Chapter V: Part 5

[68] The reply, of which I possess what was given to me as a copy, is dated Paris, January 9, 1919, and is in French.

[69] Imagine, for instance, the condition of mind into which the following day's work must have thrown the American statesman, beset as he was with political worries of his own. The extract quoted is taken from _The Daily Mail_ of April 18, 1919 (Paris edition).

President Wilson had a busy day yesterday, as the following list of engagements shows: 11 A.M. Dr. Wellington Koo, to present the Chinese Delegation to the Peace Conference. 11.10 A.M. Marquis de Vogué had a delegation of seven others, representing the Congrès Français, to present their view as to the disposition of the left bank of the Rhine. 11.30 A.M. Assyrian and Chaldean Delegation, with a message from the Assyrian-Chaldean nation. 11.45 A.M. Dalmatian Delegation, to present to the President the result of the plebiscite of that part of Dalmatia occupied by Italians. _Noon_. M. Bucquet, Chargé d'Affaires of San Marino, to convey the action of the Grand Council of San Marino, conferring on the President Honorary Citizenship in the Republic of San Marino. 12.10 P.M. M. Colonder, Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs. 12.20 P.M. Miss Rose Schneiderman and Miss Mary Anderson, delegates of the National Women's Trade Union League of the United States. 12.30 P.M. The Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Orthodox Eastern Church. 12.45 P.M. Essad Pasha, delegate of Albania, to present the claims of Albania. 1 P.M. M.M.L. Coromilas, Greek Minister at Rome, to pay his respects. _Luncheon_. Mr. Newton D. Baker, Secretary for War. 4 P.M. Mr. Herbert Hoover. 4.15 P.M. M. Bratiano, of the Rumanian Delegation. 4.30 P.M. Dr. Affonso Costa, former Portuguese Minister, Portuguese Delegate to the Peace Conference. 4.45 P.M. Boghos Nubar Pasha, president of the Armenian National Delegation, accompanied by M.A. Aharoman and Professor A. Der Hagopian, of Robert College. 5.15 P.M. M. Pasitch, of the Serbian Delegation. 5.30 P.M. Mr. Frank Walsh, of the Irish-American Delegation.

IV

CENSORSHIP AND SECRECY

Never was political veracity in Europe at a lower ebb than during the Peace Conference. The blinding dust of half-truths cunningly mixed with falsehood and deliberately scattered with a lavish hand, obscured the vision of the people, who were expected to adopt or acquiesce in the judgments of their rulers on the various questions that arose. Four and a half years of continuous and deliberate lying for victory had disembodied the spirit of veracity and good faith throughout the world of politics. Facts were treated as plastic and capable of being shaped after this fashion or that, according to the aim of the speaker or writer. Promises were made, not because the things promised were seen to be necessary or desirable, but merely in order to dispose the public favorably toward a policy or an expedient, or to create and maintain a certain frame of mind toward the enemies or the Allies. At elections and in parliamentary discourses, undertakings were given, some of which were known to be impossible of fulfilment. Thus the ministers in some of the Allied countries bound themselves to compel the Germans not only to pay full compensation for damage wantonly done, but also to defray the entire cost of the war.

The notion that the enemy would thus make good all losses was manifestly preposterous. In a century the debt could not be wiped out, even though the Teutonic people could be got to work steadily and selflessly for the purpose. For their productivity would be unavailing if their victorious adversaries were indisposed to admit the products to their markets. And not only were the governments unwilling, but some of the peoples announced their determination to boycott German wares on their own initiative. None the less the nations were for months buoyed up with the baleful delusion that all their war expenses would be refunded by the enemy.[70]

It was not the governments only, however, who, after having for over four years colored and refracted the truth, now continued to twist and invent "facts." The newspapers, with some honorable exceptions, buttressed them up and even outstripped them. Plausible unveracity thus became a patriotic accomplishment and a recognized element of politics. Parties and states employed it freely. Fiction received the hall-mark of truth and fancies were current as facts. Public men who had solemnly hazarded statements belied by subsequent events denied having ever uttered them. Never before was the baleful theory that error is helpful so systematically applied as during the war and the armistice. If the falsehoods circulated and the true facts suppressed were to be collected and published in a volume, one would realize the depth to which the standard of intellectual and moral integrity was lowered.[71]

The censorship was retained by the Great Powers during the Conference as a sort of soft cushion on which the self-constituted dispensers of Fate comfortably reposed. In Paris, where it was particularly severe and unreasoning, it protected the secret conclave from the harsh strictures of the outside world, concealing from the public, not only the incongruities of the Conference, but also many of the warnings of contemporary history. In the opinion of unbiased Frenchmen no such rigorous, systematic, and short-sighted repression of press liberty had been known since the Third Empire as was kept up under the rule of the great tribune whose public career had been one continuous campaign against every form of coercion. This twofold policy of secrecy on the part of the delegates and censorship on the part of the authorities proved incongruous as well as dangerous, for, upheld by the eminent statesmen who had laid down as part of the new gospel the principle of "open covenants openly arrived at," it furnished the world with a fairly correct standard by which to interpret the entire phraseology of the latter-day reformers. Events showed that only by applying that criterion could the worth of their statements of fact and their promises of amelioration be gaged. And it soon became clear that most of their utterances like that about open covenants were to be construed according to the maxim of _lucus a non lucendo_.

