clamor is the
establishment of an approximately equitable principle for the
redistribution of the world's resources--land, capital, industries,
monopolies, mines, transports, and colonies. Whether
socialization--their favorite prescription--is the most effectual way of
achieving this object may well be doubted, but must be thoroughly
examined and discussed. The end once achieved, it is expected that
mankind will have become one gigantic living entity, endowed with
senses, nerves, heart, arteries, and all the organs necessary to operate
and employ the forces and wealth of the planet. The process will be
complex because the factors are numerous and of various orders, and for
this reason few political thinkers have realized that its many phases
are aspects of one phenomenon. That is also a partial explanation of the
circumstance that at the Conference the political questions were
separated from the economic and treated by politicians as paramount, the
others being relegated to the background. The labor legislation passed
in Paris reduced itself, therefore, to counsels of perfection.

That the Conference was incapable of solving a problem of this magnitude
is self-evident. But the delegates could and should have referred it to
an international parliament, fully representative of all the interests
concerned. For the best way of distributing the necessaries and comforts
of life, which have been acquired or created by manual toil, is a
problem that can neither be ignored nor reasoned away. So long as it
remains a problem it will be a source of intermittent trouble and
disorder throughout the civilized world. The titles, which the classes
heretofore privileged could invoke in favor of possession, are now being
rapidly acquired by the workers, who in addition dispose of the force
conferred by organization, numbers, and resolve. At the same time most
of the stimuli and inventives to individual enterprise are being
gradually weakened by legislation, which it would be absurd to condemn
and dangerous to regard as a settlement. In the meanwhile productivity
is falling off, while the demand for the products of labor is growing
proportionately to the increase of population and culture.

Hitherto the laws of distribution were framed by the strong, who were
few and utilized the many. To-day their relative positions have shifted;
the many have waxed strong and are no longer minded to serve as
instruments in the hands of a class, hereditary or selected. But the
division of mankind into producers and utilizers has ever been the solid
and durable mainstay of that type of civilization from which progressive
nations are now fast moving away, and the laws and usages against which
the proletariat is up in arms are but its organic expression.

From the days of the building of the Pyramids down to those of the
digging of the Panama Canal the chasm between the two social orders
remained open. The abolition of slavery changed but little in the
arrangement--was, indeed, effected more in the interests of the old
economics than in deference to any strong religious or moral sentiment.
In substance the traditional ordering continued to exist in a form
better adapted to the modified conditions. But the filling up of that
chasm, which is now going forward, involves the overthrow of the system
in its entirety, and the necessity of either rearing a wholly new
structure, of which even the keen-sighted are unable to discern the
outlines, or else the restoration of the old one on a somewhat different
basis. And the only basis conceivable to-day is that which would start
from the postulate that some races of men come into the world devoid of
the capacity for any more useful part in the progress of mankind than
that which was heretofore allotted to the proletariat. It cannot be
gainsaid that there are races on the globe which are incapable of
assimilating the higher forms of civilization, but which might well be
made to render valuable services in the lower without either suffering
injustice themselves or demoralizing others. And it seems nowise
impossible that one day these reserves may be mobilized and
systematically employed in virtue of the principle that the weal of the
great progressive community necessitates such a distribution of parts as
will set each organ to perform the functions for which it is best
qualified.

Since the close of the war internationalism was in the air, and the
labor movement intensified it. It stirred the thought and warmed the
imagination alike of exploiters and exploited. Reformers and pacifists
yearned for it as a means of establishing a well-knit society of
progressive and pacific peoples and setting a term to sanguinary wars.
Some financiers may have longed for it in a spirit analogous to that in
which Nero wished that the Roman people had but one neck. And the
Conference chiefs seemed to have pictured it to themselves--if, indeed,
they meditated such an abstract matter--in the guise of a _pax
Anglo-Saxonica_, the distinctive feature of which would lie in the
transfer to the two principal peoples--and not to a board representing
all nations--of those attributes of sovereignty which the other states
would be constrained to give up. Of these three currents flowing in the
direction of internationalism only one--that of finance--appears for the
moment likely to reach its goal....


FOOTNOTES:

[36] _L'Humanité,_ March 6 and 18, 1919.

[37] Cf. _L'Humanité_, April 10,1919.

[38] The sentence was subsequently commuted.

[39] _La Gazette de Lausanne_, May 26, 1919.

[40] 128th Division.

[41] It was reproduced by the French Syndicalist organ, _L'Humanité_ of
July 7, 1919.

[42] R. de Saussure. Cf. _Journal de Genève_, August 18, and also May
26, 1919.

[43] d, r, t, l, g (partly) and p, except at the beginning of a word.

[44] Cf. the French papers generally for the month of May--also
_Bonsoir_, July 26, 1919.

[45] Walther Rathenau has dealt with this question in several of his
recent pamphlets, which are not before me at the moment.



III

THE DELEGATES


The plenipotentiaries, who became the world's arbiters for a while, were
truly representative men. But they mirrored forth not so much the souls
of their respective peoples as the surface spirit that flitted over an
evanescent epoch. They stood for national grandeur, territorial
expansion, party interests, and even abstract ideas. Exponents of a
narrow section of the old order at its lowest ebb, they were in no sense
heralds of the new. Amid a labyrinth of ruins they had no clue to guide
their footsteps, in which the peoples of the world were told to follow.
Only true political vision, breadth of judgment, thorough mastery of the
elements of the situation, an instinct for discerning central issues,
genuine concern for high principles of governance, and the rare moral
courage that disregards popularity as a mainspring of action--could have
fitted any set of legislators to tackle the complex and thorny problems
that pressed for settlement and to effect the necessary preliminary
changes. That the delegates of the principal Powers were devoid of many
of these qualities cannot fairly be made a subject of reproach. It was
merely an accident. But it was as unfortunate as their honest conviction
that they could accomplish the grandiose enterprise of remodeling the
communities of the world without becoming conversant with their
interests, acquainted with their needs, or even aware of their
whereabouts. For their failure, which was inevitable, was also bound to
be tragic, inasmuch as it must involve, not merely their own ambition to
live in history as the makers of a new and regenerate era, but also the
destinies of the nations and races which confidently looked up to them
for the conditions of future pacific progress, nay, of normal existence.

During the Conference it was the fashion in most European countries to
question the motives as well as to belittle the qualifications of the
delegates. Now that political passion has somewhat abated and the
atmosphere is becoming lighter and clearer, one may without provoking
contradiction pay a well-deserved tribute to their sincerity, high
purpose, and quick response to the calls of public duty and moral
sentiment. They were animated with the best intentions, not only for
their respective countries, but for humanity as a whole. One and all
they burned with the desire to go as far as feasible toward ending the
era of destructive wars. Steady, uninterrupted, pacific development was
their common ideal, and they were prepared to give up all that they
reasonably could to achieve it. It is my belief, for example, that if
Mr. Wilson had persisted in making his League project the cornerstone of
the new world structure and in applying his principles without favor,
the Italians would have accepted it almost without discussion, and the
other states would have followed their example. All the delegates must
have felt that the old order of things, having been shaken to pieces by
the war and its concomitants, could not possibly survive, and they
naturally desired to keep within evolutionary bounds the process of
transition to the new system, thus accomplishing by policy what
revolution would fain accomplish by violence. It was only when they came
to define that policy with a view to its application that their
unanimity was broken up and they split into two camps, the pacifists and
the militarists, or the democrats and imperialists, as they have been
roughly labeled. Here, too, each member of the assembly worked with
commendable single-mindedness, and under a sense of high responsibility,
for that solution of the problem which to him seemed the most conducive
to the general weal. And they wrestled heroically one with the other for
what they held to be right and true relatively to the prevalent
conditions. The circumstance that the cause and effects of this clash of
opinions and sentiments were so widely at variance with early
anticipations had its roots partly in their limited survey of the
complex problem, and partly, too, in its overwhelming vastness and their
own unfitness to cope with it.

The delegates who aimed at disarmament and a society of pacific peoples
made out as good a case--once their premises were admitted--as those who
insisted upon guarantees, economic and territorial. Everything depended,
for the theory adopted, upon each individual's breadth of view, and for
its realization upon the temper of the peoples and that of their
neighbors. As under the given circumstances either solution was sure to
encounter formidable opposition, which only a doughty spirit would dare
to affront, compromise, offering a side-exit out of the quandary, was
avidly taken. In this way the collective sagacities, working in
materials the nature of which they hardly understood, brought forth
strange products. Some of the incongruities of the details, such, for
instance, as the invitation to Prinkipo, despatched anonymously,
occasionally surpass satire, but their bewildered authors are entitled
to the benefit of extenuating circumstances.

On the momentous issue of a permanent peace based on Mr. Wilson's
pristine concept of a league of nations, and in accordance with rigid
principles applied equally to all the states, there was no discussion.
In other words, it was tacitly agreed that the fourteen points should
not form a bar to the vital postulates of any of the Great Powers. It
was only on the subject of the lesser states and the equality of nations
that the debates were intense, protracted, and for a long while
fruitless. At times words flamed perilously high. For months the
solutions of the Adriatic, the Austrian, Turkish, and Thracian problems
hung in poignant suspense, the public looking on with diminishing
interest and waxing dissatisfaction. The usual optimistic assurances
that all would soon run smoothly and swiftly fell upon deaf ears. Faith
in the Conference was melting away.

The plight of the Supreme Council and the vain exhortations to believe
in its efficiency reminded me of the following story.

