The Treaty of Versailles was subject to long and penetrating criticism in the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Clear-headed and far-sighted men did not cease to protest against the treaty on the same ground as American senators: (1) fear that national interests had been sacrificed to questionable international advantages; (2) uncertainty as to the adequacy of the means of enforcing the provisions in the treaty; (3) dissatisfaction with the League of Nations Covenant as it stood in the treaty; (4) doubt as to the wisdom of having incorporated in one document the solution of two different questions, imposing peace upon Germany and setting up the machinery of a new world order.
During the Conference of Paris I had the privilege of coming into intimate contact with all classes of Frenchmen. They did not deceive themselves. They knew well enough where they would have been after a few months of war, had they been facing Germany alone. Now that Germany was temporarily disabled, they wanted either a free hand to take strategic precautions against a renewal of German aggression, which meant the Rhine frontier, or a new defensive alliance in place of the Russian alliance. They had no faith whatever in the League of Nations. M. Clemenceau had been persuaded to give up the Rhine frontier in exchange for an agreement by the terms of which Great Britain and the United States were to come to the aid of France in case of German aggression. At the best, owing to the geographical position of the new proposed defenders, the Anglo-American guarantee was not a very certain one. After the American Senate began to attack Article X of the League of Nations Covenant, the French saw that they had been deceived. The Anglo-American guarantee was an illusion. The Treaty of Versailles, in itself, provided no permanent security for France.
In Belgium I found ratification of the treaty regarded as a painful necessity. There was no enthusiasm for it, and no hope that a new order would be born of it. The prime ministers of Greece and Rumania told me that the Versailles Treaty could not be pronounced either good or bad by their countries until the other treaties with enemy countries were included. But they both felt that not peace but a series of new wars was likely to be the result of the secret pourparlers among the Big Four that gave birth to the Treaty of Versailles. The minister of foreign affairs of another small nation expressed to me his belief that the incorporation of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles killed the League’s chances of success.
“How could international machinery for righting injustice and establishing a new international morality belong in a document that furnishes numerous instances of just the sort of thing the League of Nations was created to abolish?” he cried. I can see him now as he walked up and down the room, shaking both arms with elbows bended, and saying, “Pooling of interests, renunciation of special privileges, refusal to transfer territories from one sovereignty to another without consulting their inhabitants, recognition of the right of self-determination—bah! bah! BAH!” The poor man had just been shown a draft of the clauses relating to his country that were to be put into the Treaty of St.-Germain.
The statesmen of most of the smaller countries, including the neutrals invited to become charter members of the League, were afraid that the inclusion of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles would make their position in this organization embarrassing. For Mr. Wilson had succeeded in his determination to connect the league inextricably with the treaty. Here was a punitive treaty, imposed upon a defeated nation, which gave great advantages to a few countries. But many countries—in fact, almost all the countries of the world—were supposed to join in the responsibility of enforcing the Treaty of Versailles, in whose advantages and loot they were not sharing. Some of them had not even been enemies of Germany. Several of them, like Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland, had common boundaries with Germany and did most of their business with her. Others, like Sweden, Finland, and Lithuania, not only had closer cultural relations with Germany than with the Entente Powers, but also were vitally interested in not having Germany remain in the position of economic serfdom to which the Treaty of Versailles doomed her. When the draft treaty was published, the press in all the countries neighboring on Germany, which for the most part had been unsympathetic or even actually hostile during the war, pronounced its terms impracticable and war-breeding.
In Italy the spirit of revolt against the League of Nations and a punitive treaty imposed upon Germany had begun before the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Signor Orlando was replaced in the premiership by Signor Nitti while the Germans were still debating whether they should sign or not. Italian public opinion was inflamed over the injustice of denying to Italy “sacred treaty rights,” when Japan and Poland and France (there was much talk in Italy about the Saar Valley) were granted territorial gains in defiance of the principle of self-determination. But Italy could not have Fiume! And yet the British could have Egypt! Italian newspapers declared that Italy was coming out at the small end of the horn. The Treaty of Versailles recognized and guaranteed in every way all British demands and selfish interests, and in almost every way French demands and selfish interests. What Japan wanted she got in defiance of Wilsonian principles. Why should Italy ratify a treaty so much to the advantage of the other Entente nations before she was sure that the Treaty of St.-Germain and the other treaties were going to give her as much loot as Great Britain, France, and Japan received from the Treaty of Versailles?
Japan was profoundly dissatisfied. It was certain that the United States, put into a hole by Mr. Wilson’s compromise, would try to wring a definite promise of restitution of Shantung to China, with a date set. But the Japanese people did not attach vital importance to the Shantung clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. They blamed their negotiators for not having made the promise of willingness to give Shantung back to China contingent upon the surrender by European Powers of footholds, concessions, and special economic and political privileges in China. What was good for the goose was good for the gander. If there was to be an open door in China, said the Japanese press, let it be really open. Morally speaking, the Treaty of Versailles, with its emasculated League of Nations Covenant, was a deception to the Japanese. They suffered in their pride by our refusal to recognize racial equality. But the worst feature of the Treaty of Versailles was the continued mortgaging it consecrated of the colonizable areas of the world by the white race. They had little hope that the League of Nations, as it was conceived in the treaty, would bring about a world-wide state of peace. For it begged the question of recognizing the world-wide rights of peoples to reciprocal and equal privileges and opportunities. The whole spirit of the Treaty of Versailles made the Japanese feel that Asiatic peoples would never get a square deal without fighting Europe for it.
Among Latin American delegates at Paris two strong currents were battling for mastery. Ought the Treaty of Versailles, giving birth to the League of Nations, to be welcomed in Central and South America and the West Indies as the document by which the other states of the western hemisphere were emancipated from Yankee overlordship? Or ought the Latin-American republics to fear the abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine by their entry into a world federation built upon European ideals and European atmosphere?
The League might prove a means of resisting Yankee imperialism. On the other hand, it might open the doors to something worse. The transplanting to America of the doctrine of European eminent domain would be deadly to the self-respect and prosperity of weak non-European nations. A distinguished South American jurist said to me at Paris: “I think you do not need to be worried about our taking this League of Nations business too seriously. For the first time in my life, since I have been sitting in this conference, I have been made to feel that I represent what Kipling calls the ‘lesser breeds without the law.’ It frightens me!”
The modified form of Article XXI of the Covenant, inserted to preserve the Monroe Doctrine, was an ambiguous sop thrown to American public opinion to quiet the apprehensions born of our traditional instincts.6 The belief, expressed several times by President Wilson in his speeches justifying the Treaty of Versailles, that the United States would have the leadership in the League was not shared by the representatives of Latin America. They could not take home with them any such curious notion. For they saw how the United States, with all the personal prestige of Mr. Wilson, had no real influence in the conference. Proof of this statement will be found in comparing Mr. Wilson’s war speeches with the Treaty of Versailles. Had we reason to think that our influence, after