It was characteristic of the system that two American citizens were employed to read the cablegrams arriving from the United States to French newspapers. The object was the suppression of such messages as tended to throw doubt on the useful belief that the people of the great American Republic were solid behind their President, ready to approve his decisions and acts, and that his cherished Covenant, sure of ratification, would serve as a safe guarantee to all the states which the application of his various principles might leave strategically exposed. In this way many interesting items of intelligence from the United States were kept out of the newspapers, while others were mutilated and almost all were delayed. Protests were unavailing. Nor was it until several months were gone by that the French public became aware of the existence of a strong current of American opinion which favored a critical attitude toward Mr. Wilson's policy and justified misgivings as to the finality of his decisions. It was a sorry expedient and an unsuccessful one.

On another occasion strenuous efforts are reported to have been made through the intermediary of President Wilson to delay the publication in the United States of a cablegram to a journal there until the Prime Minister of Britain should deliver a speech in the House of Commons. An accident balked these exertions and the message appeared.

Publicity was none the less strongly advocated by the plenipotentiaries in their speeches and writings. These were as sign-posts pointing to roads along which they themselves were incapable of moving. By their own accounts they were inveterate enemies of secrecy and censorship. The President of the United States had publicly said that he "could not conceive of anything more hurtful than the creation of a system of censorship that would deprive the people of a free republic such as ours of their undeniable right to criticize public officials." M. Clemenceau, who suffered more than most publicists from systematic repression, had changed the name of his newspaper from the _L'Homme Libre_ to _L'Homme Enchaîné_, and had passed a severe judgment on "those friends of liberty" (the government) who tempered freedom with preventive repression measured out according to the mood uppermost at the moment.[72] But as soon as he himself became head of the government he changed his tactics and called his journal _L'Homme Libre_ again. In the Chamber he announced that "publicity for the 'debates' of the Conference was generally favored," but in practice he rendered the system of gagging the press a byword in Europe. Drawing his own line of demarcation between the permissible and the illicit, he informed the Chamber that so long as the Conference was engaged on its arduous work "it must not be said that the head of one government had put forward a proposal which was opposed by the head of another government."[73] As though the disagreements, the bickerings, and the serious quarrels of the heads of the governments could long be concealed from the peoples whose spokesmen they were!

That bargainings went on at the Conference which a plain-dealing world ought to be apprised of is the conclusion which every unbiased outsider will draw from the singular expedients resorted to for the purpose of concealing them. Before the Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, State-Secretary Lansing confessed that when, after the treaty had been signed, the French Senate called for the minutes of the proceedings on the Commission of the League of Nations, President Wilson telegraphed from Washington to the Peace Commission requesting it to withhold them. He further admitted that the only written report of the discussions in existence was left in Paris, outside the jurisdiction of the United States Senate. When questioned as to whether, in view of this system of concealment, the President's promise of "open covenants openly arrived at" could be said to have been honestly redeemed, Mr. Lansing answered, "I consider that was carried out."[74] It seems highly probable that in the same and only in the same sense will the Treaty and the Covenant be carried out in the spirit or the letter.

During the fateful days of the Conference preventive censorship was practised with a degree of rigor equaled only by its senselessness. As late as the month of June, the columns of the newspapers were checkered with blank spaces. "Scarcely a newspaper in Paris appears uncensored at present," one press organ wrote. "Some papers protest, but protests are in vain."[75]

"Practically not a word as to the nature of the Peace terms that France regards as most vital to her existence appears in the French papers this morning," complained a journal at the time when even the Germans were fully informed of what was being enacted. On one occasion _Bonsoir_ was seized for expressing the view that the Treaty embodied an Anglo-Saxon peace;[76] on another for reproducing an interview with Marshal Foch that had already appeared in a widely circulated Paris newspaper.[77] By way of justifying another of these seizures the French censor alleged that an article in the paper was deemed uncomplimentary to Mr. Lloyd George. The editor replied in a letter to the British Premier affirming that there was nothing in the article but what Mr. Lloyd George could and should be proud of. In fact, it only commended him "for having served the interests of his country most admirably and having had precedence given to them over all others." The letter concluded: "We are apprehensive that in the whole business there is but one thing truly uncomplimentary, and that is that the French censorship, for the purpose of strangling the French press, should employ your name, the name of him who abolished censorship many weeks ago."[78]

Even when British journalists were dealing with matters as unlikely to cause trouble as a description of the historic proceedings at Versailles at which the Germans received the Peace Treaty, the censor held back their messages, from five o'clock in the afternoon till three the next morning.[79] Strange though it may seem, it was at first decided that no newspaper-men should be allowed to witness the formal handing of the Treaty to the enemy delegates! For it was deemed advisable in the interests of the world that even that ceremonial should be secret.[80] These singular methods were impressively illustrated and summarized in a cartoon representing Mr. Wilson as "The new wrestling champion," throwing down his adversary, the press, whose garb, composed of journals, was being scattered in scraps of paper to the floor, and under the picture was the legend: "It is forbidden to publish what Marshal Foch says. It is forbidden to publish what Mr. George thinks. It is forbidden to publish the Treaty of Peace with Germany. It is forbidden to publish what happened at ... and to make sure that nothing else will be published, the censor systematically delays the transmission of every telegram."[81]