A French parish priest was once spiritually comforting a member of his
flock who was tormented by doubts about the goodness of God as measured
by the imperfection of His creation. Having listened to a vivid account
of the troubled soul's high expectation of its Maker and of its deep
disappointment at His work, the pious old curé said: "Yes, my child. The
world is indeed bad, as you say, and you are right to deplore it. But
don't you think you may have formed to yourself an exaggerated idea of
God?" An analogous reflection would not be out of place when passing
judgment on the Conference which implicitly arrogated to itself some of
the highest attributes of the Deity, and thus heightened the contrast
between promise and achievement. Certainly people expected much more
from it than it could possibly give. But it was the delegates themselves
who had aroused these expectations announcing the coming of a new epoch
at their fiat. The peoples were publicly told by Mr. Lloyd George and
several of his colleagues that the war of 1914-18 would be the last. His
"Never again" became a winged phrase, and the more buoyant optimists
expected to see over the palace of arbitration which was to be
substituted for the battlefield, the inspiring inscription: "A la
dernière des guerres, l'humanité reconnaissante."[46] Mr. Wilson's vast
project was still more attractive.

Mr. Lloyd George is too well known in his capacity of British
parliamentarian to need to be characterized. The splendid services he
rendered the Empire during the war, when even his defects proved
occasionally helpful, will never be forgotten. Typifying not only the
aims, but also the methods, of the British people, he never seems to
distrust his own counsels whencesoever they spring nor to lack the
courage to change them in a twinkling. He stirred the soul of the nation
in its darkest hour and communicated his own glowing faith in its star.
During the vicissitudes of the world struggle he was the right man for
the responsible post which he occupied, and I am proud of having been
one of the first to work in my own modest way to have him placed there.
But a good war-leader may be a poor peace-negotiator, and, as a matter
of fact, there are few tasks concerned with the welfare of the nation
which Mr. Lloyd George could not have tackled with incomparably greater
chances of accomplishing it than that of remodeling the world. His
antecedents were all against him. His lack of general equipment was
prohibitive; even his inborn gifts were disqualifications. One need not
pay too great heed to acrimonious colleagues who set him down as a
word-weaving trimmer, between whose utterances and thoughts there is no
organic nexus, who declines to take the initiative unless he sees
adequate forces behind him ready to his to his support, who lacks the
moral courage that serves as a parachute for a fall from popularity,
but possesses in abundance that of taking at the flood the rising tide
which balloon-like lifts its possessor high above his fellows. But
judging him in the light of the historic events in which he played a
prominent part, one cannot dismiss these criticisms as groundless.

Opportunism is an essential element of statecraft, which is the art of
the possible. But there is a line beyond which it becomes shiftiness,
and it would be rash to assert that Mr. Lloyd George is careful to keep
on the right side of it. At the Conference his conduct appeared to
careful observers to be traced mainly by outside influences, and as
these were various and changing the result was a zigzag. One day he
would lay down a certain proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and
before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and
maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal conviction.
Guided by no sound knowledge and devoid of the ballast of principle, he
was tossed and driven hither and thither like a wreck on the ocean. Mr.
Melville Stone, the veteran American journalist, gave his countrymen his
impression of the first British delegate. "Mr. Lloyd George," he said,
"has a very keen sense of humor and a great power over the multitude,
but with this he displays a startling indifference to, if not ignorance
of, the larger affairs of nations." In the course of a walk Mr. Lloyd
George expressed surprise when informed that in the United States the
war-making power was invested in Congress. "What!" exclaimed the
Premier, "you mean to tell me that the President of the United States
cannot declare war? I never heard that before." Later, when questions of
national ambitions were being discussed, Mr. Lloyd George asked, "What
is that place Rumania is so anxious to get?" meaning Transylvania.[47]

The stories current of his praiseworthy curiosity about the places
which he was busy distributing to the peoples whose destinies he was
forging would be highly amusing if the subject were only a private
individual and his motive a desire for useful information, but on the
representative of a great Empire they shed a light in which the dignity
of his country was necessarily affected and his own authority deplorably
diminished. For moral authority at that conjuncture was the sheet anchor
of the principal delegates. Although without a program, Mr. Lloyd George
would appear to have had an instinctive feeling, if not a reasoned
belief, that in matters of general policy his safest course would be to
keep pace with the President of the United States. For he took it for
granted that Mr. Wilson's views were identical with those of the
American people. One of his colleagues, endeavoring to dispel this
illusion, said: "Your province at this Conference is to lead. Your
colleagues, including Mr. Wilson, will follow. You have the Empire
behind you. Voice its aspirations. They coincide with those of the
English-speaking peoples of the world. Mr. Wilson has lost his
elections, therefore he does not stand for as much as you imagine. You
have won your elections, so you are the spokesman of a vast community
and the champion of a noble cause. You can knead the Conference at your
will. Assert your will. But even if you decide to act in harmony with
the United States, that does not mean subordinating British interests to
the President's views, which are not those of the majority of his
people." But Mr. Lloyd George, invincibly diffident--if diffidence it
be--shrank from marching alone, and on certain questions which mattered
much Mr. Wilson had his way.

One day there was an animated discussion in the twilight of the Paris
conclave while the press was belauding the plenipotentiaries for their
touching unanimity. The debate lay between the United States as voiced
by Mr. Wilson and Great Britain as represented by Mr. Lloyd George. On
the morrow, before the conversation was renewed, a colleague adjured the
British Premier to stand firm, urging that his contention of the
previous day was just in the abstract and beneficial to the Empire as
well. Mr. Lloyd George bowed to the force of these motives, but yielded
to the greater force of Mr. Wilson's resolve. "Put it to the test,"
urged the colleague. "I dare not," was the rejoinder. "Wilson won't
brook it. Already he threatens, if we do, to leave the Conference and
return home." "Well then, let him. If he did, we should be none the
worse off for his absence. But rest assured, he won't go. He cannot
afford to return home empty-handed after his splendid promises to his
countrymen and the world." Mr. Lloyd George insisted, however, and said,
"But he will take his army away, too." "What!" exclaimed the tempter.
"His army? Well, I only ..." but it would serve no useful purpose to
quote the vigorous answer in full.

This odd mixture of exaggerated self-confidence, mismeasurement of
forces, and pliability to external influences could not but be baleful
in one of the leaders of an assembly composed, as was the Paris
Conference, of men each with his own particular ax to grind and
impressible only to high moral authority or overwhelming military force.
It cannot be gainsaid that no one, not even his own familiars, could
ever foresee the next move in Mr. Lloyd George's game of statecraft, and
it is demonstrable that on several occasions he himself was so little
aware of what he would do next that he actually advocated as
indispensable measures diametrically opposed to those which he was to
propound, defend, and carry a week or two later. A conversation which
took place between him and one of his fellow-workers gives one the
measure of his irresolution and fitfulness. "Do tell me," said this
collaborator, "why it is that you members of the Supreme Council are
hurriedly changing to-day the decisions you came to after five months'
study, which you say was time well spent?"

"Because of fresh information we have received in the meanwhile. We know
more now than we knew then and the different data necessitate different
treatment."

"Yes, but the conditions have not changed since the Conference opened.
Surely they were the same in January as they are in June. Is not that
so?"

"No doubt, no doubt, but we did not ascertain them before June, so we
could not act upon them until now."

With the leading delegates thus drifting and the pieces on the political
chessboard bewilderingly disposed, outsiders came to look upon the
Conference as a lottery. Unhappily, it was a lottery in which there were
no mere blanks, but only prizes or heavy forfeits.

To sum up: the first British delegate, essentially a man of expedients
and shifts, was incapable of measuring more than an arc of the political
circle at a time. A comprehensive survey of a complicated situation was
beyond his reach. He relied upon imagination and intuition as
substitutes for precise knowledge and technical skill. Hence he himself
could never be sure that his decision, however carefully worked out,
would be final, seeing that in June facts might come to his cognizance
with which five months' investigations had left him unacquainted. This
incertitude about the elements of the problem intensified the ingrained
hesitancy that had characterized his entire public career and warped his
judgment effectually. The only approach to a guiding principle one can
find in his work at the Conference was the loosely held maxim that Great
Britain's best policy was to stand in with the United States in all
momentous issues and to identify Mr. Wilson with the United States for
most purposes of the Congress. Within these limits Mr. Lloyd George was
unyielding in fidelity to the cause of France, with which he merged that
of civilization.

M. Clemenceau is the incarnation of the tireless spirit of destruction.
Pulling down has ever been his delight, and it is largely to his success
in demolishing the defective work of rivals--and all human work is
defective--that he owes the position of trust and responsibility to
which the Parliament raised him during the last phase of the war.
Physically strong, despite his advanced age, he is mentally brilliant
and superficial, with a bias for paradox, epigram, and racy,
unconventional phraseology. His action is impulsive. In the Dreyfus days
I saw a good deal of M. Clemenceau in his editorial office, when he
would unburden his soul to M.M. Vaughan, the poet Quillard, and others.
Later on I approached him while he was chief of the government on a
delicate matter of international combined with national politics, on
which I had been requested to sound him by a friendly government, and I
found him, despite his developed and sobering sense of responsibility,
whimsical, impulsive, and credulous as before. When I next talked with
him he was the rebellious editor of _L'Homme Enchaîné_, whose corrosive
strictures upon the government of the day were the terror of Ministers
and censors. Soon afterward he himself became the wielder of the great
national gagging-machine, and in the stringency with which he
manipulated it he is said by his own countrymen to have outdone the
government of the Third Empire. His _alter ego_, Georges Mandel, is
endowed with qualities which supplement and correct those of his
venerable chief. His grasp of detail is comprehensive and firm, his
memory retentive, and his judgment bold and deliberate. A striking
illustration of the audacity of his resolve was given in the early part
of 1918. Marshal Joffre sent a telegram to President Wilson in
Washington, and because he had omitted to despatch it through the War
Ministry, M. Mandel, who is a strict disciplinarian, proposed that he be
placed under arrest. It was with difficulty that some public men moved
him to leniency.

