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for or impose any really onerous terms. It was contented with having regained hegemony among the German people. Prussia conquered France in 1870. It was an unjust war, and Prussia laid down two unjust conditions: Alsace-Lorraine and the indemnity of five milliards. As soon as the indemnity was paid–and it was an indemnity that could be paid in one lump sum–Prussia evacuated the occupied territory. It did not claim of France its colonies or its fleet, it did not impose the reduction of its armaments or control of its transport after the peace. The Treaty of Frankfort is a humanitarian act compared with the Treaty of Versailles.

If Germany had won the War–Germany to whom we have always attributed the worst possible intentions–what could it have done that the Entente has not done? It is possible that, as it is gifted with more practical common sense, it might have laid down less impossible conditions in order to gain a secure advantage without ruining the conquered countries.

There are about ninety millions of Germans in Europe, and perhaps fifteen millions in different countries outside Europe. But in the heart of Europe they represent a great ethnic unity; they are the largest and most compact national group in that continent. With all the good and bad points of their race, too methodical and at the same time easily depressed by a severe setback, they are still the most cultivated people on earth. It is impossible to imagine that they can disappear, much less that they can reconcile themselves to live in a condition of slavery. On the other hand, the Entente has built on a foundation of shifting sand a Europe full of small States poisoned with imperialism and in ruinous conditions of economy and finance, and a too great Poland without a national basis and necessarily the enemy of Russia and of Germany.

No people has always been victorious; the peoples who have fought most wars in modern Europe, English, French and Germans, have had alternate victories and defeats. A defeat often carries in its train reconsideration which is followed by renewed energy: the greatness of England is largely due to its steadfast determination to destroy the Napoleonic Empire. What elevates men is this steadfast and persevering effort, and a series of such collective efforts carries a nation to a high place.

There is nothing lasting in the existing groupings. At the moment of common danger eternal union and unbreakable solidarity are proclaimed; but both are mere literary expressions.

Great Britain, the country which has the least need to make war, has been at war for centuries with nearly all the European countries. There is one country only against which it has never made war, not even when a commercial challenge from the mercantile Republics of Italy seemed possible. That country is Italy. That shows that between the action of Italy there is not, nor can there be, contrast, and indeed that between the two nations there is complete agreement in European continental policy. It is the common desire of the two nations, though perhaps for different reasons, that no one State shall have hegemony on the continent. But between the years 1688 and 1815 Great Britain and France were at war for seventy years: for seventy years, that is, out of a hundred and twenty-seven there was a state of deadly hostility between the two countries.

General progress, evinced in various ways, above all in respect for and in the autonomy of other peoples, is a guarantee for all. No peoples are always victorious, none always conquered. In the time of Napoleon the First the French derided the lack of righting spirit in the German peoples, producers of any number of philosophers and writers. They would have laughed at anyone who suggested the possibility of any early German military triumph. After 1815 the countries of the Holy Alliance would never have believed in the possibility of the revolutionary spirit recovering; they were sure of lasting peace in Europe. In 1871 the Germans had no doubt at all that they had surely smothered France; now the Entente thinks that it has surely smothered Germany.

But civilization has gained something: it has gained that collection of rules, moral conditions, sentiments, international regulations, which tend both to mitigate violence and to regulate in a form which is tolerable, if not always just, relations between conquerors and conquered, above all, a respect for the liberty and autonomy of the latter.

Now, the treaties which have been made are, from the moral point of view, immeasurably worse than any consummated in former days, in that they carry Europe back to a phase of civilization which was thought to be over and done with centuries ago. They are a danger too. For as everyone who takes vengeance does so in a degree greater than the damage suffered, if one supposes for a moment that the conquered of to-day may be the conquerors of to-morrow, to what lengths of violence, degradation and barbarism may not Europe be dragged?

Every effort, then, should now be made to follow the opposite road to that traversed up to now, the more so in that the treaties cannot be carried out; and if it is desired that the conquered countries shall pay compensation to the conquerors, at least in part, for the most serious damage, then the line to be followed must be based on realities instead of on violence.

But before trying to see how and why the treaties cannot be carried out, it may be well to consider how the actual system of treaties has been reached, in complete opposition to all that was said by the Entente during the War and to President Wilson’s fourteen points. At the same time ought to be examined the causes which led in six months from the declarations of the Entente and of President Wilson to the Treaty of Versailles.

The most important cause for what has happened was the choice of Paris as the meeting-place of the Conference. After the War Paris was the least fitted of any place for the holding of a Peace Conference, and in the two French leaders, the President of the Republic, Poincare, and the President of the Council of Ministers, Clemenceau, even if the latter was more adaptable in mind and more open to consideration of arguments on the other side, were two temperaments driving inevitably to extremes. Victory had come in a way that surpassed all expectation; a people that, living through every day the War had lasted, had passed through every sorrow, privation, agony, had now but one thought, to destroy the enemy. The atmosphere of Paris was fiery. The decision of the peace terms to be imposed on the enemy was to be taken in a city which a few months before, one might really say a few weeks before, had been under the fire of the long-range guns invented by the Germans, in hourly dread of enemy aeroplanes. Even now it is inexplicable that President Wilson did not realize the situation which must inevitably come about. It is possible that the delirium of enthusiasm with which he was received at Paris may have given him the idea that it was in him alone that the people trusted, may have made him take the welcome given to the representative of the deciding factor of the War as the welcome to the principles which he had proclaimed to the world. Months later, when he left France amid general indifference if not distrust, President Wilson must have realized that he had lost, not popularity, but prestige, the one sure element of success for the head of a Government, much more so for the head of a State. It was inevitable that a Peace Conference held in Paris, only a few months after the War, with the direction and preparation of the work almost entirely in French hands and with Clemenceau at the head of everything, should conclude as it did conclude; all the more so when Italy held apart right from the beginning, and England, though convinced of the mistakes being made, could not act freely and effectively.

The first duty of the Peace Conference was to restore a state of equilibrium and re-establish conditions of life. Taking Europe as an economic unity, broken by the War, it was necessary first of all and in the interests of all to re-establish conditions of life which would make it possible for the crisis to be overcome with the least possible damage.

I do not propose to tell the story of the Conference, and it is as well to say at once that I do not intend to make use of any document placed in my hands for official purposes. But the story of the Paris Conference can now be told with practical completeness after what has been published by J.M. Keynes in his noble book on the Economic Consequences of the War and by the American Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, and after the statements made in the British and French Parliaments by Lloyd George and Clemenceau. But from the political point of view the most interesting document is still Andre Tardieu’s book _La Paix_, to which Clemenceau wrote a preface and which expresses, from the point of view of the French Delegation at the Conference, the programme which France laid before itself and what it obtained. This book explains how the principal decisions were taken, and indeed can be fairly considered to show in a more reliable way than any other publication extant how the work of the Conference proceeded. For not only was M. Tardieu one of the French Delegates to the Conference, one of those who signed the Versailles Treaty, but also he prepared the plan of work as well as the solutions of the most important questions in his capacity of trusted agent of the Prime Minister.

The determination in the mind of President Wilson when he came to Paris was to carry through his programme of the League of Nations. He was fickle in his infallibility, but he had the firmest faith that he was working for the peace of the world and above all for the glory of the United States. Of European things he was supremely ignorant. We are bound to recognize his good faith, but we are not in the least bound on that account to admit his capacity to tackle the problems which with his academic simplicity he set himself to solve. When he arrived in Europe he had not even prepared in outline a scheme of what the League of Nations was to be; the principal problems found him unprepared, and the duty of the crowd of experts (sometimes not too expert) who followed him seemed rather to be to demonstrate the truth of his idea than to prepare material for seriously thought out decisions.