In the Chamber the government was adjured to suppress the institution of censorship once the Treaty was signed by the Germans, and Ministers were reminded of the diatribes which they had pronounced against that institution in the years of their ambitions and strivings. In vain Deputies described and deplored the process of demoralization that was being furthered by the methods of the government. "In the provinces as well as in the capital the journals that displease are seized, eavesdroppers listen to telephonic conversations, the secrets of private letters are violated. Arrangements are made that certain telegrams shall arrive too late, and spies are delegated to the most private meetings. At a recent gathering of members of the National Press, two spies were surprised, and another was discovered at the Federation of the Radical Committees of the Oise."[82] But neither the signature of the Treaty nor its ratification by Germany occasioned the slightest modification in the system of restrictions. Paris continued in a state of siege and the censors were the busiest bureaucrats in the capital.

One undesirable result of this régime of keeping the public in the dark and indoctrinating it in the views always narrow, and sometimes mischievous, which the authorities desired it to hold, was that the absurdities which were allowed to appear with the hall-mark of censorship were often believed to emanate directly from the government. Britons and Americans versed in the books of the New Testament were shocked or amused when told that the censor had allowed the following passage to appear in an eloquent speech delivered by the ex-Premier, M. Painlevé: "As Hall Caine, the great American poet, has put it, 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?'"[83]

Every conceivable precaution was taken against the leakage of information respecting what was going on in the Council of Ten. Notwithstanding this, the French papers contrived now and again, during the first couple of months, to publish scraps of news calculated to convey to the public a faint notion of the proceedings, until one day a Nationalist organ boldly announced that the British Premier had disagreed with the expert commission and with his own colleagues on the subject of Dantzig and refused to give way. This paragraph irritated the British statesman, who made a scene at the next meeting of the Council. "There is," he is reported to have exclaimed, "some one among us here who is unmindful of his obligations," and while uttering these and other much stronger words he eyed severely a certain mild individual who is said to have trembled all over during the philippic. He also launched out into a violent diatribe against various French journals which had criticized his views on Poland and his method of carrying them in council, and he went so far as to threaten to have the Conference transferred to a neutral country. In conclusion he demanded an investigation into the origin of the leakage of information and the adoption of severe disciplinary measures against the journalists who published the disclosures.[84] Thenceforward the Council of Ten was suspended and its place taken by a smaller and more secret conclave of Five, Four, or Three, according as the state of the plenipotentiaries' health, the requirements of their home politics, or their relations among themselves caused one or two to quit Paris temporarily.

This measure insured relative secrecy, fostered rumors and gossip, and rendered criticism, whether helpful or captious, impossible. It also drove into outer darkness those Allied states whose interests were described as limited, as though the interests of Italy, whose delegate was nominally one of the privileged five, were not being treated as more limited still. But the point of this last criticism would be blunted if, as some French and Italian observers alleged, the deliberate aim of the "representatives of the twelve million soldiers" was indeed to enable peace to be concluded and the world resettled congruously with the conceptions and in harmony with the interests of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. But the supposition is gratuitous. There was no such deliberate plan. After the establishment of the Council of Five, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Wilson made short work of the reports of the expert commissions whenever these put forward reasoned views differing from their own. In a word, they became the world's supreme and secret arbiters without ceasing to be the official champions of the freedom of the lesser states and of "open covenants openly arrived at." They constituted, so to say, the living synthesis of contradictories.

The Council of Five then was a superlatively secret body. No secretaries were admitted to its gatherings and no official minutes of its proceedings were recorded. Communications were never issued to the press. It resembled a gang of benevolent conspirators, whose debates and resolutions were swallowed up by darkness and mystery. Even the most modest meeting of a provincial taxpayers' association keeps minutes of its discussions. The world parliament kept none. Eschewing traditional usages, as became naïve shapers of the new world, and ignoring history, the Five, Four, or Three shut themselves up in a room, talked informally and disconnectedly without a common principle, program, or method, and separated again without having reached a conclusion. It is said that when one put forth an idea, another would comment upon it, a third might demur, and that sometimes an appeal would be made to geography, history, or ethnography, and as the data were not immediately accessible either competent specialists were sent for or the conversation took another turn. They very naturally refused to allow these desultory proceedings to be put on record, the only concession which they granted to the curiosity of future generations being the fixation of their own physical features by photography and painting. When the sitting was over, therefore, no one could be held to aught that he had said; there was nothing to bind any of the individual delegates to the views he had expressed, nor was there anything to mark the line to which the Council as a whole had advanced. Each one was free to dictate to his secretary his recollections of what had gone on, but as these _précis_ were given from memory they necessarily differed one from the other on various important points. On the following morning, or a few days later, the world's workers would meet again, and either begin at the beginning, traveling over the same familiar field, or else break fresh ground. In this way in one day they are said to have skimmed the problems of Spitzbergen, Morocco, Dantzig, and the feeding of the enemy populations, leaving each problem where they had found it. The moment the discussion of a contentious question approached a climax, the specter of disagreement deterred them from pursuing it to a conclusion, and they passed on quickly to some other question. And when, after months had been spent in these Penelopean labors, definite decisions respecting the peace had to be taken lest the impatient people should rise up and wrest matters into their own hands, the delegates referred the various problems which they had been unable to solve to the wisdom and tact of the future League of Nations.