M. Clemenceau, the professional destroyer, who can boast that he
overthrew eighteen Cabinets, or nineteen if we include his own, was
unquestionably the right man to carry on the war. He acquitted himself
of the task superbly. His faith in the Allies' victory was unwavering.
He never doubted, never flagged, never was intimidated by obstacles nor
wheedled by persons. Once during the armistice, in May or June, when
Marshal Foch expressed his displeasure that the Premier should have
issued military orders to troops under his command[48] without first
consulting him, he was on the point of dismissing the Marshal and
appointing General Pétain to succeed him.[49] Whether the qualities
which stood him in such good stead during the world struggle could be of
equal, or indeed of much, avail in the general constructive work for
which the Conference was assembled is a question that needs only to be
formulated. But in securing every advantage that could be conferred on
his own country his influence on the delegates was decisive. M.
Clemenceau, who before the war was the intimate friend of Austrian
journalists, hated his country's enemies with undying hate. And he loved
France passionately. I remember significant words of his, uttered at the
end of the year 1899 to an enterprising young man who had founded a
Franco-German review in Munich and craved his moral support. "Is it
possible," he exclaimed, "that it has already come to that? Well, a
nation is not conquered until it accepts defeat. Whenever France gives
up she will have deserved her humiliation."

At the Conference M. Clemenceau moved every lever to deliver his country
for all time from the danger of further invasions. And, being a realist,
he counted only on military safeguards. At the League of Nations he was
wont to sneer until it dawned upon him that it might be forged into an
effective weapon of national defense. And then he included it in the
litany of abstract phrases about right, justice, and the
self-determination of peoples which it became the fashion to raise to
the inaccessible heights where those ideals are throned which are to be
worshiped but not incarnated. The public somehow never took his
conversion to Wilsonianism seriously, neither did his political friends
until the League bade fair to become serviceable in his country's hands.
M. Clemenceau's acquaintanceship with international politics was at once
superior to that of the British Premier and very slender. But his
program at the Conference was simple and coherent, because independent
of geography and ethnography: France was to take Germany's leading
position in the world, to create powerful and devoted states in eastern
Europe, on whose co-operation she could reckon, and her allies were to
do the needful in the way of providing due financial and economic
assistance so as to enable her to address herself to the cultural
problems associated with her new rôle. And he left nothing undone that
seemed conducive to the attainment of that object. Against Mr. Wilson he
maneuvered to the extent which his adviser, M. Tardieu, deemed safe, and
one of his most daring speculations was on the President's journey to
the States, during which M. Clemenceau and his European colleagues hoped
to get through a deal of work on their own lines and to present Mr.
Wilson with the decisions ready for ratification on his return. But the
stratagem was not merely apparent; it was bruited abroad with indiscreet
details, whereupon the first American delegate on his return broke the
tables of their laws--one of which separated the Treaty from the
Covenant--and obliged them to begin anew. It is fair to add that M.
Clemenceau was no uncompromising partisan of the conquest of the left
bank of the Rhine, nor of colonial conquests. These currents took their
rise elsewhere. "We don't want protesting deputies in the French
Parliament," he once remarked in the presence of the French Minister of
Foreign Affairs.[50] Offered the choice between a number of bridgeheads
in Germany and the military protection of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, he
unhesitatingly decided for the latter, which had been offered to him by
President Wilson after the rejection of the Rhine frontier.

M. Clemenceau, whose remarkable mental alacrity, self-esteem, and love
of sharp repartee occasionally betrayed him into tactless sallies and
epigrammatic retorts, deeply wounded the pride of more than one delegate
of the lesser Powers in a way which they deemed incompatible alike with
circumspect statesmanship and the proverbial hospitality of his country.
For he is incapable of resisting the temptation to launch a _bon mot_,
however stinging. It would be ungenerous, however, to attach more
importance to such quickly forgotten utterances than he meant them to
carry. An instance of how he behaved toward the representatives of
Britain and France is worth recording, both as characterizing the man
and as extenuating his offense against the delegates of the lesser
Powers.

One morning[51] M. Clemenceau appeared at the Conference door, and
seemed taken aback by the large number of unfamiliar faces and figures
behind Mr. Balfour, toward whom he sharply turned with the brusque
interrogation: "Who are those people behind you? Are they English?"
"Yes, they are," was the answer. "Well, what do they want here?" "They
have come on the same errand as those who are now following you."
Thereupon the French Premier, whirling round, beheld with astonishment
and displeasure a band of Frenchmen moving toward him, led by M. Pichon,
the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In reply to his question as to the
motive of their arrival, he was informed that they were all experts, who
had been invited to give the Conference the benefit of their views about
the revictualing of Hungary. "Get out, all of you. You are not wanted
here," he cried in a commanding voice. And they all moved away meekly,
led by M. Pichon, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Their services proved
to be unnecessary, for the result reached by the Conference was
negative.

M. Tardieu cannot be separated from his chief, with whom he worked
untiringly, placing at his disposal his intimate knowledge of the nooks
and crannies of professional and unprofessional diplomacy. He is one of
the latest arrivals and most pushing workers in the sphere of the Old
World statecraft, affects Yankee methods, and speaks English. For
several years political editor of the _Temps_, he obtained access to the
state archives, and wrote a book on the Agadir incident which was well
received, and also a monograph on Prince von Bülow, became Deputy, aimed
at a ministerial portfolio, and was finally appointed Head Commissary to
the United States. Faced by difficulties there--mostly the specters of
his own former utterances evoked by German adversaries--his progress at
first was slow. He was accused of having approved some of the drastic
methods--especially the U-boat campaign--which the Germans subsequently
employed, because in the year 1912, when he was writing on the subject,
France believed that she herself possessed the best submarines, and she
meant to employ them. He was also challenged to deny that he had
written, in August, 1912, that in every war churches and monuments of
art must suffer, and that "no army, whatever its nationality, can
renounce this." He was further charged with having taken a kindly
interest in air-war and bomb-dropping, and given it as his opinion that
it would be absurd "to deprive of this advantage those who had made most
progress in perfecting this weapon." But M. Tardieu successfully
exorcised these and other ghosts. And on his return from the United
States he was charged with organizing a press bureau of his own, to
supply American journalists with material for their cablegrams, while at
the same time he collaborated with M. Clemenceau in reorganizing the
political communities of the world. It is only in the French Chamber, of
which he is a distinguished member, that M. Tardieu failed to score a
brilliant success. Few men are prophets in their own country, and he is
far from being an exception. At the Conference, in its later phases, he
found himself in frequent opposition to the chief of the Italian
delegation, Signor Tittoni. One of the many subjects on which they
disagreed was the fate of German Austria and the political structure and
orientation of the independent communities which arose on the ruins of
the Dual Monarchy. M. Tardieu favored an arrangement which would bring
these populations closely together and impart to the whole an
anti-Teutonic impress. If Germany could not be broken up into a number
of separate states, as in the days of her weakness, all the other
European peoples in the territories concerned could, and should, be
united against her, and at the least hindered from making common cause
with her. The unification of Germany he considered a grave danger, and
he strove to create a countervailing state system.

To the execution of this project there were formidable difficulties.
For one thing, none of the peoples in question was distinctly
anti-German. Each one was for itself. Again, they were not particularly
enamoured of one another, nor were their interests always concordant,
and to constrain them by force to unite would have been not to prevent
but to cause future wars. A Danubian federation--the concrete shape
imagined for this new bulwark of European peace--did not commend itself
to the Italians, who had their own reasons for their opposition besides
the Wilsonian doctrine, which they invoked. If it be true, Signor
Tittoni argues, that Austria does not desire to be amalgamated with
Germany, why not allow her to exercise the right of self-determination
accorded to other peoples? M. Tardieu, on the other hand, not content
with the prohibition to Germany to unite with Austria, proposed[52] that
in the treaty with Austria this country should be obliged to repress the
unionist movement in the population. This amendment was inveighed
against by the Italian delegation in the name of every principle
professed and transgressed by the world-mending Powers. Even from the
French point of view he declared it perilous, inasmuch as there was, and
could be, no guarantee that a Danubian confederation would not become a
tool in Germany's hands.

Two things struck me as characteristic of the principal
plenipotentiaries: as a rule, they eschewed first-rate men as
fellow-workers, one integer and several zeros being their favorite
formula, and they took no account of the flight of time, planning as
though an eternity were before them and then suddenly improvising as
though afraid of being late for a train or a steamer. These
peculiarities were baleful. The lesser states, having mainly first-class
men to represent them, illustrated the law of compensation, which
assigned many mediocrities to the Great Powers. The former were also the
most strenuous toilers, for their task bristled with difficulties and
abounded in startling surprises, and its accomplishment depended on the
will of others. Time and again they went over the ground with infinite
care, counting and gaging the obstacles in their way, devising means to
overcome them, and rehearsing the effort in advance. So much stress had
been laid during the war on psychology, and such far-reaching
consequences were being drawn from the Germans' lack of it, that these
public men made its cultivation their personal care. Hence, besides
tracing large-scale maps of provinces and comprehensive maps[53] of the
countries to be reconstituted, and ransacking history for arguments and
precedents, they conscientiously ascertained the idiosyncrasies of their
judges, in order to choose the surest ways to impress, convince, or
persuade them. And it was instructive to see them try their hand at this
new game.