He could have made no greater mistake than he did in coming to Europe to take part in the meetings of the Conference. His figure lost relief at once, in a way it seemed to lose dignity. The head of a State was taking part in meetings of heads of Governments, one of the latter presiding. It was a giant compelled to live in a cellar and thereby sacrificing his height. He was surrounded by formal respect and in some decisions he exercised almost despotic authority, but his work was none the less disordered; there was a semblance of giving in to him while he was giving away his entire programme without being aware of it.

In his ignorance of European things he was brought, without recognizing it, to accept a series of decisions not superficially in opposition to his fourteen points but which did actually nullify them.

Great Britain is part of Europe but is not on the Continent of Europe. While Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Russia, Hungary, Holland, Belgium, etc., live the same life, are one in thought, Great Britain lives in her superb insularity. If she had any moment of supreme anxiety during the War, it was in the spring and summer of 1917 during the terrible threat of the destruction of her shipping by submarines and the inability of construction to keep pace with it. But after the defeat of Germany Great Britain found herself with a fleet far superior to those of all the rest of Europe put together; once more she broke away from Continental Europe.

Lloyd George, with swiftly acting brain and clear insight, undoubtedly the most remarkable man at the Paris Conference, found himself in a difficult situation between President Wilson’s pronouncements, some of them, like that regarding the freedom of the seas, undefined and dangerous, and the claims of France tending, after the brutal attack it had had to meet, not towards a true peace and the reconstruction of Europe, but towards the vivisection of Germany. In one of the first moments, just before the General Elections, Lloyd George, too, promised measures of the greatest severity, the trial of the Kaiser, the punishment of all guilty of atrocities, compensation for all who had suffered from the War, the widest and most complete indemnity. But such pronouncements gave way before his clear realization of facts, and later on he tried in vain to put the Conference on the plane of such realization.

Italy, as M. Tardieu says very plainly, carried no weight in the Conference. In the meetings of the Prime Ministers and President Wilson _le ton etait celui de la conversation; nul apparat, nulle pose. M. Orlando parlait peu; l’activite de l’Italie a la conference a ete, jusqu’a l’exces, absorbee par la question de Fiume, et sa part dans les debats a ete de ce fait trop reduite. Restait un dialogue a trois: Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George_. The Italian Government came into the War in May, 1915, on the basis of the London Agreement of the preceding April, and it had never thought of claiming Fiume either before the War when it was free to lay down conditions or during the progress of the War.

The Italian people had always been kept in ignorance of the principles established in the London Agreement. One of the men chiefly responsible for the American policy openly complained to me that when the United States came into the War no notification was given them of the London Agreement in which were defined the future conditions of part of Europe. A far worse mistake was made in the failure to communicate the London Agreement to Serbia, which would certainly have accepted it without hesitation in the terrible position in which it then was.

But the most serious thing of all was that Italian Ministers were unaware of its provisions till after its publication in London by the organ of the Jugo-Slavs, which had evidently received the text from Petrograd, where the Bolsheviks had published it. In Italy the London Agreement was a mystery to everyone; its text was known only to the Presidents of the Council and the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the War Cabinets. Thus only four or five people knew about it, secrecy was strictly kept, and, moreover, it cannot possibly be said that it was in accordance either with national ideals or the currents of public opinion, much less with any intelligent conception of Italy’s needs and Italy’s future.

The framers of the London Agreement never thought of Fiume. Indeed they specifically expressed their willingness that it should go to Croatia, whether in the case of Austria-Hungary remaining united or of the detachment of Croatia from it. It is not true that it was through the opposition of Russia or of France that the Italian framers of the London Agreement gave up all claim to Fiume. There was no opposition because there was no claim. The representatives of Russia and France have told me officially that no renunciation took place through any action on the part of their Governments, because no claim was ever made to them. On the other hand, after the armistice, and when it became known through the newspapers that the London Agreement gave Fiume to Croatia, a very strong movement for Fiume arose, fanned by the Government itself, and an equally strong movement in Fiume also.

If, in the London Agreement, instead of claiming large areas of Dalmatia which are entirely or almost entirely Slav, provision had been made for the constitution of a State of Fiume placed in a condition to guarantee not only the people of Italian nationality but the economic interests of all the peoples in it and surrounding it, there is no doubt that such a claim on the part of Italy would have gone through without opposition.

During the Paris Conference the representatives of Italy showed hardly any interest at all in the problems concerning the peace of Europe, the situation of the conquered peoples, the distribution of raw materials, the regulation of the new states and their relations with the victor countries. They concentrated all their efforts on the question of Fiume, that is to say on the one point in which Italian action was fundamentally weak in that, when it was free to enter into the War and lay down conditions of peace, at the moment when the Entente was without America’s invaluable assistance and was beginning to doubt the capacity of Russia to carry on, it had never even asked for Fiume in its War Treaty, that it had made the inexplicable mistake of neglecting to communicate that treaty to the United States when that country came into the War and to Serbia at the moment when Italy’s effort was most valuable for its help. At the conference Italy had no directing policy. It had been a part of the system of the German Alliance, but it had left its Allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, because it recognized that the War was unjust, and had remained neutral for ten months. Then, entering into the War freely and without obligation, there was one road for it to follow, that of proclaiming solemnly and defending the principles of democracy and justice. Indeed, that was a moral duty in that the break with the two countries with which Italy had been in alliance for thirty-three years became a matter not only of honesty but of duty solely through the injustice of the cause for which they had proclaimed an offensive war. It was not possible for Italy to go to war to realize the dream of uniting the Italian lands to the nation, for she had entered the system of Alliance of the Central Empires and had stayed there long years while having all the time Italian territories unjustly subjected to Austria-Hungary. The annexation of the Italian lands to the Kingdom of Italy had to be the consequence of the affirmation of the principles of nationality, not the reason for going to war. In any case, for Italy, which had laid on itself in the London Agreement the most absurd limitations, which had confined its war aims within exceedingly modest limits, which had no share in the distribution of the wealth of the conquered countries, which came out of the War without raw materials and without any share in Germany’s colonial empire, it was a matter not only of high duty but of the greatest utility to proclaim and uphold all those principles which the Entente had so often and so publicly proclaimed as its war policy and its war aims. But in the Paris Conference Italy hardly counted. Without any definite idea of its own policy, it followed France and the United States, sometimes it followed Great Britain. There was no affirmation of principles at all. The country which, among all the European warring Powers, had suffered most severely in proportion to its resources and should have made the greatest effort to free itself from the burdens imposed on it, took no part in the most important decisions. It has to be added that these were arrived at between March 24 and May 7, while the Italian representatives were absent from Paris or had returned there humbled without having been recalled.

After interminable discussions which decided very little, especially with regard to the League of Nations which arose before the nations were constituted and could live, real vital questions were tackled, as is seen from the report of the Conference, on March 24, and it is a fact that between that date and May 7 the whole treaty was put in shape: territorial questions, financial questions, economic questions, colonial questions. Now, at that very moment, on account of the question of Fiume and Fiume alone, for some inscrutable reason the Italian delegates thought good to retire from the Conference, to which they returned later without being invited, and during that time all the demonstrations against President Wilson took place in Italy, not without some grave responsibility on the part of the government. Italy received least consideration in the peace treaties among all the conquering countries. It was practically put on one side.

