The Inside Story of the Peace Conference Part 26

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

[290] In March, 1919.

[291] August 19, 1919.

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

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

[294] _L'Humanite,_ May 21, 1919.

[295] _The Nation_, August 23, 1919.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

30 3: Excess of births over deaths (yearly average).--Cf.

_L'Information,_ January 20, 1919:

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

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

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

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

[307] M. Andre Tardieu in a speech delivered on August 17, 1919. Cf.

Paris newspapers of following two days, and in particular _New York Herald_, August 19th.

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

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

[310] Speech of M. Klotz in the Chamber on September 5, 1919. Cf.

_L'Echo de Paris_, September 6, 1919.

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

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

[313] Issued on November 9, 1918.

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

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

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

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

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

[319] In Was.h.i.+ngton on August 16, 1919.

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

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

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

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

Cf. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.

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

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

XIV

THE TREATY WITH GERMANY

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

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

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

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