When misunderstandings arose as to what had been said or done it was the official translator, M. Paul Mantoux--one of the most brilliant representatives of Jewry at the Conference--who was wont to decide, his memory being reputed superlatively tenacious. In this way he attained the distinction of which his friends are justly proud, of being a living record--indeed, the sole available record--of what went on at the historic council. He was the recipient and is now the only repository of all the secrets of which the plenipotentiaries were so jealous, lest, being a kind of knowledge which is in verity power, it should be used one day for some dubious purpose. But M. Mantoux enjoyed the esteem and confidence not only of Mr. Wilson, but also of the British Prime Minister, who, it was generally believed, drew from his entertaining narratives and shrewd appreciations whatever information he possessed about French politics and politicians. It was currently affirmed that, being a man of method and foresight, M. Mantoux committed everything to writing for his own behoof. Doubts, however, were entertained and publicly expressed as to whether affairs of this magnitude, involving the destinies of the world, should have been handled in such secret and unbusiness-like fashion. But on the supposition that the general outcome, if not the preconceived aim, of the policy of the Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries was to confer the beneficent hegemony of the world upon its peoples, there could, it was argued, be no real danger in the procedure followed. For, united, those nations have nothing to fear.

Although the translations were done rapidly, elegantly, and lucidly, allegations were made that they lost somewhat by undue compression and even by the process of toning down, of which the praiseworthy object was to spare delicate susceptibilities. For a limited number of delicate susceptibilities were treated considerately by the Conference. A defective rendering made a curious impression on the hearers once, when a delegate said: "My country, unfortunately, is situated in the midst of states which are anything but peace-loving--in fact, the chief danger to the peace of Europe emanates from them." M. Mantoux's translation ran, "The country represented by M. X. unhappily presents the greatest danger to the peace of Europe."

On several occasions passages of the discourses of the plenipotentiaries underwent a certain transformation in the well-informed brain of M. Mantoux before being done into another language. They were plunged, so to say, in the stream of history before their exposure to the light of day. This was especially the case with the remarks of the English-speaking delegates, some of whom were wont to make extensive use of the license taken by their great national poet in matters of geography and history. One of them, for example, when alluding to the ex-Emperor Franz Josef and his successor, said: "It would be unjust to visit the sins of the father on the head of his innocent son. Charles I should not be made to suffer for Franz Josef." M. Mantoux rendered the sentence, "It would be unjust to visit the sins of the uncle on the innocent nephew," and M. Clemenceau, with a merry twinkle in his eye, remarked to the ready interpreter, "You will lose your job if you go on making these wrong translations."

But those details are interesting, if at all, only as means of eking out a mere sketch which can never become a complete and faithful picture. It was the desire of the eminent lawgivers that the source of the most beneficent reforms chronicled in history should be as well hidden as those of the greatest boon bestowed by Providence upon man. And their motives appear to have been sound enough.

The pains thus taken to create a haze between themselves and the peoples whose implicit confidence they were continuously craving constitute one of the most striking ethico-psychological phenomena of the Conference. They demanded unreasoning faith as well as blind obedience. Any statement, however startling, was expected to carry conviction once it bore the official hall-mark. Take, for example, the demand made by the Supreme Four to Bela Kuhn to desist from his offensive against the Slovaks. The press expressed surprise and disappointment that he, a Bolshevist, should have been invited even hypothetically by the "deadly enemies of Bolshevism" to delegate representatives to the Paris Conference from which the leaders of the Russian constructive elements were excluded. Thereupon the Supreme Four, which had taken the step in secret, had it denied categorically that such an invitation had been issued. The press was put up to state that, far from making such an undignified advance, the Council had asserted its authority and peremptorily summoned the misdemeanant Kuhn to withdraw his troops immediately from Slovakia under heavy pains and penalties.

Subsequently, however, the official correspondence was published, when it was seen that the implicit invitation had really been issued and that the denial ran directly counter to fact. By this exposure the Council of Four, which still sued for the full confidence of their peoples, was somewhat embarrassed. This embarrassment was not allayed when what purported to be a correct explanation of their action was given out and privately circulated by a group which claimed to be initiated. It was summarized as follows: "The Israelite, Bela Kuhn, who is leading Hungary to destruction, has been heartened by the Supreme Council's indulgent message. People are at a loss to understand why, if the Conference believes, as it has asserted, that Bolshevism is the greatest scourge of latter-day humanity, it ordered the Rumanian troops, when nearing Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing it in that stronghold, first to halt, and then to withdraw.[85] The clue to the mystery has at last been found in a secret arrangement between Kuhn and a certain financial group concerning the Banat. About this more will be said later. In one of my own cablegrams to the United States I wrote: "People are everywhere murmuring and whispering that beneath the surface of things powerful undercurrents are flowing which invisibly sway the policy of the secret council, and the public believes that this accounts for the sinister vacillation and delay of which it complains."[86]