It has to be noted that both in the armistice and in the peace treaty the most serious decisions were arrived at almost incidentally; moreover they were always vitiated by slight concessions apparently of importance. On November 2, 1917, when the representatives of the different nations met at Paris to fix the terms of armistice, M. Tardieu relates, the question of reparation for damages was decided quite incidentally. It is worth while reproducing what he says in his book, taken from the official report:

M. CLEMENCEAU: _Je voudrais venir maintenant sur la question des reparations et des tonnages. On ne comprenderait pas chez nous, en France, que nous n’inscrivions pas dans l’armistice une clause a cet effet. Ce que je vous demande c’est l’addition de trois mots: “Reparations des dommages” sans autre commentaire.

Le dialogue suivant s’etablit_:

M. HYMANS: _Cela serait-il une condition d’armistice_?

M. SONNINO: _C’est plutot une condition de paix_.

M. BONAR LAW: _Il est inutile d’inserer dans les conditions d’armistice une clause qui ne pourrait etre executee dans un bref delai_.

M. CLEMENCEAU: _Je ne veux que mentionner le principe. Vous ne devez pas oublier que la population francaise est une de celles qui ont le plus souffert. Elle ne comprendrait pas que nous ne fissions pas allusion a cette clause_.

M. LLOYD GEORGE: _Si vous envisages le principe des reparations sur terre, il faut mentionner aussi celui des reparations pour les navires coules_.

M. CLEMENCEAU: _Je comprends tout cela dans mes trois mots, “Reparations des dommages.” Je supplie le Conseil de se mettre dans l’esprit de la population francaise…._

M. VESSITCH: _Et serbe_….

M. HYMANS: _Et belge_….

M. SONNINO: _Et italienne aussi_….

M. HOUSE: _Puisqu’est une question importante pour tous, je propose l’addition de M. Clemenceau_.

M. BONAR LAW: _C’est deja dit dans notre lettre au President Wilson, qui la comuniquera a l’Allemagne. Il est inutile de la dire deux fois_.

M. ORLANDO: _J’accepte en principe, quoiqu’il n’en ait pas ete fait mention dans les conditions de l’armistice avec l’Autriche_.

_L’addition “Reparations des dommages” est alors adoptee. M. Klotz propose de mettre en tete de cette addition les mots: “Sous reserve de toutes revendications et restaurations ulterieures de la part des Allies et des Etats-Unis.” Il est ainsi decide_.

If I were at liberty to publish the official report of the doings of the Conference while the various peace treaties were being prepared, as MM. Poincare and Tardieu have published secret acts, it would be seen that the proceedings were very much the same in every case. Meanwhile we may confine ourselves to an examination of the report as given by M. Tardieu.

The question of reparation of damages was not a condition of the armistice. It had not been accepted. Clemenceau brings the question up again solely in homage to French public opinion. The suggestion is to write in simply the three words: _Reparation of damages_. It is true that these three words determine a policy, and that there is no mention of it in the claims of the Entente, in the fourteen points of President Wilson, or in the armistice between Italy and Austria-Hungary. In his fourteen points Wilson confined himself, in the matter of damages, to the following claims: (1) Reconstruction of Belgium, (2) Reconstruction of French territory invaded, (3) Reparation for territory invaded in Serbia, Montenegro and Rumania. There is no other claim or statement in the fourteen points. On the other hand the pronouncement, “_Reparation des dommages_,” included, as in fact was afterwards included, any claim for damage by land or sea.

The representatives of Belgium, Italy and Great Britain remark that it is a condition of peace, not of armistice. But Clemenceau makes it a question of regard and consideration for France. France would not understand there being no mention of it; there was no desire to define anything, only just to mention it, and in three simple words. “I ask you,” says Clemenceau, “to put yourselves into the spirit of the people of France.” At once the British representative notes the necessity of a clear statement regarding reparations for losses at sea through submarines and mines; and all, the Serbian, the Belgian and, last of all, the Italian, at once call attention to their own damages. Mr. House, not realizing the wide and serious nature of the claim, says that it is an important question for all, while America had already stated, in the words of the President of the Republic, that it renounced all indemnity of any nature whatsoever.

So was established, quite incidentally, the principle of indemnity for damages which gave the treaty a complete turn away from the spirit of the pronouncements by the Entente and the United States. Equally incidentally were established all the declarations in the treaty, the purpose of which is not easy to understand except in so far as it is seen in the economic results which may accrue.

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles states that the allied and associated governments affirm, and Germany accepts, the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the allied and associated governments and their peoples have been subjected as a consequence of the War imposed on them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

Article 177 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye states in the same way that the allied and associated governments affirm, and Austria-Hungary accepts, the responsibility of Austria and her allies, etc.

This article is common to all the treaties, and it would have no more than historic and philosophic interest if it were not followed by another article in which the allied and associated governments recognize that the resources of Germany (and of Austria-Hungary, etc.) are not adequate, after taking into account permanent diminutions of such resources which will result from other provisions of the present treaty, to make complete reparation for all such loss and damage. The allied and associated governments, however, require, and Germany undertakes, that she will make compensation for all damage done to the civilian population of the allied and associated powers and to their property during the period of the belligerency of each as an allied or associated power against Germany by such aggression by land, by sea and from the air, and in general all damage as defined in the treaty, comprising many of the burdens of war (war pensions and compensations to soldiers and their families, cost of assistance to families of those mobilized during the War, etc.).

There is nothing more useless, indeed more stupid, than to take your enemy by the throat after you have beaten him and force him to declare that all the wrong was on his side. The declaration is of no use whatever, either to the conqueror, because no importance can be attributed to an admission extorted by force; or to the conquered, because he knows that there is no moral significance in being forced to state what one does not believe; or for third parties, because they are well aware of the circumstances under which the declaration was made. It is possible that President Wilson wanted to establish a moral reason–I do not like to say a moral alibi–for accepting, as he was constrained by necessity to accept, all those conditions which were the negation of what he had solemnly laid down, the moral pledge of his people, of the American democracy.

Germany and the conquered countries have accepted the conditions imposed on them with the reserve that they feel that they are not bound by them, even morally, in the future. The future will pour ridicule on this new form of treaty which endeavours to justify excessive and absurd demands, which will have the effect of destroying the enemy rather than of obtaining any sure benefit, by using a forced declaration which has no value at all.

I have always detested German imperialism, and also the phases of exaggerated nationalism which have grown up in every country after the War and have been eliminated one after the other through the simple fact of their being common to all countries, but only after having brought the greatest possible harm to all the peoples, and I cannot say that Germany and her allies were solely responsible for the War which devastated Europe and threw a dark shadow over the life of the whole world. That statement, which we all made during the War, was a weapon to be used at the time; now that the War is over, it cannot be looked on as a serious argument.

An honest and thorough examination of all the diplomatic documents, all the agreements and relations of pre-war days, compels me to declare solemnly that the responsibility for the War does not lie solely on the defeated countries; that Germany may have desired war and prepared for it under the influence of powerful industrial interests, metallurgic, for instance, responsible for the extreme views of newspapers and other publications, but still all the warring countries have their share of responsibility in differing degree. It cannot be said that there existed in Europe two groups with a moral conception differing to the point of complete contrast; on one side, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, responsible for the War, which they imposed by their aggression; on the other, all the free and independent nations. By the side of England, France, Italy and the United States there was Russia, which must bear, if not the greatest, a very great responsibility for what happened. Nor is it true that armament expenses in the ten years preceding the War were greater in the Central Empires, or, to put it better, in the States forming the Triple Alliance, than in the countries which later formed the European Entente.

