Chapter VII: Part 7

Lastly, if Greece's claims in Thrace were rejected, she would have a population of 1,790,000 souls outside her national boundaries--that is to say, more than one-third of the population which is within her state. Would this be fair? Of the total population of Bulgarian and Turkish Thrace the Turks and Greeks together form 85 per cent., the Bulgars only 6 per cent., and the latter nowhere in compact masses. Moreover--and this ought to have clinched the matter--the Hellenic population formed an absolute as well as a relative majority in the year 1919.

These arguments and various other considerations drawn from the inordinate ambitions, the savage cruelty,[119] and the Punic faith of the Bulgars convinced the British, French, and Japanese delegates of the soundness of Greece's pleas, and they sided with M. Venizelos. But Mr. Wilson clung to his idea with a tenacity which could not be justified by argument, and was concurrently explained by motives irrelevant to the merits of the case. Whether the influence of Bulgarophil American missionaries and strong religious leanings were at the root of his insistence, as was generally assumed, or whether other considerations weighed with him, is immaterial. And yet it is worth recording that a Bulgarian journal[120] announced with the permission of the governmental censor that the American missionaries in Bulgaria and the professors of Robert College of Constantinople had so primed the American delegates at the Conference on the question of Thrace, and generally on the Bulgarian problem, that all M. Venizelos's pains to convince them of the justice of his contention would be lost labor."[121]

However this may be, Mr. Wilson's attitude was the subject of adverse comment throughout Europe. His implied claim to legislate for the world and to take over its moral leadership earned for him the epithet of "Dictator," and provoked such epigrammatic comments among his own countrymen and the French as this: "Louis XIV said, 'I am the state!' Mr. Wilson, outdoing him, exclaimed, 'I am all the states!'"

The necessity of winning over dissentient colleagues to his grandiose scheme of world reorganization and of satisfying their demands, which were of a nature to render that scheme abortive, was the most influential agency in impairing his energies and upsetting his plans. This remark assumes what unhappily seems a fact, that those plans were mainly mechanical. It is certain that they made no provision for directly influencing the masses, for giving them sympathetic guidance, and enabling them to suffuse with social sentiments the aspirations and strivings which were chiefly of the materialistic order, with a view to bringing about a spiritual transformation of the social basis. Indeed we have no evidence that the need of such a transformation of the basis of political thought, which was still rooted in the old order, was grasped by any of those who set their hand to the legislative part of the work.

These unfavorable impressions were general. Almost every step subsequently taken by the Conference confirmed them, and long before the Treaty was presented to the Germans, public confidence was gone in the ability of the Supreme Council to attain any of the moral victories over militarism, race-hatred, and secret intrigues which its leaders had encouraged the world to expect.

"The leaders of the Conference," wrote an influential press organ,[122] "are under suspicion. They may not know it, but it is true. The suspicion is doubtless unjust, but it exists. What exists is a fact; and men who ignore facts are not statesmen. The only way to deal with facts is to face them. The more unpleasant they are the more they need to be faced.

"Some of the Conference leaders are suspected of having, at various times and in various circumstances, thought more of their own personal and political positions and ambitions than of the rapid and practical making of peace. They are suspected, in a word, of a tendency to subordinate policy to politics.

"In regard to some important matters they are suspected of having no policy. They are also suspected of unwillingness to listen to their own competent advisers, who could lay down for them a sound policy. Some of them are even suspected of being under the spell of some benumbing influence that paralyzes their will and befogs their minds, when high resolve and clear visions are needful."

Another accusation of the same tenor was thus formulated: "In various degrees[123] and with different qualities of guilt all the Allied and Associated leaders have dallied with dishonesty. While professing to seek naught save the welfare of mankind, they have harbored thoughts of self-interest. The result has been a progressive loss of faith in them by their own peoples severally, and by the Allied, Associated, and neutral peoples jointly. The tide of public trust in them has reached its lowest ebb."

At the Conference, as we saw, the President of the United States possessed what was practically a veto on nearly all matters which left the vital interests of Britain and France intact. And he frequently exercised it. Thus the dispute about the Thracian settlement lay not between Bulgaria and Greece, nor between Greece and the Supreme Council, but between Greece and Mr. Wilson. In the quarrel over Fiume and the Dalmatian coast it was the same. When the Shantung question came up for settlement it was Mr. Wilson alone who dealt with it, his colleagues, although bound by their promises to support Japan, having made him their mouthpiece. The rigor he displayed in dealing with some of the smaller countries was in inverse ratio to the indulgence he practised toward the Great Powers. Not only were they peremptorily bidden to obey without discussion the behests which had been brought to their cognizance, but they were ordered, as we saw, to promise to execute other injunctions which might be issued by the Supreme Council on certain matters in the future, the details of which were necessarily undetermined.