In the fragmentary utterances of the governments and their press organs nobody placed the slightest confidence. Their testimony was discredited in advance, on grounds which they were unable to weaken. The following example is at once amusing and instructive. The French Parliamentary Committee of the Budget, having asked the government for communication of the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with finances, were told that their demand could not be entertained, every clause of the Treaty being a state secret. The Committee on Foreign Affairs made a like request, with the same results. The entire Chamber next expressed a similar wish, which elicited a firm refusal. The French Premier, it should be added, alleged a reason which was at least specious. "I should much like," he said, "to communicate to you the text you ask for, but I may not do so until it has been signed by the President of the Republic. For such is the law as embodied in Article 8 of the Constitution." Now nobody believed that this was the true ground for his refusal. His explanation, however, was construed as a courteous conventionality, and as such was accepted. But once alleged, the fiction should have been respected, at any rate by its authors. It was not. A few weeks later the Premier ordered the publication of the text of the Treaty, although, in the meantime, it had not been signed by M. Poincaré. "The excuse founded upon Article 8 was, therefore, a mere humbug," flippantly wrote an influential journal.[87]

An amusing joke, which tickled all Paris was perpetrated shortly afterward. The editor of the _Bonsoir_ imported six hundred copies of the forbidden Treaty from Switzerland, and sent them as a present to the Deputies of the Chamber, whereupon the parliamentary authorities posted up a notice informing all Deputies who desired a copy to call at the questor's office, where they would receive it gratuitously as a present from the _Bonsoir._ Accordingly the Deputies, including the Speaker, Deschanel, thronged to the questor's office. Even solemn-faced Ministers received a copy of the thick volume which I possessed ever since the day it was issued.

Another glaring instance of the lack of straightforwardness which vitiated the dealings of the Conference with the public turned upon the Bullitt mission to Russia. Mr. Wilson, who in the depths of his heart seems to have cherished a vague fondness for the Bolshevists there, which he sometimes manifested in utterances that startled the foreigners to whom they were addressed, despatched through Colonel House some fellow-countrymen of his to Moscow to ask for peace proposals which, according to the Moscow government, were drafted by himself and Messrs. House and Lansing. Mr. Bullitt, however, who must know, affirms that the draft was written by Mr. Lloyd George's secretary, Mr. Philip Kerr, and himself and presented to Lenin by Messrs. Bullitt, Steffins, and Petit. If the terms of this document should prove acceptable the American envoys were empowered to promise that an official invitation to a new peace conference would be sent to them as well as to their opponents by April 15th. The conditions--eleven in number--with a few slight modifications in which the Americans acquiesced--were accepted by the dictator, who was bound, however, not to permit their publication. The facts remained secret until Mr. Bullitt, thrown over by Mr. Wilson, who recoiled from taking the final and decisive step, resigned, and in a letter reproduced by the press set forth the reasons for his decision.[88]

Now, vague reports that there was such a mission had found its way into the Paris newspapers at a relatively early date. But an authoritative denial was published without delay. The statement, the public was assured, was without foundation. And the public believed the assurance, for it was confirmed authoritatively in England. Sir Samuel Hoare, in the House of Commons, asked for information about a report that "two Americans have recently returned from Russia bringing offers of peace from Lenin," and received from Mr. Bonar Law this noteworthy reply: "I have said already that there is not the shadow of foundation for this information, otherwise I would have known it. Moreover, I have communicated with Mr. Lloyd George in Paris, who also declares that he knows nothing about the matter."[89] _E pur si muove_. Mr. Lloyd George knew nothing about President Wilson's determination to have the Covenant inserted in the Peace Treaty, even after the announcement was published to the world by the Havas Agency, and the confirmation given to pressmen by Lord Robert Cecil. The system of reticence and concealment, coupled with the indifference of this or that delegation to questions in which it happened to take no special interest, led to these unseemly air-tight compartments.

From this rank soil of secrecy, repression, and unveracity sprang noxious weeds. False reports and mendacious insinuations were launched, spread, and credited, impairing such prestige as the Conference still enjoyed, while the fragmentary announcements ventured on now and again by the delegates, in sheer self-defense, were summarily dismissed as "eye-wash" for the public.

For a time the disharmony between words and deeds passed unnoticed by the bulk of the masses, who were edified by the one and unacquainted with the other. But gradually the lack of consistency in policy and of manly straightforwardness and moral wholeness in method became apparent to all and produced untoward consequences. Mr. Wilson, whose authority and influence were supposed to be paramount, came in for the lion's share of criticism, except in the Polish policy of the Conference, which was traced to Mr. Lloyd George and his unofficial prompters. The American press was the most censorious of all. One American journal appearing in Paris gave utterance to the following comments on the President's rôle:[90]

President Wilson is conscious of his power of persuasion. That
power enables him to say one thing, do another, describe the act as
conforming to the idea, and, with act and idea in exact
contradiction to each other, convince the people, not only that he
has been consistent throughout, but that his act cannot be altered
without peril to the nation and danger to the world.

We do not know which Mr. Wilson to follow--the Mr. Wilson who says
he will not do a thing or the Mr. Wilson who does that precise
thing.

A great many Americans have one fixed idea. That idea is that the
President is the only magnanimous, clear-visioned, broad-minded
statesman in the United States, or the entire world, for that
matter.

When he uses his powers of persuasion Americans become as the
children of Hamelin Town. Inasmuch as Mr. Wilson of the word and
Mr. Wilson of the deed seem at times to be two distinct identities,
some of his most enthusiastic supporters for the League of Nations,
being unfortunately gifted with memory and perception, are fairly
standing on their heads in dismay.