One and all gave assent to the axiom that moderation would impress the
arbiters more favorably than greed, but not all of them wielded
sufficient self-command to act upon it. The more resourceful delegates,
whose tasks were especially redoubtable because they had to demand large
provinces coveted by others, prepared the ground by visiting personally
some of the more influential arbiters before these were officially
appointed, forcibly laying their cases before them and praying for their
advice. In reality they were striving to teach them elementary
geography, history, and politics. The Ulysses of the Conference, M.
Venizelos, first pilgrimaged to London, saying: "If the Foreign Office
is with Greece, what matters it who is against her." He hastened to call
on President Wilson as soon as that statesman arrived in Europe, and,
to the surprise of many, the two remained a long time closeted together.
"Whatever did you talk about?" asked a colleague of the Greek Premier.
"How did you keep Wilson interested in your national claims all that
time? You must have--" "Oh no," interrupted the modest statesman. "I
disposed of our claims succinctly enough. A matter of two minutes. Not
more. I asked him to dispense me from taking up his time with such
complicated issues which he and his colleagues would have ample
opportunity for studying. The rest of the time I was getting him to give
me the benefit of his familiarity with the subject of the League of
Nations. And he was good enough to enumerate the reasons why it should
be realized, and the way in which it must be worked. I was greatly
impressed by what he said." "Just fancy!" exclaimed a colleague,
"wasting all that time in talking about a scheme which will never come
to anything!" But M. Venizelos knew that the time was not misspent.
President Wilson was at first nowise disposed to lend a favorable ear to
the claims of Greece, which he thought exorbitant, and down to the very
last he gave his support to Bulgaria against Greece whole-heartedly. The
Cretan statesman passed many an hour of doubt and misgiving before he
came within sight of his goal. But he contrived to win the President
over to his way of envisaging many Oriental questions. He is a
past-master in practical psychology.

The first experiments of M. Venizelos, however, were not wholly
encouraging. For all the care he lavished on the chief luminaries of the
Conference seemingly went to supplement their education and fill up a
few of the geographical, historical, philological, ethnological, and
political gaps in their early instruction rather than to guide them in
their concrete decisions, which it was expected would be always left to
the "commissions of experts." But the fruit which took long to mature
ripened at last, and Greece had many of her claims allowed. Thus in
reorganizing the communities of the world the personal factor played a
predominant part. Venizelos was, so to say, a fixed star in the
firmament, and his light burned bright through every rift in the clouds.
His moderation astonished friends and opponents. Every one admired his
_exposé_ of his case as a masterpiece. His statesman-like setting, in
perspective, the readiness with which he put himself in the place of his
competitor and struck up a fair compromise, endeared him to many, and
his praises were in every one's mouth. His most critical hour--it lasted
for months--struck when he found himself struggling with the President
of the United States, who was for refusing the coast of Thrace to Greece
and bestowing it on Bulgaria. But with that dispute I deal in another
place.

Of Italy's two plenipotentiaries during the first five months one was
the most supple and the other the most inflexible of her statesmen,
Signor Orlando and Baron Sonnino. If her case was presented to the
Conference with less force than was attainable, the reasons are obvious.
Her delegates had a formal treaty on which they relied; to the attitude
of their country from the outbreak of the war to its finish they rightly
ascribed the possibility of the Allies' victory, and they expected to
see this priceless service recognized practically; the moderation and
suppleness of Signor Orlando were neutralized by the uncompromising
attitude of Baron Sonnino, and, lastly, the gaze of both statesmen was
fixed upon territorial questions and sentimental aspirations to the
neglect of economic interests vital to the state--in other words, they
beheld the issues in wrong perspective. But one of the most popular
figures among the delegates was Signor Orlando, whose eloquence and
imagination gave him advantages which would have been increased a
hundredfold if he might have employed his native language in the
conclave. For he certainly displayed resourcefulness, humor, a historic
sense, and the gift of molding the wills of men. But he was greatly
hampered. Some of his countrymen alleged that Baron Sonnino was his evil
genius. One of the many sayings attributed to him during the Conference
turned upon the quarrels of some of the smaller peoples among
themselves. "They are," the Premier said, "like a lot of hens being held
by the feet and carried to market. Although all doomed to the same fate,
they contrive to fight one another while awaiting it."

After the fall of Orlando's Cabinet, M. Tittoni repaired to Paris as
Italy's chief delegate. His reputation as one of Europe's principal
statesmen was already firmly established; he had spent several years in
Paris as Ambassador, and he and the late Di San Giuliano and Giolitti
were the men who broke with the Central Empires when these were about to
precipitate the World War. In French nationalist circles Signor Tittoni
had long been under a cloud, as the man of pro-German leanings. The
suspicion--for it was nothing more--was unfounded. On the contrary, M.
Tittoni is known to have gone with the Allies to the utmost length
consistent with his sense of duty to his own country. To my knowledge he
once gave advice which his Italian colleagues and political friends and
adversaries now bitterly regret was disregarded. The nature of that
counsel will one day be disclosed....

Of Japan's delegates, the Marquis Saionji and Baron Makino, little need
be said, seeing that their qualifications for their task were
demonstrated by the results. Mainly to statesmanship and skilful
maneuvering Japan is indebted for her success at the Paris Conference,
where her cause was referred by Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau to
Mr. Wilson to deal with. The behavior of her representatives was an
illuminating object-lesson in the worth of psychological tactics in
practical politics. They hardly ever appeared in the footlights,
remained constantly silent and observant, and were almost ignored by the
press. But they kept their eyes fixed on the goal. Their program was
simple. Amid the flitting shadows of political events they marched
together with the Allies, until these disagreed among themselves, and
then they voted with Great Britain and the United States. Occasionally
they went farther and proposed measures for the lesser states which
Britain framed, but desired to second rather than propose. Japan, at the
Conference, was a stanch collaborator of the two English-speaking
principals until her own opportunity came, and then she threw all her
hoarded energies into her cause, and by her firm resolve dispelled any
opposition that Mr. Wilson may have intended to offer. One of the most
striking episodes of the Conference was the swift, silent, and
successful campaign by which Japan had her secret treaty with China
hall-marked by the puritanical President of the United States, whose
sense of morality could not brook the secret treaties concluded by Italy
and Rumania with the Greater and Greatest Powers of Europe. Again, it
was with statesman-like sagacity that the Japanese judged the Russian
situation and made the best of it--first, shortly before the invitation
to Prinkipo, and, later, before the celebrated eight questions were
submitted to Admiral Kolchak. I was especially struck by an occurrence,
trivial in appearance, which demonstrated the weight which they rightly
attached to the psychological side of politics. Everybody in Paris
remarked, and many vainly complained of, the indifference, or rather,
unfriendliness, of which Russians were the innocent victims. Among the
Allied troops who marched under the Arc de Triomphe on July 14th there
were Rumanians, Greeks, Portuguese, and Indians, but not a single
Russian. A Russian general drove about in the forest of flags and
banners that day looking eagerly for symbols of his own country, but for
hours the quest was fruitless. At last, when passing the Japanese
Embassy, he perceived, to his delight, an enormous Russian flag waving
majestically in the breeze, side by side with that of Nippon. "I shed
tears of joy," he told his friend that evening, "and I vowed that
neither I nor my country would ever forget this touching mark of
friendship."

Japanese public opinion criticized severely the failure of their
delegates to obtain recognition of the equality of races or nations.
This judgment seems unjust, for nothing that they could have done or
said would have wrung from Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hughes their assent to the
doctrine, nor, if they had been induced to proclaim it, would it have
been practically applied.

In general, the lawyers were the most successful in stating their cases.
But one of the delegates of the lesser states who made the deepest
impression on those of the greater was not a member of the bar. The head
of the Polish delegation, Roman Dmowski, a picturesque, forcible
speaker, a close debater and resourceful pleader, who is never at a loss
for an image, a comparison, an _argumentum ad hominem_, or a repartee,
actually won over some of the arbiters who had at first leaned toward
his opponents--a noteworthy feat if one realizes all that it meant in an
assembly where potent influences were working against some of the
demands of resuscitated Poland. His speech in September on the future of
eastern Galicia was a veritable masterpiece.

M. Dmowski appeared at the Conference under all the disadvantages that
could be heaped upon a man who has incurred the resentment of the most
powerful international body of modern times. He had the misfortune to
have the Jews of the world as his adversaries. His Polish friends
explained this hostility as follows. His ardent nationalist sentiments
placed him in antagonism to every movement that ran counter to the
progress of his country on nationalist lines. For he is above all things
a Pole and a patriot. And as the Hebrew population of Poland,
disbelieving in the resurrection of that nation, had long since struck
up a cordial understanding with the states that held it in bondage, the
gifted author of a book on the _Foundations of Nationalism_, which went
through four editions, was regarded by the Hebrew elements of the
population as an irreconcilable enemy. In truth, he was only the leader
of a movement that was a historical necessity. One of the theses of the
work was the necessity of cultivating an anti-German spirit in Poland as
the only antidote against the Teuton virus introduced from Berlin
through economic and other channels. And as the Polish Jews, whose idiom
is a corrupted German dialect and whose leanings are often Teutonic,
felt that the attack upon the whole was an attack on the part, they
anathematized the author and held him up to universal obloquy. And there
has been no reconciliation ever since. In the United States, where the
Jewish community is numerous and influential, M. Dmowski found spokes in
his wheel at every stage of his journey, and in Paris, too, he had to
full-front a tremendous opposition, open and covert. Whatever unbiased
people may think of this explanation and of his hostility to the Germans
and their agents, Roman Dmowski deservedly enjoys the reputation of a
straightforward and loyal fighter for his country's cause, a man who
scorns underhand machinations and proclaims aloud--perhaps too
frankly--the principles for which he is fighting. Polish Jews who
appeared in Paris, some of them his bitterest antagonists, recognized
the chivalrous way in which he conducts his electoral and other
campaigns. Among the delegates his practical acquaintanceship with East
European polities entitled him to high rank. For he knows the world
better than any living statesman, having traveled over Europe, Asia, and
America. He undertook and successfully accomplished a delicate mission
in the Far East in the year 1905, rendering valuable services to his
country and to the cause of civilization.