In order to stifle any velleities of resistance on the part of their governments, they were notified that America's economic aid, of which they were in sore need, would depend on their docility. It is important to remember that it was the motive thus clearly presented that determined their formal assent to a policy which they deprecated. A Russian statesman summed up the situation in the words: "It is an illustration of one of our sayings, 'Whose bread I eat, his songs I sing.'" Thus it was reported in July that an agreement come to by the financial group Morgan with an Italian syndicate for a yearly advance to Italy of a large sum for the purchase of American food and raw stuffs was kept in abeyance until the Italian delegation should accept such a solution of the Adriatic problem as Mr. Wilson could approve. The Russian and anti-Bolshevists were in like manner compelled to give their assent to certain democratic dogmas and practices. It is also fair, however, to bear in mind that whatever one may think of the wisdom of the policy pursued by the President toward these peoples, the motives that actuated it were unquestionably admirable, and the end in view was their own welfare, as he understood it. It is all the more to be regretted that neither the arguments nor the example of the autocratic delegates were calculated to give these the slightest influence over the thought or the unfettered action of their unwilling wards. The arrangements carried out were entirely mechanical.

In the course of time after the vital interests of Britain, France, and Japan had been disposed of, and only those of the "lesser states," in the more comprehensive sense of this term, remained, President Wilson exercised supreme power, wielding it with firmness and encountering no gainsayer. Thus the peace between Italy and Austria was put off from month to month because he--and only he--among the members of the Supreme Council rejected the various projects of an arrangement. Into the merits of this dispute it would be unfruitful to enter. That there was much to be said for Mr. Wilson's contention, from the point of view of the League of Nations, and also from that of the Jugoslavs, will not be denied. That some of the main arguments to which he trusted his case were invalidated by the concessions which he had made to other countries was Italy's contention, and it cannot be thrust aside as untenable.

At last Mr. Wilson ventured on a step which challenged the attention and stirred the disquietude of his friends. He despatched a note[124] to Turkey, warning her that if the massacres of Armenians were not discontinued he would withdraw the twelfth of his Fourteen Points, which provides for the maintenance of Turkish sovereignty over undeniable Turkish territories. The intention was excellent, but the necessary effects of his action were contrary to what the President can have aimed at. He had not consulted the Conference on the important change which he was about to make respecting a point which was supposed to be part of the groundwork of the new ordering. This from the Conference point of view was a momentous decision, which could be taken only with the consent of the Supreme Council. Even as a mere threat it was worthless if it did not stand for the deliberate will of that body which the President had deemed it superfluous to consult. As it happened, the British authorities were just then organizing a body of gendarmes to police the Turkish territories in question, and they were engaged in this work with the knowledge and approval of the Supreme Council. Mr. Wilson's announcement could therefore only be construed--and was construed--as the act of an authority superior to that of the Council.[125] The Turks, who are shrewd observers, must have drawn the obvious conclusion from these divergent measures as to the degree of harmony prevailing among the Allied and Associated Powers.

M. Clemenceau had a conversation on the subject with Mr. Polk, who explained that the note was informal and given verbally, and conveyed the idea only of one nation in connection with the Armenian situation. This explanation, accepted by the French government, did not commend itself to public opinion, either in France or elsewhere. Moreover, the French were struck by another aspect of this arbitrary exercise of supreme power. "President Wilson," wrote an eminent French publicist, "throws himself into the attitude of a man who can bind and loose the Turkish Empire at the very moment when the Senate appears opposed to accepting any mandate, European or Asiatic, at the moment when Mr. Lansing declares to the Congress that the government of which he is a member does not desire to accept any mandate. But is it not obvious that if Mr. Wilson sovereignly determines the lot of Turkey he can be held in consequence to the performance of certain duties? We have often had to deplore the absence of policy common to the Allies. But has each one of them, considered separately, at least a policy of its own? Does it take action otherwise than at haphazard, yielding to the impulse of a general, a consul, or a missionary?"[126]