And yet Mr. Wilson himself was a victim of the policy of reticence and concealment to which the Great Powers were incurably addicted. At the time when they were moving heaven and earth to induce him to break with Germany and enter the war, they withheld from him the existence of their secret treaties. Possibly it may not be thought fair to apply the test of ethical fastidiousness to their method of bringing the United States to their side and to their unwillingness to run the risk of alienating the President. But it appears that until the close of hostility the secret was kept inviolate, nor was it until Mr. Wilson reached the shores of Europe for the purpose of executing his project that he was faced with the huge obstacles to his scheme arising out of those far-reaching commitments. With this depressing revelation and the British _non possumus_ to his demand for the freedom of the seas, Mr. Wilson's practical difficulties began. It was probably on that occasion that he resolved, seeing that he could not obtain everything he wanted, to content himself with the best he could get. And that was not a society of peoples, but a rough approximation to the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon nations.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] The French Minister of Finances made this the cornerstone of his policy and declared that the indemnity to be paid by the vanquished Teutons would enable him to set the finances of France on a permanently sound basis. In view of this expectation new taxation was eschewed.

[71] A selection of the untruths published in the French press during the war has been reproduced by the Paris journal, _Bonsoir_. It contains abundant pabulum for the cynic and valuable data for the psychologist. The example might be followed in Great Britain. The title is: "Anthologie du Bourrage de Crâne." It began in the month of July, 1919.

[72] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 2, 1919.

[73] Cf. _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), January 17, 1919.

[74] Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_, August 27, 1919.

[75] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), June 10, 1919.

[76] Cf. _Bonsoir_, June 20, 1919.

[77] On April 27th.

[78] _Bonsoir_, June 21, 1919.

[79] _The New York Herald_, May 15. 1919.

[80] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), May 3,1919.

[81] _The New York Herald_, June 6, 1919.

[82] Cf. _Le Matin_, July 9, 1919. The chief speakers alluded to were MM. Renaudel, Deshayes, Lafont, Paul Meunier, Vandame.

[83] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 29, 1919.

[84] Quoted in the Paris _Temps_ of March 28,1919.

[85] This explanation deals exclusively with the first advance of the Rumanian army into Hungary.

[86] Cabled to _The Public Ledger_ of Philadelphia, April 20,1919.

[87] _Bonsoir_, June 21, 1919.

[88] Cf. _The Daily News_, July 5,1919. _L'Humanité_, July 8, 1919.

[89] Cf. _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), April 4, 1919.

[90] _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), July 31, 1919.

V

AIMS AND METHODS

The policy of the Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries was never put into words. For that reason it has to be judged by their acts, despite the circumstance that these were determined by motives which varied greatly at different times, and so far as one can conjecture were not often practical corollaries of fundamental principles. From these acts one may draw a few conclusions which will enable us to reconstruct such policy as there was. One is that none of the sacrifices imposed upon the members of the League of Nations was obligatory on the Anglo-Saxon peoples. These were beyond the reach of all the new canons which might clash with their interests or run counter to their aspirations. They were the givers and administrators of the saving law rather than its observers. Consequently they were free to hold all that was theirs, however doubtful their title; nay, they were besought to accept a good deal more under the mandatory system, which was molded on their own methods of governance. It was especially taken for granted that the architects would be called to contribute naught to the new structure but their ideas, and that they need renounce none of their possessions, however shady its origin, however galling to the population its retention. It was in deference to this implicit doctrine that President Wilson withdrew without protest or discussion his demand for the freedom of the seas, on which he had been wont to lay such stress.

Another way of putting the matter is this. The principal aim of the Conference was to create conditions favorable to the progress of civilization on new lines. And the seed-bearers of true, as distinguished from spurious, civilization and culture being the Anglo-Saxons, it is the realization of their broad conceptions, the furtherance of their beneficent strivings, that are most conducive to that ulterior aim. The men of this race in the widest sense of the term are, therefore, so to say, independent ends in themselves, whereas the other peoples are to be utilized as means. Hence the difference of treatment meted out to the two categories. In the latter were implicitly included Italy and Russia. Unquestionably the influence of Anglo-Saxondom is eminently beneficial. It tends to bring the rights and the dignity as well as the duties of humanity into broad day. The farther it extends by natural growth, therefore, the better for the human race. The Anglo-Saxon mode of administering colonies, for instance, is exemplary, and for this reason was deemed worthy to receive the hall-mark of the Conference as one of the institutions of the future League. But even benefits may be transformed into evils if imposed by force.

That, in brief, would seem to be the clue--one can hardly speak of any systematic conception--to the unordered improvisations and incongruous decisions of the Conference.

I am not now concerned to discuss whether this unformulated maxim, which had strong roots that may not always have reached the realm of consciousness, calls for approval as an instrument of ethico-political progress or connotes an impoverishment of the aims originally propounded by Mr. Wilson. Excellent reasons may be assigned why the two English-speaking statesmen proceeded without deliberation on these lines and no other. The matter might have been raised to a higher plane, but for that the delegates were not prepared. All that one need retain at present is the orientation of the Supreme Council, inasmuch as it imparts a sort of relative unity to seemingly heterogeneous acts. Thus, although the conditions of the Peace Treaty in many respects ran directly counter to the provisions of the Covenant, none the less the ultimate tendency of both was to converge in a distant point, which, when clearly discerned, will turn out to be the moral guidance of the world by Anglo-Saxondom as represented at any rate in the incipient stage by both its branches. Thus the discussions among the members of the Conference were in last analysis not contests about mere abstractions. Beneath the high-sounding principles and far-resonant reforms which were propounded but not realized lurked concrete racial strivings which a patriotic temper and robust faith might easily identify with the highest interests of humanity.