"M. Dmowski's activity," his friends further assert, "is impassioned and
unselfish. The ambition that inspires and nerves him is not of the
personal sort, nor is his patriotism a ladder leading to place and
power. Polish patriotism occupies a category apart from that of other
European peoples, and M. Dmowski has typified it with rare fidelity and
completeness. If Wilsonianism had been realized, Polish nationalism
might have become an anachronism. To-day it is a large factor in
European politics and is little understood in the West. M. Dmowski lives
for his country. Her interests absorb his energies. He would probably
agree with the historian Paolo Sarpi, who said, 'Let us be Venetians
first and Christians after.' Of the two widely divergent currents into
which the main stream of political thought and sentiment throughout the
world is fast dividing itself, M. Dmowski moves with the national away
from the international championed by Mr. Wilson. The frequency with
which the leading spirits of Bolshevism turn out to be Jews--to the
dismay and disgust of the bulk of their own community--and the ingenuity
they displayed in spreading their corrosive tenets in Poland may not
have been without effect upon the energy of M. Dmowski's attitude toward
the demand of the Polish Jews to be placed in the privileged position of
wards of the League of Nations. But the principle of the protection of
minority--Jewish or Gentile--is assailable on grounds which have nothing
to do with race or religion." Some of the most interesting and
characteristic incidents at the Conference had the Polish statesman for
their principal actor, and to him Poland owes some of the most solid and
enduring benefits conferred on her at the Conference.

Of a different temper is M. Paderewski, who appeared in Paris to plead
his country's cause at a later stage of the labors of the Conference.
This eminent artist's energies were all blended into one harmonious
whole, so that his meetings with the great plenipotentiaries were never
disturbed by a jarring note. As soon as it was borne in upon him that
their decisions were as irrevocable as decrees of Fate, he bowed to them
and treated the authors as Olympians who had no choice but to utter the
stern fiat. Even when called upon to accept the obnoxious clause
protecting religious and ethnic minorities against which his colleague
had vainly fought, M. Paderewski sunk political passion in reason and
attuned himself to the helpful role of harmonizer. He held that it would
have been worse than useless to do otherwise. He was grieved that his
country must acquiesce in that decree, he regretted intensely the
necessity which constrained such proven friends of Poland as the Four to
pass what he considered a severe sentence on her; but he resigned
himself gracefully to the inevitable and thanked Fate's executioners for
their personal sympathy. This attitude evoked praise and admiration from
Messrs. Lloyd George and Wilson, and the atmosphere of the conclave
seemed permeated with a spirit that induced calm satisfaction and the
joy of elevated thoughts. M. Paderewski made a deep and favorable
impression on the Supreme Council.

Belgium sent her most brilliant parliamentarian, M. Hymans, as first
plenipotentiary to the Conference. He was assisted by the chief of the
Socialist party, M. Vandervelde, and by an eminent authority on
international law, M. Van den Heuvel. But for reasons which elude
analysis, none of the three delegates hit it off with the duumvirate
who were spinning the threads of the world's destinies. M. Hymans,
however, by his warmth, sincerity, and courage impressed the
representatives of the lesser states, won their confidence, became their
natural spokesman, and blazed out against all attempts--and they were
numerous and deliberate--to ignore their existence. It was he who by his
direct and eloquent protest took M. Clemenceau off his guard and
elicited the amazing utterance that the Powers which could put twelve
million soldiers in the field were the world's natural arbiters. In this
way he cleared the atmosphere of the distorting mists of catchwords and
shibboleths.

How decisive a role internal politics played in the designation of
plenipotentiaries to the Conference was shown with exceptional clearness
in the case of Rumania. That country had no legislature. The Constituent
Assembly, which had been dissolved owing to the German invasion, was
followed by no fresh elections. The King, with whom the initiative thus
rested, had reappointed M. Bratiano Chief of the Government, and M.
Bratiano was naturally desirous of associating his own historic name
with the aggrandizement of his country. But he also desired to secure
the services of his political rival, M. Take Jonescu, whose reputation
as a far-seeing statesman and as a successful negotiator is world-wide.
Among his qualifications are an acquaintanceship with European countries
and their affairs and a rare facility for give and take which is of the
essence of international politics. He can assume the initiative in
_pourparlers_, however uncompromising the outlook; frame plausible
proposals; conciliate his opponents by showing how thoroughly he
understands and appreciates their point of view, and by these means he
has often worked out seemingly hopeless negotiations to a satisfactory
issue. M. Clemenceau wrote of him, "C'est un grand Européen."[54]

M. Bratiano's bid for the services of his eminent opponent was coupled
with the offer of certain portfolios in the Cabinet to M. Jonescu and to
a number of his parliamentary supporters. While negotiations were slowly
proceeding by telegraph, M. Jonescu, who had already taken up his abode
in Paris, was assiduously weaving his plans. He began by assuming what
everybody knew, that the Powers would refuse to honor the secret treaty
with France, Britain, and Russia, which assigned to Rumania all the
territories to which she had laid claim, and he proposed first striking
up a compromise with the other interested states, then compacting
Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Greece into a solid
block, and asking the Powers to approve and ratify the new league. Truly
it was a genial conception worthy of a broad-minded statesman. It aimed
at a durable peace based on what he considered a fair settlement of
claims satisfactory to all, and it would have lightened the burden of
the Big Four. But whether it could have been realized by peoples moved
by turbid passions and represented by trustees, some of whom were
avowedly afraid to relinquish claims which they knew to be exorbitant,
may well be doubted.

But the issue was never put to the test. The two statesmen failed to
agree on the Cabinet question; M. Jonescu kept aloof from office, and
the post of second delegate fell to Rumania's greatest diplomatist and
philologist, M. Mishu, who had for years admirably represented his
country as Minister in the British capital. From the outset M.
Bratiano's position was unenviable, because he based his country's case
on the claims of the secret treaty, and to Mr. Wilson every secret
treaty which he could effectually veto was anathema. Between the two
men, in lieu of a bond of union, there was only a strong force of mutual
repulsion, which kept them permanently apart. They moved on different
planes, spoke different languages, and Rumania, in the person of her
delegates, was treated like Cinderella by her stepmother. The Council of
Three kept them systematically in the dark about matters which it
concerned them to know, negotiated over their heads, transmitted to
Bucharest injunctions which only they were competent to receive,
insisted on their compromising to accept future decrees of the
Conference without an inkling as to their nature, and on their admitting
the right of an alien institution--the League of Nations--to intervene
in favor of minorities against the legally constituted government of the
country. M. Bratiano, who in a trenchant speech inveighed against these
claims of the Great Powers to take the governance of Europe into their
own hands, withdrew from the Conference and laid his resignation in the
hands of the King.

One of the most remarkable debaters in this singular parliament, where
self-satisfied ignorance and dullness of apprehension were so hard to
pierce, was the youthful envoy of the Czechoslovaks, M. Benes. This
politician, who before the Conference came to an end was offered the
honorable task of forming a new Cabinet, which he wisely declined,
displayed a masterly grasp of Continental politics and a rare gift of
identifying his country's aspirations with the postulates of a settled
peace. A systematic thinker, he made a point of understanding his case
at the outset. He would begin his _exposé_ by detaching himself from all
national interests and starting from general assumptions recognized by
the Olympians, and would lead his hearers by easy stages to the
conclusions which he wished them to draw from their own premises. And
two of them, who had no great sympathy with his thesis, assured me that
they could detect no logical flaw in his argument. Moderation and
sincerity were the virtues which he was most eager to exhibit, and they
were unquestionably the best trump cards he could play. Not only had he
a firm grasp of facts and arguments, but he displayed a sense of measure
and open-mindedness which enabled him to implant his views on the minds
of his hearers.

Armenia's cause found a forcible and suasive pleader in Boghos Pasha,
whose way of marshaling arguments in favor of a contention that was
frowned upon by many commanded admiration. The Armenians asked for a
vast stretch of territory with outlets on the Black Sea and the
Mediterranean, but they were met with the objections that their total
population was insignificant; that only in one province were they in a
majority, and that their claim to Cilicia clashed with one of the
reserved rights of France. The ice, therefore, was somewhat thin in
parts, but Boghos Pasha skated over it gracefully. His description of
the Armenian massacres was thrilling. Altogether his _exposé_ was a
masterpiece, and was appreciated by Mr. Wilson and M. Clemenceau.