It soon became manifest even to the most obtuse that whenever the Supreme Council, following its leaders and working on such lines as these, terminated its labors, the ties between the political communities of Europe would be just as flimsy as in the unregenerate days of secret diplomacy, secret alliances, and secret intrigues, unless in the meanwhile the peoples themselves intervened to render them stronger and more enduring. It would, however, be the height of unfairness to make Mr. Wilson alone answerable for this untoward ending to a far resonant beginning. He had been accused by the press of most countries of enwrapping personal ambition in the attractive covering of disinterestedness and altruism, just as many of his foreign colleagues were said to go in fear of the "malady of lost power." But charges of this nature overstep the bounds of legitimate criticism. Motive is hardly ever visible, nor is it often deducible from deliberate action. If, for example, one were to infer from the vast territorial readjustments and the still vaster demands of the various belligerents at the Conference, the motives that had determined them to enter the war, the conclusion--except in the case of the American people, whose disinterestedness is beyond the reach of cavil--would indeed be distressing. The President of the United States merited well of all nations by holding up to them an ideal for realization, and the mere announcement of his resolve to work for it imparted an appreciable if inadequate incentive to men of good-will. The task, however, was so gigantic that he cannot have gaged its magnitude, discerned the defects of the instruments, nor estimated aright the force of the hindrances before taking the world to witness that he would achieve it. Even with the hearty co-operation of ardent colleagues and the adoption of a sound method he could hardly have hoped to do more than clear the ground--perhaps lay the foundation-stone--of the structure he dreamt of. But with the partners whom circumstance allotted him, and the gainsayers whom he had raised up and irritated in his own country, failure was a foregone conclusion from the first. The aims after which most of the European governments strove were sheer incompatible with his own. Doubtless they all were solicitous about the general good, but their love for it was so general and so diluted with attachment to others' goods as to be hardly discernible. The reproach that can hardly be spared to Mr. Wilson, however, is that of pusillanimity. If his faith in the principles he had laid down for the guidance of nations were as intense as his eloquent words suggested, he would have spurned the offer of a sequence of high-sounding phrases in lieu of a resettlement of the world. And his appeal to the peoples would most probably have been heard. The beacon once lighted in Paris would have been answered in almost every capital of the world. One promise he kept religiously: he did not return to Washington without a paper covenant. Is it more? Is it merely a paradox to assert that as war was waged in order to make war impossible, so a peace was made that will render peace impossible?

FOOTNOTES:

[91] In March.

[92] Quoted by _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.

[93] Delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on March 4, 1919.

[94] _The New York Herald_, March 19, 1919 (Paris edition).

[95] Cf. _The New York Herald_, July 8, 1919.

[96] The semi-official journals manifested a steady tendency to lean toward the Republican opposition in the United States, down to the month of August, when the amendments proposed by various Senators bade fair to jeopardize the Treaties and render the promised military succor doubtful.

[97] _Journal de Genève_, May 18, 1919.

[98] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), August 14, 1919.

[99] Cf. Paris papers of February 2, 1919, and _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia), February 4, 1919.

[100] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, April 19, 1919.

[101] In April, 1919.

[102] About April 10,1919.

[103] On March 19, 1919.

[104] Cf. my cablegram published in _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia), January 12, 1919.

[105] Cf. _The Public Ledger_ (Philadelphia), February 5, 1919.

[106] Doctor Bunke, Councilor at the court of Dantzig, endeavors in _The Dantzig Neueste Nachrichten_ to prove that the problem of Dantzig was solved exclusively in the interests of the Naval Powers, America and Britain, who need it as a basis for their commerce with Poland, Russia, and Germany. Cf. also _Le Temps_, August 23, 1919

[107] _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition), March 1, 1919.

[108] Lysis, author of _Demain_, and many other remarkable studies of economic problems, and editor of _Le Démocratie Nouvelle_, May 30, 1919.

[109] For an account of analogous bargainings with Bela Kuhn, see the Chapter on Rumania.

[110] Bearing the number 3882.

[111] On October 12, 1918, and February 1, 1919

[112] On February 4, 1919.

[113] _La Démocratie Nouvelle_, May 30, 1919

[114] See his admirable article in _The New York Herald_ (Paris edition) of May 21, 1919, from which the following extract is worth quoting: "I have said that certain great forces have steadily and occultly worked for a German peace. But I mean, in fact, one force--an international finance to which all other forces hostile to the freedom of nations and of the individual soul are contributory. The influence of this finance had permeated the Conference, delaying the decisions as long as possible, increasing divisions between people and people, between class and class, between peace-makers and peace-makers, in order to achieve two definite ends, which two ends are one and the same.