It is not true that only in the case of Germany were the war aims imperialist, and that the Entente countries came in without desire of conquest. Putting aside for the moment what one sees in the treaties which have followed the War, it is worth while considering what would have happened if Russia had won the War instead of being torn to pieces before victory came. Russia would have had all the Poland of the eighteenth century (with the apparent autonomy promised by the Tsar), nearly all Turkey in Europe, Constantinople, and a great part of Asia Minor. Russia, with already the greatest existing land empire and at least half the population not Russian, would have gained fresh territories with fresh non-Russian populations, putting the Mediterranean peoples, and above all Italy, in a very difficult situation indeed.

It cannot be said that in the ten years preceding the War Russia did not do as much as Germany to bring unrest into Europe. It was on account of Russia that the Serbian Government was a perpetual cause of disturbance, a perpetual threat to Austria-Hungary. The unending strife in the Balkans was caused by Russia in no less degree than by Austria-Hungary, and all the great European nations shared, with opposing views, in the policy of Eastern expansion.

The judgment of peoples and of events, given the uncertainty of policy as expressed in parliament and newspapers, is variable to the last degree. It will be enough to recall the varying judgment upon Serbia during the last ten years in the Press of Great Britain, France and Italy: the people of Serbia have been described as criminals and heroes, assassins and martyrs. No one would have anything to do with Serbia; later Serbia was raised to the skies.

The documents published by Kautsky in Germany and those revealed from time to time by the Moscow Government prove that the preparation for and conviction of war was not only on the part of the Central Empires, but also, and in no less degree, on the part of the other States. One point will always remain inexplicable: why Russia should have taken the superlatively serious step of general mobilization, which could not be and was not a simple measure of precaution. It is beyond doubt that the Russian mobilization preceded even that of Austria. After a close examination of events, after the bitter feeling of war had passed, in his speech of December 23, 1920, Lloyd George said justly that the War broke out without any Government having really desired it; all, in one way or another, slithered into it, stumbling and tripping.

There were three Monarchies in Europe, the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and the fact that they were divided into two groups necessarily led to war. It was inevitable sooner or later. Russia was the greatest danger, the greatest threat to Europe; what happened had to happen under one form or another. The crazy giant was under the charge of one man without intelligence and a band of men, the men of the old regime, largely without scruples.

Each country of Europe has its share of responsibility, Italy not excluded. It is difficult to explain why Italy went to Tripoli in the way in which she did in 1911, bringing about the Italo-Turkish war, which brought about the two Balkan wars and the policy of adventure of Serbia, which was the incident though not the cause of the European War.

The Libyan adventure, considered now in the serene light of reason, cannot be looked on as anything but an aberration. Libya is an immense box of sand which never had any value, nor has it now. Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan cover more than one million one hundred thousand square kilometres and have less than nine hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom even now, after ten years, less than a third are under the effective control of Italy. With the war and expenses of occupation, Libya has cost Italy about seven milliard lire, and for a long time yet it will be on the debit side in the life of the nation. With the same number of milliards, most of which were spent before the European War, Italy could have put in order and utilized her immense patrimony of water-power and to-day would be free from anxiety about the coal problem by which it is actually enslaved. The true policy of the nation was to gain economic independence, not a barren waste. Ignorant people spoke of Libya in Italy as a promised land; in one official speech the King was even made to say that Libya could absorb part of Italian emigration. That was just a phenomenon of madness, for Libya has no value at all from the agricultural, commercial or military point of view. It may pay its way one day, but only if all expenses are cut down and the administrative system is completely changed. It may be that, if only from a feeling of duty towards the inhabitants, Italy cannot abandon Libya now that she has taken it, but the question will always be asked why she did take it, why she took it by violence when a series of concessions could have been obtained without difficulty from the Turkish Government.

The Libyan enterprise, undertaken on an impulse, against the opinion of Italy’s allies, Austria and Germany, against the wish of England and France, is a very serious political responsibility for Italy.

The European War was the consequence of a long series of movements, aspirations, agitations. It cannot be denied, and it is recognized by clear-thinking men like Lloyd George, that France and England too have by their actions taken on themselves their part in the serious responsibility. To say that in the past they had never thought of war is to say a thing not true. And there is no doubt that all the diplomatic documents published before and during the War show in Russia, above all, a situation which inevitably would soon lead to war. In the Balkans, especially in Serbia, Russia was pursuing a cynical and shameless policy of corruption, nourishing and exciting every ferment of revolt against Austria-Hungary. Russian policy in Serbia was really criminal. Everyone in Germany was convinced that Russia was preparing for war. The Tsar’s pacificist ideas were of no importance whatever. In absolute monarchies it is an illusion to think that the sovereign, though apparently an autocrat, acts in accordance with his own views. His views are almost invariably those of the people round him; he does not even receive news in its true form, but in the form given it by officials. Russia was an unwieldy giant who had shown signs of madness long before the actual revolution. It is impossible that a collective madness such as that which has had possession of Russia for three years could be produced on the spur of the moment; the regime of autocracy contained in itself the germs of Bolshevism and violence. Bolshevism cannot properly be judged by Western notions; it is not a revolutionary movement of the people; it is, as I have said before, the religious fanaticism of the Eastern Orthodox rising from the dead body of Tsarist despotism. Bolshevism, centralizing and bureaucratic, follows the same lines as the imperial policy of almost every Tsar.

Undoubtedly the greatest responsibility for the War lies on Germany. If it has not to bear all the responsibility, as the treaties claim, it has to bear the largest share; and the responsibility lies, rather than on the shoulders of the Emperor and the quite ordinary men who surrounded him, on those of the military caste and some great industrial groups. The crazy writings of General von Bernhardi and other scandalous publications of the same sort expressed, more than just theoretical views, the real hopes and tendencies of the whole military caste. It is true enough that there existed in Germany a real democratic society under the control of the civil government, but there was the military caste too, with privileges in social life and a special position in the life of the State. This caste was educated in the conception of violence as the means of power and grandeur. When a country has allowed the military and social theories of General von Bernhardi and the senselessly criminal pronouncements of the Emperor William II to prevail for so many years, it has put the most formidable weapons possible into the hands of its enemies. The people who governed Germany for so long have no right to complain now of the conditions in which their country is placed. But the great German people, hardworking and persevering, has full right to look on such conditions as the negation of justice. The head of a European State, a man of the clearest view and calmest judgment, speaking to me of the Emperor William, of whose character and intellect he thought very little, expressed the view that the Emperor did not want war, but that he would not avoid it when he had the chance.

The truth is that Germany troubled itself very little about France. Kinderlen Waechter, the most intelligent of the German Foreign Ministers, and perhaps the one most opposed to the War, when he outlined to me the situation as it was ten years ago, showed no anxiety at all except in regard to Russia. Russia might make war, and it was necessary to be ready or to see that it came about at a moment when victory was certain if conditions did not change. Germany had no reason at all for making war on France from the time that it had got well ahead of that country in industry, commerce and navigation. It is true that there were a certain number of unbalanced people in the metal industry who talked complacently of French iron and stirred up the yellow press, just as in France to-day there are many industrials with their eyes fixed on German coal which they want to seize as far as possible. But the intellectuals, the politicians, even military circles, had no anxiety at all except with regard to Russia.