The Jugoslav delegates, MM. Vesnitch and Trumbitch, patriotic,
tenacious, uncompromising, had an early opportunity of showing the stuff
of which they were made. When they were told that the Jugoslav state was
not yet recognized and that the kingdom of Serbia must content itself
with two delegates, they lodged an indignant protest against both
decisions, and refused to appear at the Conference unless they were
allowed an adequate number of representatives. Thereupon the Great
Powers compromised the matter by according them three, and with stealthy
rage they submitted to the refusal of recognition. They were not again
heard of until one day they proposed that their dispute with Italy
about Fiume and the Dalmatian coast should be solved by submitting it to
President Wilson for arbitration. The expedient was original. President
Wilson, people remembered, had had an animated talk on the subject with
the Italian Premier, Orlando, and it was known that he had set his face
against Italy's claim and against the secret treaty that recognized it.
Consequently the Serbs were running no risk by challenging Signor
Orlando to lay the matter before the American delegate. Whether, all
things considered, it was a wise move to make has been questioned.
Anyhow, the Italian delegation declined the suggestion on a number of
grounds which several delegates considered convincing. The Conference,
it urged, had been convoked precisely for the purpose of hearing and
settling such disputes as theirs, and the Conference consisted, not of
one, but of many delegates, who collectively were better qualified to
deal with such problems than any one man. Europeans, too, could more
fully appreciate the arguments, and the atmosphere through which the
arguments should be contemplated, than the eminent American idealist,
who had more than once had to modify his judgment on European matters.
Again, to remove the discussion from the international court might well
be felt as a slight put upon the men who composed it. For why should
their verdict be less worth soliciting than that of the President of the
United States? True, Italy's delegates were themselves judges in that
tribunal, but the question to be tried was not a matter between two
countries, but an issue of much wider import--namely, what frontiers
accorded to the embryonic state of Jugoslavia would be most conducive to
the world's peace. And nobody, they held, could offer a more complete or
trustworthy answer than they and their European colleagues, who were
conversant with all the elements of the problem. Besides--but this
objection was not expressly formulated--had not Mr. Wilson already
decided against Italy? On these and other grounds, then, they decided to
leave the matter to the Conference. It was a delicate subject, and few
onlookers cared to open their minds on its merits.

Albania was represented by an old friend of mine, the venerable Turkhan
Pasha, who had been in diplomacy ever since the Congress of Berlin in
the 'seventies of last century, and who looked like a modernized Nestor.
I made his acquaintance many years ago, when he was Ambassador of Turkey
in St. Petersburg. He was then a favorite everywhere in the Russian
capital as a conscientious Ambassador, a charming talker, and a
professional peace-maker, who wished well to everybody. The Young Turks
having recalled him from St. Petersburg, he soon afterward became Grand
Vizier to the Mbret of Albania. Far resonant events removed the Mbret
from the throne, Turkhan Pasha from the Vizierate, and Albania from the
society of nations, and I next found my friend in Switzerland ill in
health, eating the bitter bread of exile, temporarily isolated from the
world of politics and waiting for something to turn up. A few years more
gave the Allies an unexpectedly complete victory and brought back
Turkhan Pasha to the outskirts of diplomacy and politics. He suddenly
made his appearance at the Paris Conference as the representative of
Albania and the friend of Italy.

Another Albanian friend of mine, Essad Pasha, whose plans for the
regeneration of his country differed widely from those of Turkhan, was
for a long while detained in Saloniki. By dint of solicitations and
protests, he at last obtained permission to repair to Paris and lay his
views before the Conference, where he had a curious interview with Mr.
Wilson. The President, having received from Albanians in the United
States many unsolicited judgments on the character and antecedents of
Essad Pasha, had little faith in his fitness to introduce and popularize
democratic institutions in Albania. And he unburdened himself of these
doubts to friends, who diffused the news. The Pasha asked for an
audience, and by dint of patience and perseverance his prayer was heard.
Five minutes before the appointed hour he was at the President's house,
accompanied by his interpreter, a young Albanian named Stavro, who
converses freely in French, Greek, and Turkish, besides his native
language. But while in the antechamber Essad, remembering that the
American President speaks nothing but pure English, suggested that
Stavro should drive over to the Hôtel Crillon for an interpreter to
translate from French. Thereupon one of the secretaries stopped him,
saying: "Although he cannot speak French, the President understands it,
so that a second interpreter will be unnecessary." Essad then addressed
Mr. Wilson in Albanian, Stavro translated his words into French, and the
President listened in silence. It was the impression of those in the
room that, at any rate, Mr. Wilson understood and appreciated the gist
of the Pasha's sharp criticism of Italy's behavior. But, to be on the
safe side, the President requested his visitor to set down on paper at
his leisure everything he had said and to send it to him.


PRESIDENT WILSON


President Wilson, before assuming the redoubtable rôle of world arbiter,
was hardly more than a name in Europe, and it was not a synonym for
statecraft. His ethical objections to the rule of Huerta in Mexico, his
attempt to engraft democratic principles there, and the anarchy that
came of it were matters of history. But the President of the nation to
whose unbounded generosity and altruism the world owes a debt of
gratitude that can only be acknowledged, not repaid, deservedly enjoyed
a superlative measure of respect from his foreign colleagues, and the
author of the project which was to link all nations together by ties of
moral kinship was literally idolized by the masses. Never has it fallen
to my lot to see any mortal so enthusiastically, so spontaneously
welcomed by the dejected peoples of the universe. His most casual
utterances were caught up as oracles. He occupied a height so far aloft
that the vicissitudes of everyday life and the contingencies of politics
seemingly could not touch him. He was given credit for a rare degree of
selflessness in his conceptions and actions and for a balance of
judgment which no storms of passion could upset. So far as one could
judge by innumerable symptoms, President Wilson was confronted with an
opportunity for good incomparably vaster than had ever before been
within the reach of man.

Soon after the opening of the Conference the shadowy outlines of his
portrait began to fill in, slowly at first, and before three months had
passed the general public beheld it fairly complete, with many of its
natural lights and shades. The quality of an active politician is never
more clearly brought out than when, raised to an eminent place, he is
set an arduous feat in sight of the multitude. Mr. Wilson's task was
manifestly congenial to him, for it was deliberately chosen by himself,
and it comprised the most tremendous problems ever tackled by man born
of woman. The means by which he set to work to solve them were
startlingly simple: the regeneration of the human race was to be
compassed by means of magisterial edicts secretly drafted and sternly
imposed on the interested peoples, together with a new and not wholly
appropriate nomenclature.

In his own country, where he has bitter adversaries as well as devoted
friends, Mr. Wilson was regarded by many as a composite being made up
of preacher, teacher, and politician. To these diverse elements they
refer the fervor and unction, the dogmatic tone, and the practised
shrewdness that marked his words and acts. Independent American opinion
doubted his qualifications to be a leader. As a politician, they said,
he had always followed the crowd. He had swum with the tide of public
sentiment in cardinal matters, instead of stemming or canalizing and
guiding it. Deficient in courageous initiative, he had contented himself
with merely executive functions. No new idea, no fresh policy, was
associated with his name. His singular attitude on the Mexican imbroglio
had provoked the sharp criticism even of friends and the condemnation of
political opponents. His utterances during the first stages of the World
War, such as the statement that the American people were too proud to
fight and had no concern with the causes and objects of the war,[55]
when contrasted with the opposite views which he propounded later on,
were ascribed to quick political evolution--but were not taken as
symptoms of a settled mind. He seemed a pacifist when his pride revolted
at the idea of settling any intelligible question by an appeal to
violence, and a semi-militarist when, having in his own opinion created
a perfectly safe and bloodless peace guarantee in the shape of the
League of Nations, he agreed to safeguard it by a military compact which
sapped its foundation. He owed his re-election for a second term partly,
it was alleged, to the belief that during the first he had kept his
country out of the war despite the endeavors of some of its eminent
leaders to bring it in; yet when firmly seated in the saddle, he
followed the leaders whom he had theretofore with-stood and obliged the
nation to fight.

As chief of the great country, his domestic critics add, which had just
turned victory's scale in favor of the Allies, Mr. Wilson saw a superb
opportunity to hitch his wagon to a star, and now for the first time he
made a determined bid for the leadership of the world. Here the idealist
showed himself at his best. But by the way of preparation he asked the
nation at the elections to refuse their votes to his political
opponents, despite the fact that they were loyally supporting his
policy, and to return only men of his own party, and in order to silence
their misgivings he declared that to elect Republican Senators would be
to repudiate the administration of the President of the United States at
a critical conjuncture. This was urged against him as the inexpiable
sin. The electors, however, sent his political opponents to the Senate,
whereupon the President organized his historic visit to Europe. It might
have become a turning-point in the world's history had he transformed
his authority and prestige into the driving-power requisite to embody
his beneficent scheme. But he wasted the opportunity for lack of moral
courage. Thus far American criticism. But the peoples of Europe ignored
the estimates of the President made by his fellow-countrymen, who, as
such, may be forgiven for failing to appreciate his apostleship, or set
the full value on his humanitarian strivings. The war-weary masses
judged him not by what he had achieved or attempted in the past, but by
what he proposed to do in the future. And measured by this standard, his
spiritual statue grew to legendary proportions.

Europe, when the President touched its shores, was as clay ready for the
creative potter. Never before were the nations so eager to follow a
Moses who would take them to the long-promised land where wars are
prohibited and blockades unknown. And to their thinking he was that
great leader. In France men bowed down before him with awe and
affection. Labor leaders in Paris told me that they shed tears of joy in
his presence, and that their comrades would go through fire and water to
help him to realize his noble schemes.[56] To the working classes in
Italy his name was a heavenly clarion at the sound of which the earth
would be renewed. The Germans regarded him and his humane doctrine as
their sheet-anchor of safety. The fearless Herr Muehlon said, "If
President Wilson were to address the Germans, and pronounce a severe
sentence upon them, they would accept it with resignation and without a
murmur and set to work at once." In German-Austria his fame was that of
a savior, and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the suffering
and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted. A touching instance of this
which occurred in the Austrian capital, when narrated to the President,
moved him to tears. There were some five or six thousand Austrian
children in the hospitals at Vienna who, as Christmas was drawing near,
were sorely in need of medicaments and much else. The head of the
American Red Cross took up their case and persuaded the Americans in
France to send two million dollars' worth of medicaments to Vienna.
These were duly despatched, and had got as far as Berne, when the French
authorities, having got wind of the matter, protested against this
premature assistance to infant enemies on grounds which the other
Allies had to recognize as technically tenable, and the medicaments were
ordered back to France from Berne. Thereupon Doctor Ferries, of the
International Red Cross, became wild with indignation and laid the
matter before the Swiss government, which undertook to send some
medicaments to the children, while the Americans were endeavoring to
move the French to allow at least some of the remedies to go through.
The children in the hospitals, when told that they must wait, were
bright and hopeful. "It will be all right," some of them exclaimed.
"Wilson is coming soon, and he will bring us everything."