"The first end was so to manipulate the minds of the peace-makers, of their hordes of retainers and 'experts,' as to bring about, if possible, a peace that would not be destructive to industrial Germany. The second end was so to delay the Russian question, so to complicate and thwart every proposed solution, that, at last, either during or after the Peace Conference, a recognition of the Bolshevist power as the _de facto_ government of Russia would be the only possible solution."

[115] "What confidence can be commanded by men who, asserting one week that the ultimate of human wisdom has been attained in a document, confess the next week that the document is frail? When are we to believe that their confessions are at an end?"--_The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 23, 1919.

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

[117] M. Affonso Costa, who shortly before had succeeded the Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Monas Egiz.

[118] Dedeagatch.

[119] See _Rapports et Enquêtes de la Commission Interalliée sur les Violations du droit des gens commises en Macédoine Orientale par les armées bulgares_. The conclusion of the report is one of the most terrible indictments ever drawn up by impartial investigators against what is practically a whole people.

[120] _Zora_, August 11th. Cf. _Le Temps_, August 28, 1919.

[121] Mr. Charles House published a statement in the press of Saloniki to the effect that the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions forbids missionaries to take an active part in politics. He added that if this injunction was transgressed--and in Paris the current belief was that it had been--it would not be tolerated by the Missionary Board, nor recognized by the American government.

[122] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), March 31, 1919.

[123] _The Daily Mail_ (Paris edition), April 6, 1919.

[124] Somewhere between August 17 and 20, 1919. It was transmitted by Admiral Bristol, American member of the Inter-Allied Inquiry Mission at Smyrna.

[125] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.

[126] _L'Echo de Paris_, August 28, 1919. Article by Pertinax.

VI

THE LESSER STATES

Before the Anglo-Saxon statesmen thus set themselves to rearrange the complex of interests, forces, policies, nationalities, rights, and claims which constituted the politico-social world of 1919, they were expected to deal with all the Allied and Associated nations, without favor or prejudice, as members of one family. This expectation was not fulfilled. It may not have been warranted. From the various discussions and decisions of which we have knowledge, a number of delegates drew the inference that France was destined for obvious reasons to occupy the leading position in continental Europe, under the protection of Anglo-Saxondom; and that a privileged status was to be conferred on the Jews in eastern Europe and in Palestine, while the other states were to be in the leading-strings of the Four. This view was not lightly expressed, however inadequately it may prove to have been then supported by facts. As to the desirability of forming this rude hierarchy of states, the principal plenipotentiaries were said to have been in general agreement, although responding to different motives. There was but one discordant voice--that of France--who was opposed to the various limitations set to Poland's aggrandizement, and also to the clause placing the Jews under the direct protection of the League of Nations, and investing them with privileges in which the races among whom they reside are not allowed to participate. Bulgaria had a position unique in her class, for she was luckier than most of her peers in having enlisted on her side the American delegation and Mr. Wilson as leading counsel and special pleader for her claim to an outlet to the Ægean Sea.

At the Conference each state was dealt with according to its class. Entirely above the new law, as we saw, stood its creators, the Anglo-Saxons. To all the others, including the French, the Wilsonian doctrine was applied as fully as was compatible with its author's main object, the elaboration of an instrument which he could take back with him to the United States as the great world settlement. Within these limits the President was evidently most anxious to apply his Fourteen Points, but he kept well within these. Thus he would, perhaps, have been quite ready to insist on the abandonment by Britain of her supremacy on the seas, on a radical change in the international status of Egypt and Ireland, and much else, had these innovations been compatible with his own special object. But they were not. He was apparently minded to test the matter by announcing his resolve to moot the problem of the freedom of the seas, but when admonished by the British government that it would not even brook its mention, he at once gave it up and, presumably drawing the obvious inference from this downright refusal, applied it to the Irish, Egyptian, and other issues, which were forthwith eliminated from the category of open or international problems. But France's insistent demand, on the other hand, for the Rhine frontier met with an emphatic refusal.[127]

The social reformer is disheartened by the one-sided and inexorable way in which maxims proclaimed to be of universal application were restricted to the second-class nations.

Russia's case abounds in illustrations of this arbitrary, unjust, and impolitic pressure. The Russians had been our allies. They had fought heroically at the time when the people of the United States were, according to their President, "too proud to fight." They were essential factors in the Allies' victory, and consequently entitled to the advantages and immunities enjoyed by the Western Powers. In no case ought they to have been placed on the same level as our enemies, and in lieu of recompense condemned to punishment. And yet this latter conception of their deserts was not wholly new. Soon after their defection, and when the Allies were plunged in the depths of despondency, a current of opinion made itself felt among certain sections of the Allied peoples tending to the conclusion of peace on the basis of compensations to Germany, to be supplied by the cession of Russian territory. This expedient was advocated by more than one statesman, and was making headway when fresh factors arose which bade fair to render it needless.