There were mistaken views in German policy, no doubt, but at the same time there was real anxiety about her national existence. With a huge population and limited resources, with few colonies, owing to her late arrival in the competition for them, Germany looked on the never-ceasing desire of Russia for Constantinople as the ruin of her policy of expansion in the East.

And in actual fact there was but one way by which the three great Empires, which in population and extension of territory dominated the greater part of Europe, could avoid war, and that was to join in alliance among themselves or at least not to enter other alliances. The three great Empires divided themselves into two allied groups. From that moment, given the fact that in each of them the military caste held power, that the principal decisions lay in the hands of a few men not responsible to parliament; given the fact that Russia, faithful to her traditional policy, aimed to draw into her political orbit all the Slav peoples right down to the Adriatic and the Aegean and Austria, was leaning toward the creation of a third Slav monarchy in the dual kingdom, it was inevitable that sooner or later the violence, intrigue and corruption with which we are familiar should culminate in open conflict. Bismarck always saw that putting Russia and Germany up against each other meant war.

Peoples, like individuals, are far from representing with anything approaching completeness such social conceptions as we call violence and right, honesty and bad faith, justice and injustice; each people has its different characteristics, but no one people represents good, or another bad, no one represents brutality, or another civilization. All these meaningless phrases were brought out during the War, according to which, as was said by one of the Prime Ministers of the Entente, the War was the decisive struggle between the forces of autocracy and liberty, between the dark powers of evil and violence and the radiant powers of good and right. To-day all this causes nothing but a smile. Such things are just speechifying, and banal at that. Perhaps they were a necessity of War-time which might well be made use of; when you are fighting for your very life you use every means you have; when you are in imminent danger you do not choose your weapons, you use everything to hand. All the War propaganda against the German Empires, recounting, sometimes exaggerating, all the crimes of the enemy, claiming that all the guilt was on the side of Germany, describing German atrocities as a habit, almost a characteristic of the German people, deriding German culture as a species of liquid in which were bred the microbes of moral madness–all this was legitimate, perhaps necessary, during the War. The reply to the asphyxiating gas of the enemy was not only the same gas, but a propaganda calculated to do more damage, and which, in fact, did do as much damage as tanks and blockade.

But, when war is over, nothing should be put into a peace treaty except such things as will lead to a lasting peace, or the most lasting peace compatible with our degree of civilization.

On January 22, 1917, President Wilson explained the reasons why he made the proposal to put an end to the War; he said in the American Senate that the greatest danger lay in a peace imposed by conquerors after victory. At that time it was said that there must be neither conquerors nor conquered. A peace imposed after victory would be the cause of so much humiliation and such intolerable sacrifices for the conquered side, it would be so severe, it would give rise to so much bitter feeling that it would not be a lasting peace, but one founded on shifting sand.

In the spring of 1919, just before the most serious decisions were to be taken, Lloyd George put before the conference a memorandum entitled “_Some considerations for the Peace Conference before they finally draft their terms_.”

With his marvellously quick insight, after having listened to the speeches of which force was the leading motive (the tendency round him was not to establish a lasting peace but to vivisect Germany), Lloyd George saw that it was not a true peace that was being prepared.

On March 25, 1919, Lloyd George presented the following memorandum to the conference:

I

When nations are exhausted by wars in which they have put forth all their strength and which leave them tired, bleeding and broken, it is not difficult to patch up a peace that may last until the generation which experienced the horrors of the war has passed away. Pictures of heroism and triumph only tempt those who know nothing of the sufferings and terrors of war. It is therefore comparatively easy to patch up a peace which will last for thirty years.

What is difficult, however, is to draw up a peace which will not provoke a fresh struggle when those who have had practical experience of what war means have passed away. History has proved that a peace which has been hailed by a victorious nation as a triumph of diplomatic skill and statesmanship, even of moderation, in the long run has proved itself to be short-sighted and charged with danger to the victor. The peace of 1871 was believed by Germany to ensure not only her security but her permanent supremacy. The facts have shown exactly the contrary. France itself has demonstrated that those who say you can make Germany so feeble that she will never be able to hit back are utterly wrong. Year by year France became numerically weaker in comparison with her victorious neighbour, but in reality she became ever more powerful. She kept watch on Europe; she made alliance with those whom Germany had wronged or menaced; she never ceased to warn the world of its danger, and ultimately she was able to secure the overthrow of the far mightier power which had trampled so brutally upon her. You may strip Germany of her colonies, reduce her armaments to a mere police force and her navy to that of a fifth-rate power; all the same, in the end, if she feels that she has been unjustly treated in the peace of 1919, she will find means of exacting retribution from her conquerors. The impression, the deep impression, made upon the human heart by four years of unexampled slaughter will disappear with the hearts upon which it has been marked by the terrible sword of the Great War. The maintenance of peace will then depend upon there being no causes of exasperation constantly stirring up the spirit of patriotism, of justice or of fair play to achieve redress. Our terms may be severe, they may be stern and even ruthless, but at the same time they can be so just that the country on which they are imposed will feel in its heart that it has no right to complain. But injustice, arrogance, displayed in the hour of triumph, will never be forgotten nor forgiven.

For these reasons I am, therefore, strongly averse to transferring more Germans from German rule to the rule of some other nation than can possibly be helped. I cannot conceive any greater cause of future war than that the German people, who have certainly proved themselves one of the most vigorous and powerful races in the world, should be surrounded by a number of small states, many of them consisting of people who have never previously set up a stable government for themselves, but each of them containing large masses of Germans clamouring for reunion with their native land. The proposal of the Polish Commission that we should place 2,100,000 Germans under the control of a people of a different religion and which has never proved its capacity for stable self-government throughout its history, must, in my judgment, lead sooner or later to a new war in the East of Europe. What I have said about the Germans is equally true about the Magyars. There will never be peace in South-Eastern Europe if every little state now coming into being is to have a large Magyar Irredenta within its borders.

I would therefore take as a guiding principle of the peace that as far as is humanly possible the different races should be allocated to their motherlands, and that this human criterion should have precedence over considerations of strategy or economics or communications, which can usually be adjusted by other means.

Secondly, I would say that the duration for the payments of reparation ought to disappear if possible with the generation which made the war.

But there is a consideration in favour of a long-sighted peace which influences me even more than the desire to leave no causes justifying a fresh outbreak thirty years hence. There is one element in the present condition of nations which differentiates it from the situation as it was in 1815. In the Napoleonic Wars the countries were equally exhausted, but the revolutionary spirit had spent its force in the country of its birth, and Germany had satisfied the legitimate popular demands for the time being by a series of economic changes which were inspired by courage, foresight and high statesmanship. Even in Russia the Tsar had effected great reforms which were probably at that time even too advanced for the half-savage population. The situation is very different now. The revolution is still in its infancy. The extreme figures of the Terror are still in command in Russia. The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution. There is a deep sense not only of discontent, but of anger and revolt among the workmen against pre-war conditions. The whole existing order, in its political, social and economic aspects is questioned by the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other. In some countries, like Germany and Russia, the unrest takes the form of open rebellion, in others, like France, Great Britain and Italy, it takes the shape of strikes and of general disinclination to settle down to work, symptoms which are just as much concerned with the desire for political and social change as with wage demands.