Thus Mr. Wilson had become a transcendental hero to the European
proletarians, who in their homely way adjusted his mental and moral
attributes to their own ideal of the latter-day Messiah. His legendary
figure, half saint, half revolutionist, emerged from the transparent
haze of faith, yearning, and ignorance, as in some ecstatic vision. In
spite of his recorded acts and utterances the mythopeic faculty of the
peoples had given itself free scope and created a messianic democrat
destined to free the lower orders, as they were called, in each state
from the shackles of capitalism, legalized thraldom, and crushing
taxation, and each nation from sanguinary warfare. Truly, no human being
since the dawn of history has ever yet been favored with such a superb
opportunity. Mr. Wilson might have made a gallant effort to lift society
out of the deep grooves into which it had sunk, and dislodge the secular
obstacles to the enfranchisement and transfiguration of the human race.
At the lowest it was open to him to become the center of a countless
multitude, the heart of their hearts, the incarnation of their noblest
thought, on condition that he scorned the prudential motives of
politicians, burst through the barriers of the old order, and deployed
all his energies and his full will-power in the struggle against sordid
interests and dense prejudice. But he was cowed by obstacles which his
will lacked the strength to surmount, and instead of receiving his
promptings from the everlasting ideals of mankind and the inspiriting
audacities of his own highest nature and appealing to the peoples
against their rulers, he felt constrained in the very interest of his
cause to haggle and barter with the Scribes and the Pharisees, and ended
by recording a pitiful answer to the most momentous problems couched in
the impoverished phraseology of a political party.

Many of his political friends had advised the President not to visit
Europe lest the vast prestige and influence which he wielded from a
distance should dwindle unutilized on close contact with the realists'
crowd. Even the war-god Mars, when he descended into the ranks of the
combatants on the Trojan side, was wounded by a Greek, and, screaming
with pain, scurried back to Olympus with paling halo. But Mr. Wilson
decided to preside and to direct the fashioning of his project, and to
give Europe the benefit of his advice. He explained to Congress that he
had expressed the ideals of the country for which its soldiers had
consciously fought, had had them accepted "as the substance of their own
thoughts and purpose" by the statesmen of the associated governments,
and now, he concluded: "I owe it to them to see to it, in so far as in
me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and
no possible effort omitted to realize them. It is now my duty to play my
full part in making good what they offered their lives and blood to
obtain. I can think of no call to service which could transcend
this."[57] No intention could well be more praiseworthy.

Soon after the _George Washington_, flying the presidential flag, had
steamed out of the Bay on her way to Europe, the United Press received
from its correspondent on board, who was attached to Mr. Wilson's
person, a message which invigorated the hopes of the world and evoked
warm outpourings of the seared soul of suffering man in gratitude toward
the bringer of balm. It began thus: "The President sails for Europe to
uphold American ideals, and literally to fight for his Fourteen Points.
The President, at the Peace Table, will insist on the freedom of the
seas and a general disarmament.... The seas, he holds, ought to be
guarded by the whole world."

Since then the world knows what to think of the literal fighting at the
Peace Table. The freedom of the seas was never as much as alluded to at
the Peace Table, for the announcement of Mr. Wilson's militant
championship brought him a wireless message from London to the effect
that that proposal, at all events, must be struck out of his program if
he wished to do business with Britain. And without a fight or a
remonstrance the President struck it out. The Fourteen Points were not
discussed at the Conference.[58] One may deplore, but one cannot
misunderstand, what happened. Mr. Wilson, too, had his own fixed aim to
attain: intent on associating his name with a grandiose humanitarian
monument, he was resolved not to return to his country without some sort
of a covenant of the new international life. He could not afford to go
home empty-handed. Therein lay his weakness and the source of his
failure. For whenever his attitude toward the Great Powers was taken to
mean, "Unless you give me my Covenant, you cannot have your Treaty," the
retort was ready: "Without our Treaty there will be no Covenant."

Like Dejoces, the first king of the Medes, who, having built his palace
at Ecbatana, surrounded it with seven walls and permanently withdrew his
person from the gaze of his subjects, Mr. Wilson in Paris admitted to
his presence only the authorized spokesmen of states and causes, and not
all of these. He declined to receive persons who thought they had a
claim to see him, and he received others who were believed to have none.
During his sojourn in Paris he took many important Russian affairs in
hand after having publicly stated that no peace could be stable so long
as Russia was torn by internal strife. And as familiarity with Russian
conditions was not one of his accomplishments, he presumably needed
advice and help from those acquainted with them. Now a large number of
Russians, representing all political parties and four governments, were
in Paris waiting to be consulted. But between January and May not one of
them was ever asked for information or counsel. Nay, more, those who
respectfully solicited an audience were told to wait. In the meanwhile
men unacquainted with the country and people were sent by Mr. Wilson to
report on the situation, and to begin by obtaining the terms of an
acceptable treaty from the Bolshevik government.

The first plenipotentiary of one of the principal lesser states was for
months refused an audience, to the delight of his political adversaries,
who made the most of the circumstance at home. An eminent diplomatist
who possessed considerable claims to be vouchsafed an interview was put
off from week to week, until at last, by dint of perseverance, as it
seemed to him, the President consented to see him. The diplomatist,
pleased at his success, informed a friend that the following Wednesday
would be the memorable day. "But are you not aware," asked the friend,
"that on that day the President will be on the high seas on his way back
to the United States?" He was not aware of it. But when he learned that
the audience had been deliberately fixed for a day when Mr. Wilson would
no longer be in France he felt aggrieved.

In Italy the President's progress was a veritable triumph. Emperors and
kings had roused no such enthusiasm. One might fancy him a deity
unexpectedly discovered under the outward appearance of a mortal and now
being honored as the god that he was by ecstatic worshipers. Everything
he did was well done, everything he said was nobly conceived and worthy
of being treasured up. In these dispositions a few brief months wrought
a vast difference.

In this respect an instructive comparison might be made between Tsar
Alexander I at the Vienna Congress and the President of the United
States at the Conference of Paris. The Russian monarch arrived in the
Austrian capital with the halo of a Moses focusing the hopes of all the
peoples of Europe. His reputation for probity, public spirit, and lofty
aspirations had won for him the good-will and the anticipatory blessings
of war-weary nations. He, too, was a mystic, believed firmly in occult
influences, so firmly indeed that he accepted the fitful guidance of an
ecstatic lady whose intuition was supposed to transcend the sagacity of
professional statesmen. And yet the Holy Alliance was the supreme
outcome of his endeavors, as the League of Nations was that of Mr.
Wilson's. In lieu of universal peace all eastern Europe was still
warring and revolting in September and the general outlook was
disquieting. The disheartening effect of the contrast between the
promise and the achievement of the American statesman was felt
throughout the world. But Mr. Wilson has the solace to know that people
hardly ever reach their goal--though they sometimes advance fairly near
to it. They either die on the way or else it changes or they do.

It was doubtless a noble ambition that moved the Prime Ministers of the
Great Powers and the chief of the North American Republic to give their
own service to the Conference as heads of their respective missions. For
they considered themselves to be the best equipped for the purpose, and
they were certainly free from such prejudices as professional traditions
and a confusing knowledge of details might be supposed to engender. But
in almost every respect it was a grievous mistake and the source of
others still more grievous. True, in his own particular sphere each of
them had achieved what is nowadays termed greatness. As a war leader Mr.
Lloyd George had been hastily classed with Marlborough and Chatham, M.
Clemenceau compared to Danton, and Mr. Wilson set apart in a category to
himself. But without questioning these journalistic certificates of fame
one must admit that all three plenipotentiaries were essentially
politicians, old parliamentary hands, and therefore expedient-mongers
whose highest qualifications for their own profession were drawbacks
which unfitted them for their self-assumed mission. Of the concrete
world which they set about reforming their knowledge was amazingly
vague. "Frogs in the pond," says the Japanese proverb, "know naught of
the ocean." There was, of course, nothing blameworthy in their
unacquaintanceship with the issues, but only in the offhandedness with
which they belittled its consequences. Had they been conversant with the
subject or gifted with deeper insight, many of the things which seemed
particularly clear to them would have struck them as sheer inexplicable,
and among these perhaps their own leadership of the world-parliament.

What they lacked, however, might in some perceptible degree have been
supplied by enlisting as their helpers men more happily endowed than
themselves. But they deliberately chose mediocrities. It is a mark of
genial spirits that they are well served, but the plenipotentiaries of
the Conference were not characterized by it. Away in the background some
of them had familiars or casual prompters to whose counsels they were
wont to listen, but many of the adjoints who moved in the limelight of
the world-stage were gritless and pithless.