At the Paris Conference the spirit of this conception may still have survived and prompted much that was done and much that was left unattempted. Russia was under a cloud. If she was not classed as an enemy she was denied the consideration reserved for the Allies and the neutrals. Her integrity was a matter of indifference to her former friends; almost every people and nationality in the Russian state which asked for independence found a ready hearing at the Supreme Council. And some of them before they had lodged any such claim were encouraged to lose no time in asking for separation. In one case a large sum of money and a mission were sent to "create the independent state of the Ukraine," so impatient were peoples in the West to obtain a substitute for the Russian ally whom they had lost in the East, and great was their consternation when their protégés misspent the funds and made common cause with the Teutons.

Disorganized Russia was in some ways a godsend to the world's administrators in Paris. To the advocate of alliances, territorial equilibrium, and the old order of things it offered a facile means of acquiring new helpmates in the East by emancipating its various peoples in the name of right and justice. It held out to the capitalists who deplored the loss of their milliards a potential source whence part of that loss might be made good.[128] To the zealots of the League of Nations it offered an unresisting body on which all the requisite operations from amputation to trepanning might be performed without the use of anesthetics.

The various border states of Russia were thus quietly lopped off without even the foreknowledge, much less the assent, of the patient, and without any pretense at plebiscites. Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Georgia were severed from the chaotic Slav state offhandedly, and the warrant was the doctrine propounded by President Wilson--that every people shall be free to choose its own mode of living and working. Every people? Surely not, remarked unbiased onlookers. The Egyptians, the Irish, the Austrians, the Persians, to name but four among many, are disqualified for the exercise of these indefeasible rights. Perhaps with good reason? Then modify the doctrine. Why this difference of treatment? they queried. Is it not because the supreme judge knows full well that Great Britain would not brook the discussion of the Egyptian or the Irish problem, and that France, in order to feel quite secure, must hinder the Austrian-Germans from coalescing with their brethren of the Reich? But if Britain and France have the right to veto every self-denying measure that smacks of disruption or may involve a sacrifice, why is Russia bereft of it? If the principle involved be of any value at all, its application must be universal. To an equal all-round distribution of sacrifice the only alternative is the supremacy of force in the service of arbitrary rule. And to this force, accordingly, the Supreme Council had recourse. The only cases in which it seriously vindicated the rights of oppressed or dissatisfied peoples to self-determination against the will of the ruling race or nation were those in which that race or nation was powerless to resist. Whenever Britain or France's interests were deemed to be imperiled by the putting in force of any of the Fourteen Points, Mr. Wilson desisted from its application. Thus it came about that Russia was put on the same plane with Germany and received similar, in some respects, indeed, sterner, treatment. The Germans were at least permitted to file objections to the conditions imposed and to point out flaws in the arrangements drafted, and their representations sometimes achieved their end. It was otherwise with the Russians. They were never consulted. And when their representatives in Paris respectfully suggested that all such changes as might be decided upon by the Great Powers during their country's political disablement should be taken to be provisional and be referred for definite settlement to the future constituent assembly, the request was ignored.

Of psychological rather than political interest was Mr. Wilson's conscientious hesitation as to whether the nationalities which he was preparing to liberate were sufficiently advanced to be intrusted with self-government. As stated elsewhere, his first impulse would seem to have been to appoint mandatories to administer the territories severed from Russia. The mandatory arrangement under the ubiquitous League is said to have been his own. Presumably he afterward acquired the belief that the system might be wisely dispensed with in the case of some of Russia's border states, for they soon afterward received promises of independence and implicitly of protection against future encroachments by a resuscitated Russia.