Much of this unrest is healthy. We shall never make a lasting peace by attempting to restore the conditions of 1914. But there is a danger that we may throw the masses of the population throughout Europe into the arms of the extremists, whose only idea for regenerating mankind is to destroy utterly the whole existing fabric of society. These men have triumphed in Russia. They have done so at a terrible price. Hundreds and thousands of the population have perished. The railways, the roads, the towns, the whole structural organization of Russia has been almost destroyed, but somehow or other they seem to have managed to keep their hold upon the masses of the Russian people, and what is much more significant, they have succeeded in creating a large army which is apparently well directed and well disciplined, and is, as to a great part of it, prepared to die for its ideals. In another year Russia, inspired by a new enthusiasm, may have recovered from her passion for peace and have at her command the only army eager to fight, because it is the only army that believes that it has any cause to fight for.

The greatest danger that I see in the present situation is that Germany may throw in her lot with Bolshevism and place her resources, her brains, her vast organizing power at the disposal of the revolutionary fanatics whose dream it is to conquer the world for Bolshevism by force of arms. This danger is no mere chimera. The present government in Germany is weak; its authority is challenged; it lingers merely because there is no alternative but the Spartacists, and Germany is not ready for Spartacism, as yet. But the argument which the Spartacists are using with great effect at this very time is that they alone can save Germany from the intolerable conditions which have been bequeathed her by the War. They offer to free the German people from indebtedness to the Allies and indebtedness to their own richer classes. They offer them complete control of their own affairs and the prospect of a new heaven and earth. It is true that the price will be heavy. There will be two or three years of anarchy, perhaps of bloodshed, but at the end the land will remain, the people will remain, the greater part of the houses and the factories will remain, and the railways and the roads will remain, and Germany, having thrown off her burdens, will be able to make a fresh start.

If Germany goes over to the Spartacists it is inevitable that she should throw in her lot with the Russian Bolshevists. Once that happens all Eastern Europe will be swept into the orbit of the Bolshevik revolution, and within a year we may witness the spectacle of nearly three hundred million people organized into a vast red army under German instructors and German generals, equipped with German cannon and German machine guns and prepared for a renewal of the attack on Western Europe. This is a prospect which no one can face with equanimity. Yet the news which came from Hungary yesterday shows only too clearly that this danger is no fantasy. And what are the reasons alleged for this decision? They are mainly the belief that large numbers of Magyars are to be handed over to the control of others. If we are wise, we shall offer to Germany a peace, which, while just, will be preferable for all sensible men to the alternative of Bolshevism. I would therefore put it in the forefront of the peace that once she accepts our terms, especially reparation, we will open to her the raw materials and markets of the world on equal terms with ourselves, and will do everything possible to enable the German people to get upon their legs again. We cannot both cripple her and expect her to pay.

Finally, we must offer terms which a responsible government in Germany can expect to be able to carry out. If we present terms to Germany which are unjust, or excessively onerous, no responsible government will sign them; certainly the present weak administration will not. If it did, I am told that it would be swept away within twenty-four hours. Yet if we can find nobody in Germany who will put his hand to a peace treaty, what will be the position? A large army of occupation for an indefinite period is out of the question. Germany would not mind it. A very large number of people in that country would welcome it, as it would be the only hope of preserving the existing order of things. The objection would not come from Germany, but from our own countries. Neither the British Empire nor America would agree to occupy Germany. France by itself could not bear the burden of occupation. We should therefore be driven back on the policy of blockading the country. That would inevitably mean Spartacism from the Urals to the Rhine, with its inevitable consequence of a huge red army attempting to cross the Rhine. As a matter of fact, I am doubtful whether public opinion would allow us deliberately to starve Germany. If the only difference between Germany and ourselves were between onerous terms and moderate terms, I very much doubt if public opinion would tolerate the deliberate condemnation of millions of women and children to death by starvation. If so, the Allies would have incurred the moral defeat of having attempted to impose terms on Germany which Germany had successfully resisted.

From every point of view, therefore, it seems to me that we ought to endeavour to draw up a peace settlement as if we were impartial arbiters, forgetful of the passions of the war. This settlement ought to have three ends in view.

First of all it must do justice to the Allies, by taking into account Germany’s responsibility for the origin of the War, and for the way in which it was fought.

Secondly, it must be a settlement which a responsible German government can sign in the belief that it can fulfil the obligations it incurs.

Thirdly, it must be a settlement which will contain in itself no provocations for future wars, and which will constitute an alternative to Bolshevism, because it will commend itself to all reasonable opinion as a fair settlement of the European problem.

II

It is not, however, enough to draw up a just and far-sighted peace with Germany. If we are to offer Europe an alternative to Bolshevism we must make the League of Nations into something which will be both a safeguard to those nations who are prepared for fair dealing with their neighbours and a menace to those who would trespass on the rights of their neighbours, whether they are imperialist empires or imperialist Bolshevists. An essential element, therefore, in the peace settlement is the constitution of the League of Nations as the effective guardian of international right and international liberty throughout the world. If this is to happen the first thing to do is that the leading members of the League of Nations should arrive at an understanding between themselves in regard to armaments. To my mind it is idle to endeavour to impose a permanent limitation of armaments upon Germany unless we are prepared similarly to impose a limitation upon ourselves. I recognize that until Germany has settled down and given practical proof that she has abandoned her imperialist ambitions, and until Russia has also given proof that she does not intend to embark upon a military crusade against her neighbours, it is essential that the leading members of the League of Nations should maintain considerable forces both by land and sea in order to preserve liberty in the world. But if they are to present a united front to the forces both of reaction and revolution, they must arrive at such an agreement in regard to armaments among themselves as would make it impossible for suspicion to arise between the members of the League of Nations in regard to their intentions towards one another. If the League is to do its work for the world it will only be because the members of the League trust it themselves and because there are no rivalries and jealousies in the matter of armaments between them. The first condition of success for the League of Nations is, therefore, a firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy, that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them. Unless this is arrived at before the Covenant is signed the League of Nations will be a sham and a mockery. It will be regarded, and rightly regarded, as a proof that its principal promoters and patrons repose no confidence in its efficacy. But once the leading members of the League have made it clear that they have reached an understanding which will both secure to the League of Nations the strength which is necessary to enable it to protect its members and which at the same time will make misunderstanding and suspicion with regard to competitive armaments impossible between them its future and its authority will be assured. It will then be able to ensure as an essential condition of peace that not only Germany, but all the smaller States of Europe, undertake to limit their armaments and abolish conscription. If the small nations are permitted to organize and maintain conscript armies running each to hundreds of thousands, boundary wars will be inevitable, and all Europe will be drawn in. Unless we secure this universal limitation we shall achieve neither lasting peace nor the permanent observance of the limitation of German armaments which we now seek to impose.

I should like to ask why Germany, if she accepts the terms we consider just and fair, should not be admitted to the League of Nations, at any rate as soon as she has established a stable and democratic government? Would it not be an inducement to her both to sign the terms and to resist Bolshevism? Might it not be safer that she should be inside the League than that she should be outside it?

Finally, I believe that until the authority and effectiveness of the League of Nations has been demonstrated, the British Empire and the United States ought to give France a guarantee against the possibility of a new German aggression. France has special reason for asking for such a guarantee. She has twice been attacked and twice invaded by Germany in half a century. She has been so attacked because she has been the principal guardian of liberal and democratic civilization against Central European autocracy on the continent of Europe. It is right that the other great Western democracies should enter into an undertaking which will ensure that they stand by her side in time to protect her against invasion should Germany ever threaten her again, or until the League of Nations has proved its capacity to preserve the peace and liberty of the world.