As the heads of the principal governments implicitly claimed to be the
authorized spokesmen of the human race and endowed with unlimited
powers, it is worth noting that this claim was boldly challenged by the
peoples' organs in the press. Nearly all the journals read by the masses
objected from the first to the dictatorship of the group of Premiers,
Mr. Wilson being excepted. "The modern parasite," wrote a respectable
democratic newspaper,[59] "is the politician. Of all the privileged
beings who have ever governed us he is the worst. In that, however,
there is nothing surprising ... he is not only amoral, but incompetent
by definition. And it is this empty-headed individual who is intrusted
with the task of settling problems with the very rudiments of which he
is unacquainted." Another French journal[60] wrote: "In truth it is a
misfortune that the leaders of the Conference are Cabinet chiefs, for
each of them is obsessed by the carking cares of his domestic policy.
Besides, the Paris Conference takes on the likeness of a lyrical drama
in which there are only tenors. Now would even the most beautiful work
in the world survive this excess of beauties?"

The truth as revealed by subsequent facts would seem to be that each of
the plenipotentiaries recognizing parliamentary success as the source of
his power was obsessed by his own political problems and stimulated by
his own immediate ends. As these ends, however incompatible with each
other, were believed by each one to tend toward the general object, he
worked zealously for their attainment. The consequences are notorious.
M. Clemenceau made France the hub of the universe. Mr. Lloyd George
harbored schemes which naturally identified the welfare of mankind with
the hegemony of the English-speaking races. Signor Orlando was inspired
by the "sacred egotism" which had actuated all Italian Cabinets since
Italy entered the war, and President Wilson was burning to associate his
name and also that of his country with the vastest and noblest
enterprise inscribed in the annals of history. And each one moved over
his own favorite route toward his own goal. It was an apt illustration
of the Russian fable of the swan, the crab, and the pike being harnessed
together in order to remove a load. The swan flew upward, the crab
crawled backward, the pike made with all haste for the water, and the
load remained where it was.

A lesser but also a serious disadvantage of the delegation of government
chiefs made itself felt in the procedure. Embarrassing delays were
occasioned by the unavoidable absences of the principal delegates whom
pressure of domestic politics called to their respective capitals, as
well as by their tactics, and their colleagues profited by their absence
for the sake of the good cause. Thus all Paris, as we saw, was aware
that the European chiefs, whose faith in Wilsonian orthodoxy was still
feeble at that time, were prepared to take advantage of the President's
sojourn in Washington to speed up business in their own sense and to
confront him on his return with accomplished facts. But when, on his
return, he beheld their handiwork he scrapped it, and a considerable
loss of time ensued for which the world has since had to pay very
heavily.

Again, when Premier Orlando was in Rome after Mr. Wilson's appeal to
the Italian people, a series of measures was passed by the delegates in
Paris affecting Italy, diminishing her importance at the Conference, and
modifying the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of London. Some of
these decisions had to be canceled when the Italians returned. These
stratagems had an undesirable effect on the Italians.

Not the least of the Premiers' disabilities lay in the circumstance that
they were the merest novices in international affairs. Geography,
ethnography, psychology, and political history were sealed books to
them. Like the rector of Louvain University who told Oliver Goldsmith
that, as he had become the head of that institution without knowing
Greek, he failed to see why it should be taught there, the chiefs of
state, having attained the highest position in their respective
countries without more than an inkling of international affairs, were
unable to realize the importance of mastering them or the impossibility
of repairing the omission as they went along.

They displayed their contempt for professional diplomacy and this
feeling was shared by many, but they extended that sentiment to certain
diplomatic postulates which can in no case be dispensed with, because
they are common to all professions. One of them is knowledge of the
terms of the problems to be solved. No conjuncture could have been less
favorable for an experiment based on this theory. The general situation
made a demand on the delegates for special knowledge and experience,
whereas the Premiers and the President, although specialists in nothing,
had to act as specialists in everything. Traditional diplomacy would
have shown some respect for the law of causality. It would have sent to
the Conference diplomatists more or less acquainted with the issues to
be mooted and also with the mentality of the other negotiators, and it
would have assigned to them a number of experts as advisers. It would
have formed a plan similar to that proposed by the French authorities
and rejected by the Anglo-Saxons. In this way at least the technical
part of the task would have been tackled on right lines, the war would
have been liquidated and normal relations quickly re-established among
the belligerent states. It may be objected that this would have been a
meager contribution to the new politico-social fabric. Undoubtedly it
would, but, however meager, it would have been a positive gain. Possibly
the first stone of a new world might have been laid once the ruins of
the old were cleared away. But even this modest feat could not be
achieved by amateurs working in desultory fashion and handicapped by
their political parties at home. The resultant of their apparent
co-operation was a sum in subtraction because dispersal or effort was
unavoidably substituted for concentration.

Whether one contemplates them in the light of their public acts or
through the prism of gossip, the figures cut by the delegates of the
Great Powers were pathetic. Giants in the parliamentary sphere, they
shrank to the dimensions of dwarfs in the international. In matters of
geography, ethnography, history, and international politics they were
helplessly at sea, and the stories told of certain of their efforts to
keep their heads above water while maintaining a simulacrum of dignity
would have been amusing were the issues less momentous. "Is it after
Upper or Lower Silesia that those greedy Poles are hankering?" one
Premier is credibly reported to have asked some months after the Polish
delegation had propounded and defended its claims and he had had time to
familiarize himself with them. "Please point out to me Dalmatia on the
map," was another characteristic request, "and tell me what connection
there is between it and Fiume." One of the principal plenipotentiaries
addressed a delegate who is an acquaintance of mine approximately as
follows: "I cannot understand the spokesmen of the smaller states. To me
they seem stark mad. They single out a strip of territory and for no
intelligible reason flock round it like birds of prey round a corpse on
the field of battle. Take Silesia, for example. The Poles are clamoring
for it as if the very existence of their country depended on their
annexing it. The Germans are still more crazy about it. But for their
eagerness I suppose there is some solid foundation. But how in Heaven's
name do the Armenians come to claim it? Just think of it, the Armenians!
The world has gone mad. No wonder France has set her foot down and
warned them off the ground. But what does France herself want with it?
What is the clue to the mystery?" My acquaintance, in reply, pointed out
as considerately as he could that Silesia was the province for which
Poles and Germans were contending, whereas the Armenians were pleading
for Cilicia, which is farther east, and were, therefore, frowned upon by
the French, who conceive that they have a civilizing mission there and
men enough to accomplish it.

It is characteristic of the epoch, and therefore worthy of the
historian's attention, that not only the members of the Conference, but
also other leading statesmen of Anglo-Saxon countries, were wont to make
a very little knowledge of peoples and countries go quite a far way. Two
examples may serve to familiarize the reader with the phenomenon and to
moderate his surprise at the defects of the world-dictators in Paris.
One English-speaking statesman, dealing with the Italian government[61]
and casting around for some effective way of helping the Italian people
out of their pitiable economic plight, fancied he hit upon a felicitous
expedient, which he unfolded as follows. "I venture," he said, "to
promise that if you will largely increase your cultivation of bananas
the people of my country will take them all. No matter how great the
quantities, our market will absorb them, and that will surely make a
considerable addition to your balance on the right side." At first the
Italians believed he was joking. But finding that he really meant what
he said, they ruthlessly revealed his idea to the nation under the
heading, "Italian bananas!"

Here is the other instance. During the war the Polish people was
undergoing unprecedented hardships. Many of the poorer classes were
literally perishing of hunger. A Polish commission was sent to an
English-speaking country to interest the government and people in the
condition of the sufferers and obtain relief. The envoys had an
interview with a Secretary of State, who inquired to what port they
intended to have the foodstuffs conveyed for distribution in the
interior of Poland. They answered: "We shall have them taken to Dantzig.
There is no other way." The statesman reflected a little and then said:
"You may meet with difficulties. If you have them shipped to Dantzig you
must of course first obtain Italy's permission. Have you got it?" "No.
We had not thought of that. In fact, we don't yet see why Italy need be
approached." "Because it is Italy who has command of the Mediterranean,
and if you want the transport taken to Dantzig it is the Italian
government that you must ask!"[62]

The delegates picked up a good deal of miscellaneous information about
the various countries whose future they were regulating, and to their
credit it should be said that they put questions to their informants
without a trace of false pride. One of the two chief delegates wending
homeward from a sitting at which M. Jules Cambon had spoken a good deal
about those Polish districts which, although they contained a majority
of Germans, yet belonged of right to Poland, asked the French delegate
why he had made so many allusions to Frederick the Great. "What had
Frederick to do with Poland?" he inquired. The answer was that the
present German majority of the inhabitants was made up of colonists who
had immigrated into the districts since the time of Frederick the Great
and the partition of Poland. "Yes, I see," exclaimed the statesman, "but
what had Frederick the Great to do with the partition of Poland?" ... In
the domain of ethnography there were also many pitfalls and accidents.
During an official _exposé_ of the Oriental situation before the Supreme
Council, one of the Great Four, listening to a narrative of Turkish
misdeeds, heard that the Kurds had tortured and killed a number of
defenseless women, children, and old men. He at once interrupted the
speaker with the query: "You now call them Kurds. A few minutes ago you
said they were Turks. I take it that the Kurds and the Turks are the
same people?" Loath to embarrass one of the world's arbiters, the
delegate respectfully replied, "Yes, sir, they are about the same, but
the worse of the two are the Kurds."[63]

Great Britain's first delegate, with engaging candor sought to disarm
criticism by frankly confessing in the House of Commons that he had
never before heard of Teschen, about which such an extraordinary fuss
was then being made, and by asking: "How many members of the House have
ever heard of Teschen? Yet," he added significantly, "Teschen very
nearly produced an angry conflict between two allied states."[64]

The circumstance that an eminent parliamentarian had never heard of
problems that agitate continental peoples is excusa

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/14477