In this connection a scene is worth reproducing which was enacted at the Peace Table before the system of administering certain territories by proxy was fully elaborated. At one of the sittings the delegates set themselves to determine what countries should be thus governed,[129] and it was understood that the mandatory system was to be reserved for the German colonies and certain provinces of the Turkish Empire. But in the course of the conversation Mr. Wilson casually made use of the expression, "The German colonies, the territories of the Turkish Empire and other territories." One of the delegates promptly put the question, "What other territories?" to which the President replied, unhesitatingly, "Those of the late Russian Empire." Then he added by way of explanation: "We are constantly receiving petitions from peoples who lived hitherto under the scepter of the Tsars--Caucasians, Central Asiatic peoples, and others--who refuse to be ruled any longer by the Russians and yet are incapable of organizing viable independent states of their own. It is meet that the desires of these nations should be considered." At this the Czech delegate, Doctor Kramarcz, flared up and exclaimed: "Russia? Cut up Russia? But what about her integrity? Is that to be sacrificed?" But his words died away without evoking a response. "Was there no one," a Russian afterward asked, "to remind those representatives of the Great Powers of their righteous wrath with Germany when the Brest-Litovsk treaty was promulgated?"

Toward Italy, who, unlike Russia, was not treated as an enemy, but as relegated to the category of lesser states, the attitude of President Wilson was exceptionally firm and uncompromising. On the subject of Fiume and Dalmatia he refused to yield an inch. In vain the Italian delegation argued, appealed, and lowered its claims. Mr. Wilson was adamant. It is fair to admit that in no other way could he have contrived to get even a simulacrum of a League. Unless the weak states were awed into submitting to sacrifices for the great aim which he had made his own, he must return to Washington as the champion of a manifestly lost cause. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that his thesis was not destitute of arguments to support it. Accordingly the deadlock went on for months, until the Italian Cabinet fell and people wearied of the Adriatic problems.

Poland was another of the communities which had to bend before Anglo-Saxon will, represented in her case mainly by Mr. Lloyd George, not, however, without the somewhat tardy backing of his colleague from Washington. It is important for the historian and the political student to observe that as the British Premier was not credited with any profound or original ideas about the severing or soldering of east European territories, the authorship of the powerful and successful opposition to the allotting of Dantzig to Poland was rightly or wrongly ascribed not to him, but to what is euphemistically termed "international finance" lurking in the background, whose interest in Poland was obviously keen, and whose influence on the Supreme Council, although less obvious, was believed to be far-reaching. The same explanation was currently suggested for the fixed resolve of Mr. Lloyd George not to assign Upper Silesia to Poland without a plebiscite. His own account of the matter was that although the inhabitants were Polish--they are as two to one compared with the Germans--it was conceivable that they entertained leanings toward the Germans, and might therefore desire to throw in their lot with these. When one compares this scrupulous respect for the likes and dislikes of the inhabitants of that province with the curt refusal of the same men at first to give ear to the ardent desire of the Austrians to unite with the Germans, or to abide by a plebiscite of the inhabitants of Fiume or Teschen, one is bewildered. The British Premier's wish was opposed by the official body of experts appointed to report on the matter. Its members had no misgivings. The territory, they said, belonged of right to Poland, the great majority of its population was unquestionably Polish, and the practical conclusion was that it should be handed over to the Polish government as soon as feasible. Thereupon the staff of the commission was changed and new members were substituted for the old.[130] But that was not enough. The British Premier still encountered such opposition among his foreign colleagues that it was only by dint of wordy warfare and stubbornness that he finally won his point.

The stipulation for which the first British delegate toiled thus laboriously was that within a fortnight after the ratification of the Treaty the German and Polish forces should evacuate the districts in which the plebiscite was to be held, that the Workmen's Councils there should be dissolved, and that the League of Nations should take over the government of the district so as to allow the population to give full expression to its will. But the League of Nations did not exist and could not be constituted for a considerable time. It was therefore decided[131] that some temporary substitute for the League should be formed at once, and the Supreme Council decided that Inter-Allied troops should occupy the districts. That was the first instalment of the price to be paid for the British Premier's tenderness for plebiscites, which the expert commissions deprecated as unnecessary, and which, as events proved in this case, were harmful.

In the meanwhile Bolshevist--some said German--agents were stirring up the population by suasion and by terrorism until it finally began to ferment. Thousands of working-men responded to the goad, "turned down" their tools and ceased work. Thereupon the coal-fields of Upper Silesia, the production of which had already dropped by 50 per cent, since the preceding November, ceased to produce anything. This consummation grieved the Supreme Council, which turned for help to the Inter-Allied armies. For the Silesian coal-fields represented about one-third of Germany's production, and both France and Italy were looking to Germany for part of their fuel-supply. The French press pertinently asked whether it would not have been cheaper, safer, and more efficacious to have forgone the plebiscite and relied on the Polish troops from the outset.[132] For, however ideal the intentions of Mr. Lloyd George may have been, the net result of his insistence on a plebiscite was to enable an ex-newspaper vender named Hoersing, who had undertaken to prevent the detachment of Upper Silesia from Germany, to set his machinery for agitation in motion and cause general unrest in the Silesian and Dombrova coal-mining districts. When the strike was declared the workmen, who are Poles to a man, rejected all suggestions that they should refer their grievances to arbitration courts. For these tribunals were conducted by Germans. The consequence of Mr. Lloyd George's spirited intervention was, in the words of an unbiased observer, to "raise the specters of starvation, freezing and Bolshevism in eastern Europe" during the ensuing winter--a heavy price to pay for pedantic adherence to the letter of an irrelevant ordinance, at a moment when the spirit of basic principles was being allowed to evaporate.