III

If, however, the Peace Conference is really to secure peace and prove to the world a complete plan of settlement which all reasonable men will recognize as an alternative preferable to anarchy, it must deal with the Russian situation. Bolshevik imperialism does not merely menace the States on Russia’s borders. It threatens the whole of Asia, and is as near to America as it is to France. It is idle to think that the Peace Conference can separate, however sound a peace it may have arranged with Germany, if it leaves Russia as it is to-day. I do not propose, however, to complicate the question of the peace with Germany by introducing a discussion of the Russian problem. I mention it simply in order to remind ourselves of the importance of dealing with it as soon as possible.

The memorandum is followed by some proposals entitled “General Lines of the Peace Conditions,” which would tend to make the peace less severe. It is hardly worth while reproducing them. As in many points the decisions taken were in the opposite sense it is better not to go beyond the general considerations.

Mr. Lloyd George’s memorandum is a secret document. But as the English and American Press have already printed long passages from it, it is practically possible to give it in its entirety without adding anything to what has already been printed.

M. Tardieu has published M. Clemenceau’s reply, drawn up by M. Tardieu himself and representing the French point of view:

I

The French Government is in complete agreement with the general purpose of Mr. Lloyd George’s Note: to make a lasting peace, and for that reason a just peace.

But, on the other hand, it does not think that this principle, which is its own, really leads to the conclusions arrived at in the Note in question.

II

The Note suggests that the territorial conditions laid down for Germany in Europe shall be moderate in order that she may not feel deeply embittered after peace.

The method would be sound if the recent War had been nothing but a European war for Germany; but that is not the case.

Previous to the War Germany was a great world Power whose _future was on the sea_. This was the power of which she was so inordinately proud. For the loss of this world power she will never be consoled.

The Allies have taken from her–or are going to take from her–without being deterred by fear of her resentment, all her colonies, all her ships of war, a great part of her commercial fleet (as reparations), the foreign markets which she controlled.

That is the worst blow that could be inflicted on her, and it is suggested that she can be pacified by some improvements in territorial conditions. That is a pure illusion. The remedy is not big enough for the thing it is to cure.

If there is any desire, for general reasons, to give Germany some satisfaction, it must not be sought in Europe. Such help will be vain as long as Germany has lost her world policy.

To pacify her (if there is any interest in so doing) she must have satisfaction given her in colonies, in ships, in commercial expansion. The Note of March 26 thinks of nothing but satisfaction in European territory.

III

Mr. Lloyd George fears that unduly severe territorial conditions imposed on Germany will play into the hands of Bolshevism. Is there not cause for fear, on the other hand, that the method he suggests will have that very result?

The Conference has decided to call into being a certain number of new States. Is it possible without being unjust to them to impose on them inacceptable frontiers towards Germany? If these people–Poland and Bohemia above all–have resisted Bolshevism up to now it is through national sentiment. If this sentiment is violated Bolshevism will find an easy prey in them, and the only existing barrier between Russian and German Bolshevism will be broken.

The result will be either a Confederation of Eastern and Central Europe under the direction of a Bolshevik Germany or the enslavery of those countries to a Germany become reactionary again, thanks to the general anarchy. In either case the Allies will have lost the War.

The policy of the French Government, on the other hand, is to give the fullest aid to those young peoples with the support of everything liberal in Europe, and not to try to introduce at their expense abatements–which in any case would be useless–of the colonial, naval and commercial disaster which the peace imposes on Germany.

If it is necessary, in giving these young peoples frontiers without which they cannot live, to transfer under their sovereignty some Germans, sons of the men who enslaved them, we may regret the necessity, and we should do it with moderation, but it cannot be avoided.

Further, when all the German colonies are taken from her entirely and definitely, because she ill-treated the natives, what right is there to refuse normal frontiers to Poland and Bohemia because Germans installed themselves in those countries as precursors of the tyrant Pan-Germanism?

IV

The Note of March 26 insists on the necessity of a peace which will appear to Germany as a just peace, and the French Government agrees.

It may be observed, however, that, given the German mentality, their conception of justice may not be the same as that of the Allies.

And, also, surely the Allies as well as Germany, even before Germany, should feel this impression of justice. The Allies who fought together should conclude the War with a peace equal for all.

Now, following the method suggested in the Note of March 26, what will be the result?

A certain number of total and definite guarantees will be given to maritime nations whose countries were not invaded.

Total and definite, the surrender of the German colonies.

Total and definite, the surrender of the German war fleet.

Total and definite, the surrender of a large part of the German commercial fleet.

Total and lasting, if not definite, the exclusion of Germany from foreign markets.

For the Continental countries, on the other hand–that is to say, for the countries which have suffered most from the War–would be reserved partial and transitory solutions:

Partial solution, the modified frontiers suggested for Poland and Bohemia.

Transitory solution, the defensive pledge offered France for the protection of her territory.

Transitory solution, the regime proposed for the Saar coal.

There is an evident inequality which might have a bad influence on the after-war relations among the Allies, more important than the after-war relations of Germany with them.

It has been shown in Paragraph I that it would be an illusion to hope that territorial satisfaction offered to Germany would compensate her sufficiently for the world disaster she has suffered. And it may surely be added that it would be an injustice to lay the burden of such compensation on the shoulders of those countries among the Allies which have had to bear the heaviest burden of the War.

After the burdens of the War, these countries cannot bear the burdens of the peace. It is essential that they should feel that the peace is just and equal for all.

And unless that be assured it is not only in Central Europe that there will be fear of Bolshevism, for nowhere does it propagate so easily, as has been seen, as amid national disillusionment.

V

The French Government desires to limit itself for the moment to these observations of a general character. It pays full homage to the intentions which inspired Mr. Lloyd George’s memorandum. But it considers that the inductions that can be drawn from the present Note are in consonance with justice and the general interests.

And those are the considerations by which the French Government will be inspired in the coming exchange of ideas for the discussion of conditions suggested by the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

These two documents are of more than usual interest.

The British Prime Minister, with his remarkable insight, at once notes the seriousness of the situation. He sees the danger to the peace of the world in German depression. Germany oppressed does not mean Germany subjected. Every year France becomes numerically weaker, Germany stronger. The horrors of war will be forgotten and the maintenance of peace will depend on the creation of a situation which makes life possible, does not cause exasperation to come into public feeling or into the just claims of Germans desirous of independence. Injustice in the hour of triumph will never be pardoned, can never be atoned.

So the idea of handing over to other States numbers of Germans is not only an injustice, but a cause of future wars, and what can be said of Germans is also true of Magyars. No cause of future wars must be allowed to remain. Putting millions of Germans under Polish rule–that is, under an inferior people which has never shown any capacity for stable self-government–must lead to a new war sooner or later. If Germany in exasperation became a country of revolution, what would happen to Europe? You can impose severe conditions, but that does not mean that you can enforce them; the conditions to be imposed must be such that a responsible German Government can in good faith assume the obligation of carrying them out.

Neither Great Britain nor the United States of America can assume the obligation of occupying Germany if it does not carry out the excessively severe conditions which it is desired to impose. Can France occupy Germany alone?

From that moment Lloyd George saw the necessity of admitting Germany into the League of Nations _at once_, and proposed a scheme of treaty containing conditions which, while very severe, were in part tolerable for the German people.

Clemenceau’s reply, issued a few days later, contains the French point of view, and has an ironical note when it touches on the weak points in Lloyd George’s argument. The War, says the French note, was not a European war; Germany’s eyes were fixed on world power, and she saw that her future was on the sea. There is no necessity to show consideration regarding territorial conditions in Europe. By taking away her commercial fleet, her colonies and her foreign markets more harm is done to Germany than by taking European territory. To pacify her (if there is any occasion for doing so) she must be offered commercial satisfaction. At this point the note, in considering questions of justice and of mere utility, becomes distinctly ironical.