When the future historian defines, as he probably will, the main result of the Conference's labors as a tendency to place the spiritual and political direction of the world in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race, it is essential to a correct view of things that he should not regard this trend as the outcome of a deliberate concerted policy. It was anything but this. Nobody who conversed with the statesmen before and during the Conference could detect any sure tokens of such ultimate aims, nor, indeed, of a thorough understanding of the lesser problems to be settled. Circumstance led, and the statesmen followed. The historian may term the process drift, and the humanitarian regret that such momentous issues should ever have been submitted to a body of uninformed politicians out of touch with the people for whose behoof they claimed to be legislating. To liquidate the war should have been the first, as it was the most urgent, task. But it was complicated, adjourned, and finally botched by interweaving it with a mutilated scheme for the complete readjustment of the politico-social forces of the planet. The result was a tangled skein of problems, most of them still unsolved, and some insoluble by governments alone. Out of the confusion of clashing forces towered aloft the two dominant Powers who command the economic resources of the world, and whose democratic institutions and internal ordering are unquestionably more conducive to the large humanitarian end than those of any other, and gradually their overlordship of the world began to assert itself. But this tendency was not the outcome of deliberate endeavor. Each representative of those vast states was solicitous in the first place about the future of his own country, and then about the regeneration of the human race. One would like to be able to add that all were wholly inaccessible to the promptings of party interests and personal ambitions.

Planlessness naturally characterized the exertions of the Anglo-Saxon delegates from start to finish. It is a racial trait. Their hosts, who were experts in the traditions of diplomacy, had before the opening of the Conference prepared a plan for their behoof, which at the lowest estimate would have connoted a vast improvement on their own desultory way of proceeding. The French proposed to distribute all the preparatory work among eighteen commissions, leaving to the chief plenipotentiaries the requisite time to arrange preliminaries and become acquainted with the essential elements of the problems. But Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George are said to have preferred their informal conversations, involving the loss of three and a half months, during which no results were reached in Paris, while turmoil, bloodshed, and hunger fed the smoldering fires of discontent throughout the World.

The British Premier, like his French colleague, was solicitous chiefly about making peace with the enemy and redeeming as far as possible his election pledges to his supporters. To that end everything else would appear to have been subordinated. To the ambitious project of a world reform he and M. Clemenceau gave what was currently construed as a nominal assent, but for a long time they had no inkling of Mr. Wilson's intention to interweave the peace conditions with the Covenant. So far, indeed, were they both from entertaining the notion that the two Premiers expressly denied--and allowed their denial to be circulated in the press--that the two documents were or could be made mutually interdependent. M. Pichon assured a group of journalists that no such intention was harbored.[91] Mr. Lloyd George is understood to have gone farther and to have asked what degree of relevancy a Covenant for the members of the League could be supposed to possess to a treaty concluded with a nation which for the time being was denied admission to that sodality. And as we saw, he was incurious enough not to read the narrative of what had been done by his own American colleagues even after the Havas Agency announced it.

To President Wilson, on the other hand, the League was the _magnum opus_ of his life. It was to be the crown of his political career, to mark the attainment of an end toward which all that was best in the human race had for centuries been consciously or unconsciously wending without moving perceptibly nearer. Instinctively he must have felt that the Laodicean support given to him by his colleagues would not carry him much farther and that their fervor would speedily evaporate once the Conference broke up and their own special aims were definitely achieved or missed. With the shrewdness of an experienced politician he grasped the fact that if he was ever to present his Covenant to the world clothed with the authority of the mightiest states, now was his opportunity. After the Conference it would be too late. And the only contrivance by which he could surely reckon on success was to insert the Covenant in the Peace Treaty and set before his colleagues an irresistible incentive for elaborating both at the same time.

He had an additional motive for these tactics in the attitude of a section of his own countrymen. Before starting for Paris he had, as we saw, made an appeal to the electorate to return to the legislature only candidates of his own party to the exclusion of Republicans, and the result fell out contrary to his expectations. Thereupon the oppositional elements increased in numbers and displayed a marked combative disposition. Even moderate Republicans complained in terms akin to those employed by ex-President Taft of Mr. Wilson's "partizan exclusion of Republicans in dealing with the highly important matter of settling the results of the war. He solicited a commission in which the Republicans had no representation and in which there were no prominent Americans of any real experience and leadership of public opinion."[92]

The leaders of this opposition sharply watched the policy of the President at the Conference and made no secret of their resolve to utilize any serious slip as a handle for revising or rejecting the outcome of his labors. Seeing his cherished cause thus trembling in the scale, Mr. Wilson hit upon the expedient of linking the Covenant with the Peace Treaty and making of the two an inseparable whole. He announced this determination in a forcible speech[93] to his own countrymen, in which he said, "When the Treaty comes back, gentlemen on this side will find the Covenant not only in it, but so many threads of the Treaty tied to the Covenant that you cannot dissect the Covenant from the Treaty without destroying the whole vital structure." This scheme was denounced by Mr. Wilson's opponents as a trick, but the historian will remember it as a maneuver, which, however blameless or meritorious its motive, was fraught with lamentable consequences for all the peoples for whose interests the President was sincerely solicitous. To take but one example. The misgivings generated by the Covenant delayed the ratification of the Peace Treaty by the United States Senate, in consequence of which the Turkish problem had to be postponed until the Washington government was authorized to accept or compelled to refuse a mandate for the Sultan's dominions, and in the meanwhile mass massacres of Greeks and Armenians were organized anew.