Rumania was chastened and qualified in severer fashion for admission to the sodality of nations until her delegates quitted the Conference in disgust, struck out their own policy, and courteously ignored the Great Powers. Then the Supreme Council changed its note for the moment and abandoned the position which it had taken up respecting the armistice with Hungary, to revert to it shortly afterward.[133] The joy with which the upshot of this revolt was hailed by all the lesser states was an evil omen. For their antipathy toward the Supreme Council had long before hardened into a sentiment much more intense, and any stick seemed good enough to break the rod of the self-constituted governors of the planet.

The concrete result of this tinkering and cobbling could only be a ramshackle structure, built without any reference to the canons of political architecture. It was shaped neither by the Fourteen Points nor by the canons of the balance of power and territory. It was hardly more than an abortive attempt to make a synthesis of the two. Created by force, it could be perpetuated only by force; but if symptoms are to be trusted, it is more likely to be broken up by force. As an American press organ remarked in August: "The Council of Five complains that no one now condescends to recognize the League of Nations. Even the small nations are buying war material, quite oblivious of the fact that there are to be no more wars, now that the League is there to prevent them. Sweden is buying large supplies from Germany, and Spain is sending a commission to Paris to negotiate for some of France's war equipment."[134]

Belgium, too, was treated with scant consideration. The praise lavished on her courageous people during the war was apparently deemed an adequate recompense for the sacrifices she had made and the losses she endured. For the revision of the treaties of 1839, indispensable to the economic development of the country, no diplomatic preparation was made down to May, and among the Treaty clauses then drafted Belgium's share of justice was so slight and insufficient that the unbiased press published sharp strictures on the forgetfulness or egotism of the Supreme Council. "The little that has leaked out of the decisions taken regarding the conditions which affect Belgium," wrote one journal, "has caused not only bitter disappointment in Belgium, but also indignation everywhere.... The Allies having decided not to accord moral satisfaction to Belgium (they chose Geneva as the capital of the League of Nations), it was perhaps to be expected that they would not accord her material satisfaction. And such expectations are being fulfilled. The Limburg province, annexed to Holland in 1839, the province which gave the retreating enemy unlawful refuge in 1918, a rank violation of Dutch neutrality, is apparently not to be restored to Belgium. Even the right, vital to the safety and welfare of Belgium, the right of unimpeded navigation of the Scheldt between Antwerp and the sea, has not yet been conceded. And the raw material that is indispensable if Belgian industry is to be revived is withheld; the Allies, however, are quite willing to flood the country with manufactured articles."[135]

And yet Belgium's demands were extremely modest.[136] They were formulated, not as the guerdon for her heroic defense of civilization, but as a plain corollary flowing direct from each and every principle officially recognized by the heads of the Conference--right, nationality, legitimate guarantees, and economic requirements. Tested by any or all of these accepted touchstones, everything asked for was reasonable and fair in itself, and seemingly indispensable to the durability of the new world-structure which the statesmen were endeavoring to raise on the ruins of the old. Belgium's forlorn political and territorial plight embodied all the worst vices of the old balance of power stigmatized by President Wilson: the mutilation of the country; the forcible separation of sections of its population from each other; the distribution of these lopped, ethnic fragments among alien states and dynasties; the control of her waterways handed over to commercial rivals; the transformation of cities and districts that were obviously destined to figure among her sources of national well-being and centers of culture into dead towns that paralyze her effort and hinder her progress. In a word, Belgium had had no political existence for her own behoof. She was not an organic unit in the sodality of nations, but a mere cog in the mechanism of European equilibrium.

