The last to speak at this memorable session, M. Venizelos, suggested that the legitimate anxieties of the states immediately affected by the treaty with Austria ought to be considered, before the treaty was presented to the Austrian delegation, in a special joint meeting of the Big Four and the representatives of these states.
This was not done. The draft of the treaty was given to the Austrians at St.-Germain on June 2. After lengthy exchange of notes some concessions were made in the economic clauses, and an amended treaty was handed to the Austrians on July 20. Negotiations were protracted, not on account of the Austrians, who were powerless, but because the interests of Italy had to be acknowledged, and because the small states had to be appeased and bullied. The Treaty of St.-Germain was signed on September 10. By that time, however, all interest in it had died down, and, as far as its economic clauses were concerned, it was universally recognized to be more absurd and impossible of fulfilment than the Treaty of Versailles.
The Bulgarians were handed their treaty on September 19, and they signed it at Neuilly on November 27. The Hungarian and Turkish treaties had been drawn up at the same time as the others. But there was no stable government in Hungary to sign the treaty, and the Entente Powers were at loggerheads over the Turkish treaty. Before the treaties of Trianon and Sèvres were presented to the Hungarians and Turks, the Paris Peace Conference had gone out of existence, and was succeeded by the three Entente premiers, who held a series of continuation conferences frequently from January, 1920, to January, 1923.
It may be felt that I have written an unsympathetic account of the Paris Conference. But how can one write otherwise concerning an inglorious failure? It would be possible to explain plausibly, convincingly, why it failed. But the chronicler of contemporary history must pass on to an examination of the treaties, and then to judge them by the only criterion he has the right to use: What has happened to the world because of them? Did they bring us peace? Have they proved to be practicable? Were they the beginning of a new order? Has the League of Nations filled the rôle expected of it by those who said that its birth alone justified the Paris peace settlement and would prove its corrective?
CHAPTER IV
THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES
The principal Allied and Associated Powers, who took upon themselves the entire responsibility for imposing and securing the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, sent an exhaustive reply to the German counter-proposals on June 16, in which, as we have seen, some concessions were made in details, modifying the draft treaty. But these were slight. In this reply they said:
They [the victors] believe that it is not only a just settlement of the great war, but that it provides the basis upon which the peoples of Europe can live together in friendship and equality. At the same time it creates the machinery for the peaceful adjustment of all international problems by discussion and consent, whereby the settlement of 1919 itself can be modified from time to time to suit new facts and new conditions as they arise. It is frankly not based upon a general condonation of the events of 1914–1918. It would not be a peace of justice if it were. But it represents a sincere and deliberate attempt to establish “that reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed, and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind,” which was the agreed basis of the peace. As such the treaty in its present form must be accepted or rejected.
In the light of these words, uttered by the Big Four at a solemn moment, we must examine the main features of this treaty. And lest it be thought that the American President did not approve of the treaty as signed, but agreed to it, as General Smuts did, only in the hope of its immediate and radical revision by the League of Nations, it is fair to quote the opening paragraph of Mr. Wilson’s speech at Kansas City on September 6, 1919. He said:
I came back from Paris, bringing one of the greatest documents of human history. One of the things that made it great was that it was penetrated throughout with the principles to which America has devoted her life. Let me hasten to say that one of the most delightful circumstances of the work on the other side of the water was that I discovered that what we called American principles had penetrated to the heart and to the understanding, not only of the great peoples of Europe, but to the hearts and understandings of the great men who were representing the peoples of Europe.
The Treaty of Versailles, containing 440 articles, with annexes, constitutes a large sized volume. Its first twenty-six articles contain the Covenant of the League of Nations. Then follow the boundaries of Germany; political clauses for Europe; German rights and interests outside Germany; military, naval, and air clauses; prisoners of war and graves; penalties; reparation; financial clauses; economic clauses; aërial navigation; ports, waterways, and railways; labor; guarantees; miscellaneous provisions.
The underlying idea of the treaty is that the Germans are a guilty and vanquished people, who are indefinitely compelled, without appeal, to put at the mercy of the conquerors their lives, their property, their territory. A reading of the treaty will convince the fair-minded man that its many “jokers” are so cleverly scattered through the treaty as to nullify what provisions it does contain for setting dates for the termination of the penalties and limitations imposed upon Germany. I saw many of these “jokers” when I read the treaty. They were patent. But a clever lawyer would find many more.
The late Senator Philander C. Knox, who had read the treaty through, told me in the autumn of 1919 that, from a legal point of view, there was no hope whatever of Germany’s being able to fulfil the obligations placed upon her. He brushed the economic questions aside, and showed me how Germany was trussed by the treaty in such a way that no matter what she did towards fulfilment she would still be in default. “With all the power and authority and good will in the world,” said our former secretary of state, “no nation on earth could ever acquit herself of the obligations of such a treaty. If Germany were a small nation, and her enemies bound together permanently by common interests, central Europe, under this treaty, would become within a decade a huge region inhabited by millions of slaves. As it is, the treaty indicts those who drew it up. It is a crime against civilization.” This comment was provoked when I was trying to argue with the senator that the treaty ought to be ratified with reservations.
Eight months later, on May 5, 1920, Senator Knox said publicly, addressing the Senate:
The Treaty of Versailles is almost universally discredited in all its parts. The majority of its negotiators concede this. Its economic terms are impossible; its League of Nations is an aggravated imitation of the worst features of the ill fated and foolish holy alliance of a century ago. It promises little but mischief unless recast on such radical lines as will entirely obliterate its identity. … We must proceed in accordance with the established beneficent and enlightened rules and principles of international law as they have heretofore obtained between civilized Christian nations.
The principal features of the Treaty of Versailles are the exclusion of Germany from the League of Nations; the failure to establish or promise reciprocity in any of its provisions that would otherwise have been for the common good of the world; the violation of the principle of self-determination where it was to the interest of the victors to ignore it; the elimination of Germany from cultural and economic participation in the development of the world; and the consecration of the principle of the right of the victors in a war