A large section of the press and the majority of the delegates strongly condemned the interpolation of the Covenant. What they demanded was first the conclusion of a solid peace and then the establishment of suitable international safeguards. For to be safeguarded, peace must first exist. "A suit of armor without the warrior inside is but a useless ornament," wrote one of the American journals.[94]

But the course advocated by Mr. Wilson was open to another direct and telling objection. Peace between the belligerent adversaries was, in the circumstances, conceivable only on the old lines of strategic frontiers and military guaranties. The Supreme Council implied as much in its official reply to the criticisms offered by the Austrians to the conditions imposed on them, making the admission that Italy's new northern frontiers were determined by considerations of strategy. The plan for the governance of the world by a league of pacific peoples, on the other hand, postulated the abolition of war preparations, including strategic frontiers. Consequently the more satisfactory the Treaty the more unfavorable would be the outlook for the moral reconstitution of the family of nations, and _vice versa_. And to interlace the two would be to necessitate a compromise which would necessarily mar both.

In effect the split among the delegates respecting their aims and interests led to a tacit understanding among the leaders on the basis of give-and-take, the French and British acquiescing in Mr. Wilson's measures for working out his Covenant--the draft of which was contributed by the British--and the President, giving way to them on matters said to affect their countries' vital interests. How smoothly this method worked when great issues were not at stake may be inferred from the perfunctory way in which it was decided that the Kaiser's trial should take place in London. A few days before the Treaty was signed there was a pause in the proceedings of the Supreme Council during which the secretary was searching for a mislaid document. Mr. Lloyd George, looking up casually and without addressing any one in particular, remarked, "I suppose none of you has any objection to the Kaiser being tried in London?" M. Clemenceau shrugged his shoulders, Mr. Wilson raised his hand, and the matter was assumed to be settled. Nothing more was said or written on the subject. But when the news was announced, after the President's departure from France, it took the other American delegates by surprise and they disclaimed all knowledge of any such decision. On inquiry, however, they learned that the venue had in truth been fixed in this offhand way.[95]

Mr. Wilson found it a hard task at first to obtain acceptance for his ill-defined tenets by France, who declined to accept the protection of his League of Nations in lieu of strategic frontiers and military guaranties. Insurmountable obstacles barred his way. The French government and people, while moved by decent respect for their American benefactors[96] to assent to the establishment of a league, flatly refused to trust themselves to its protection against Teuton aggression. But they were quite prepared to second Mr. Wilson's endeavors to oblige some of the other states to content themselves with the guaranties it offered, only, however, on condition that their own country was first safeguarded in the traditional way. Territorial equilibrium and military protection were the imperative provisos on which they insisted. And as France was specially favored by Mr. Wilson on sentimental grounds which outweighed his doctrine, and as she was also considered indispensable to the Anglo-Saxon peoples as their continental executive, she had no difficulty in securing their support. On this point, too, therefore, the President found himself constrained to give way. And only did he abandon his humanitarian intentions and his strongest arguments to be lightly brushed aside, he actually recoiled so far into the camp of his opponents that he gave his approval to an indefensible clause in the Treaty which would have handed over to France the German population of the Saar as the equivalent of a certain sum in gold. Coming from the world-reformer who, a short time before, had hurled the thunderbolts of his oratory against those who would barter human beings as chattels, this amazing compromise connoted a strange falling off. Incidentally it was destructive of all faith in the spirit that had actuated his world-crusade. It also went far to convince unbiased observers that the only framework of ideas with decisive reference to which Mr. Wilson considered every project and every objection as it arose, was that which centered round his own goal--the establishment, if not of a league of nations cemented by brotherhood and fellowship, at least of the nearest approach to that which he could secure, even though it fell far short of the original design. These were the first-fruits of the interweaving of the Covenant with the Treaty.

In view of this readiness to split differences and sacrifice principles to expediency it became impossible even to the least observant of Mr. Wilson's adherents in the Old World to cling any longer to the belief that his cosmic policy was inspired by firm intellectual attachment to the sublime ideas of which he had made himself the eloquent exponent and had been expected to make himself the uncompromising champion. In every such surrender to the Great Powers, as in every stern enforcement of his principles on the lesser states, the same practical spirit of the professional politician visibly asserted itself. One can hardly acquit him of having lacked the moral courage to disregard the veto of interested statesmen and governments and to appeal directly to the peoples when the consequence of this attitude would have been the sacrifice of the makeshift of a Covenant which he was ultimately content to accept as a substitute for the complete reinstatement of nations in their rights and dignity.