Ruined by the war, Belgium was sorely tried by the Peace Conference. She complained of two open wounds which poisoned her existence, stunted her economic growth, and rendered her self-defense an impossibility: the vast gap of Limburg on the east and the blocking of the Scheldt on the west. The great national _réduit_, Antwerp, cut off from the sea, inaccessible to succor in case of war, on the one side, and Limburg opening to Germany's armies the road through central Belgium, on the other--these were the two standing dangers which it was hoped would be removed. How dangerous they are events had demonstrated. In October, 1914, Antwerp fell because Holland had closed the Scheldt and forbidden the entrance to warships and transports, and in November, 1918, a German army of over seventy thousand men eluded pursuit by the Allies by passing through Dutch Limburg, carrying with them vast war materials and booty. Militarily Belgium is exposed to mortal perils so long as the treaties which ordained this preposterous division of territories are maintained in vigor.

Economically, too, the consequences, especially of the status of the Scheldt, are admittedly baleful. To Holland the river is practically useless--indeed, the only advantage it could confer would be the power of impeding the growth and prosperity of Antwerp for the benefit of its rival, Rotterdam. All that the Belgians desired there was the complete control of their national river, with the right of carrying out the works necessary to keep it navigable. A like demand was put forward for the canal of Terneuzen, which links the city of Ghent with the Scheldt; and the suppression of the checks and hindrances to Belgium's free communications with her hinterland--_i.e._, the basins of the Meuse and the Rhine. Prom every point of view, including that of international law, the claims made were at once modest and grounded. But the Supreme Council had no time to devote to such subsidiary matters, and, like more momentous issues, they were adjourned.

The Belgian delegation did not ask that Holland's territory should be curtailed. On the contrary, they would have welcomed its increase by the addition of territory inhabited by people of her own idiom, under German sway.[137] But the Dutch demurred, as Denmark had done in the matter of the third Schleswig zone, for fear of offending Germany. And the Supreme Council acquiesced in the refusal. Again, when issues were under discussion that turned upon the Rhine country and affected Belgian interests, her delegates were never consulted. They were systematically ignored by the Conference. When the capital of the League of Nations was to be chosen, their hopes that Brussels would be deemed worthy of the honor were blasted by President Wilson himself. One of the American delegates informed a foreign colleague "that the capital of the League must be situate in a tranquil country, must have a steady, settled population and a really good climate." "A good climate?" asked a continental statesman. "Then why not choose Monte Carlo?"

But the decision in favor of Geneva was sent by courier from Switzerland ready made to President Wilson. The chief grounds which lent color to the belief that religious bias played a larger part in the Conference's decisions than was apparent were the following: It was from Geneva that the spirit of religious and political liberty first went forth to be incarnated among the various nations of the world. It is to John Calvin, rather than to Martin Luther, that the birth of the Scotch Covenanters and of English Puritanism is traceable. Hence Geneva is the parent of New England. So, too, it was Rousseau--a true child of Calvin--who was the author of America's Declaration of Independence. Again, one of the first pacifists and advocates of international arbitration was born in Geneva. John Knox sat for two years at the feet of Calvin. Consequently the Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution, and the American Revolution all had their springs in Geneva.

These were the considerations which weighed with President Wilson when he refused to fix his choice on Brussels. In vain the Belgians argued and pleaded, urging that if the Conference were to vote for London, Washington, or Paris, they would receive the announcement with respectful acquiescence, but that among the lesser states they conceived that their country's claims were the best grounded. To the Americans who objected that Switzerland's mountains and lakes, being free from hateful war memories, offer more fitting surroundings for the capital of the League of Peace than Brussels, where vestiges of the odious struggle will long survive, they answered that they could only regret that Belgium's resistance to the lawless invaders should be taken to disqualify her for the honor.

It is worth while pursuing this matter a step farther. The Federal Council in Berne having soon afterward officially recommended[138] the nation to enter the League which guarantees it neutrality,[139] an illuminating discussion ensued. And it was elicited that as there is an obligation imposed on all member-states to execute the decrees of the League for the coercion of rebellious fellow-members, it follows that in such cases Switzerland, too, would be obliged to take an active part in the struggle between the League and the recalcitrant country. From military operations, however, Switzerland is dispensed, but it would certainly be bound to adopt economic measures of pressure, and to this extent abandon its neutrality. Now not only would that attitude be construed by the disobedient nation as unfriendly, and the usual consequences drawn from it, but as Switzerland is freed from military co-operation, it follows that the League could not fix the headquarters of its military command in its own capital, Geneva, as that would constitute a violation of Swiss neutrality. And, if it did, Switzerland would in self-defense be bound to oppose the decision!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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