Having decided to bring to life new States, especially Poland and Czeko-Slovakia, why not give them safe frontiers even if some Germans or Magyars have to be sacrificed?

One of Clemenceau’s fixed ideas is that criterions of justice must not be applied to Germans. The note says explicitly that, given the German mentality, it is by no means sure that the conception of justice of Germany will be the same as that of the Allies.

On another occasion, after the signing of the treaty, when Lloyd George pointed out the wisdom of not claiming from Germany the absurdity of handing over thousands of officers accused of cruelty for judgment by their late enemies, and recognized frankly the impossibility of carrying out such a stipulation in England, Clemenceau replied simply that the Germans are not like the English.

The delicate point in Clemenceau’s note is the contradiction in which he tries to involve the British Prime Minister between the clauses of the treaty concerning Germany outside Europe, in which no moderation had been shown, and those regarding Germany in Europe, in which he himself did not consider moderation either necessary or opportune.

There was an evident divergence of views, clearing the way for a calm review of the conditions to be imposed, and here two countries could have exercised decisive action: the United States and Italy.

But the United States was represented by Wilson, who was already in a difficult situation. By successive concessions, the gravity of which he had not realized, he found himself confronted by drafts of treaties which in the end were contradictions of all his proposals, the absolute antithesis of the pledges he had given. It is quite possible that he had not seen where he was going, but his frequent irritation was the sign of his distress. Still, in the ship-wreck of his whole programme, he had succeeded in saving one thing, the Statute of the League of Nations which was to be prefaced to all the treaties. He wanted to go back to America and meet the Senate with at least something to show as a record of the great undertaking, and he hoped and believed in good faith that the Covenant of the League of Nations would sooner or later have brought about agreement and modified the worst of the mistakes made. His conception of things was academic, and he had not realized that there was need to constitute the nations before laying down rules for the League; he trusted that bringing them together with mutual pledges would further most efficiently the cause of peace among the peoples. On the other hand, there was diffidence, shared by both, between Wilson and Lloyd George, and there was little likelihood of the British Prime Minister’s move checking the course the Conference had taken.

Italy might have done a great work if its representatives had had a clear policy. But, as M. Tardieu says, they had no share in the effective doings of the Conference, and their activity was almost entirely absorbed in the question of Fiume. The Conference was a three-sided conversation between Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George, and the latter had hostility and diffidence on each side of him, with Italy–as earlier stated–for the most part absent. Also, it was just then that the divergence between Wilson and the Italian representatives reached its acute stage. The essential parts of the treaty were decided in April and the beginning of May, on April 22 the question of the right bank of the Rhine, on the 23rd or 24th the agreement about reparations. Italy was absent, and when the Italian delegates returned to Paris without being asked on May 6, the text of the treaty was complete, in print. In actual fact, only one person did really effective work and directed the trend of the Conference, and that person was Clemenceau.

The fact that the Conference met in Paris, that everything that was done by the various delegations was known, even foreseen so that it could be opposed, discredited, even destroyed by the Press beforehand–a thing which annoyed Lloyd George so much that at one time he thought seriously of leaving the Conference–all this gave an enormous advantage to the French delegation and especially to Clemenceau who directed the Conference’s work.

All his life Clemenceau has been a tremendous destroyer. For years and years he has done nothing but overthrow Governments with a sort of obstinate ferocity. He was an old man when he was called to lead the country, but he brought with him all his fighting spirit. No one detests the Church and detests Socialism more than he; both of these moral forces are equally repulsive to his individualistic spirit. I do not think there is any man among the politicians I have known who is more individualistic than Clemenceau, who remains to-day the man of the old democracy. In time of war no one was better fitted than he to lead a fighting Ministry, fighting at home, fighting abroad, with the same feeling, the same passion. When there was one thing only necessary in order to beat the enemy, never to falter in hatred, never to doubt the sureness of victory, no one came near him, no one could be more determined, no one more bitter. But when War was over, when it was peace that had to be ensured, no one could be less fitted for the work. He saw nothing beyond his hatred for Germany, the necessity for destroying the enemy, sweeping away every bit of his activity, bringing him into subjection. On account of his age he could not visualize the problems of the future; he could only see one thing necessary, and that was immediate, to destroy the enemy and either destroy or confiscate all his means of development. He was not nationalist or imperialist like his collaborators, but before all and above all one idea lived in him, hatred for Germany; she must be rendered barren, disembowelled, annihilated.

He had said in the French Parliament that treaties of peace were nothing more than a way of going on with war, and in September, 1920, in his preface to M. Tardieu’s book, he said that France must get reparation for Waterloo and Sedan. Even Waterloo: _Waterloo et Sedan, pour ne pas remonter plus haut, nous imposaient d’abord les douloureux soucis d’une politique de reparation_.

Tardieu noted, as we have seen, that there were only three people in the Conference: Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George. Orlando, he remarks, spoke little, and Italy had no importance. With subtle irony he notes that Wilson talked like a University don criticizing an essay with the didactic logic of the professor. The truth is that after having made the mistake of staying in the Conference he did not see that his whole edifice was tumbling down, and he let mistakes accumulate one after the other, with the result that treaties were framed which, as already pointed out, actually destroyed all the principles he had declared to the world.

Things being as they were in Paris, Clemenceau’s temperament, the pressure of French industry and of the newspapers, the real anxiety to make the future safe, and the desire on that account to exterminate the enemy, France naturally demanded, through its representatives, the severest sanctions. England, given the realistic nature of its representatives and the calm clear vision of Lloyd George, always favoured in general the more moderate solutions as those which were more likely to be carried out and would least disturb the equilibrium of Europe. So it came about that the decisions seemed to be a compromise, but were, on the other hand, actually so hard and so stern that they were impossible of execution.

Without committing any indiscretion it is possible to see now from the publications of the French representatives at the Conference themselves what France’s claims were.

Let us try to sum them up.

As regards disarmament and control there could have been and there ought to have been no difficulty about agreement. I am in favour of the reduction of all armaments, but I regard it as a perfectly legitimate claim that the country principally responsible for the War, and in general the conquered countries, should be obliged to disarm.

No one would regard it as unfair that Germany and the conquered countries should be compelled to reduce their armaments to the measure necessary to guarantee internal order only.

But a distinction must be drawn between military sanctions meant to guarantee peace and those which have the end of ruining the enemy. In actual truth, in his solemn pronouncements after the entry of the United States into the War, President Wilson had never spoken of a separate disarmament of the conquered countries, but of adequate guarantees _given and received_ that national armaments should be reduced to the smallest point compatible with internal order. Assurances given and received: that is to say an identical situation as between conquerors and conquered.

No one can deny the right of the conqueror to compel the conquered enemy to give up his arms and reduce his military armaments, at any rate for some time. But on this point too there was useless excess.

I should never have thought of publishing France’s claims. Bitterness comes that way, responsibility is incurred, in future it may be an argument in your adversary’s hands. But M. Tardieu has taken this office on himself and has told us all France did, recounting her claims from the acts of the Conference itself. Reference is easy to the story written by one of the representatives of France, possibly the most efficient through having been in America a long time and having fuller and more intimate knowledge of the American representatives, particularly Colonel House.

Generally speaking, in every claim the French representatives started from an extreme position, and that was not only a state of mind, it was a tactical measure. Later on, if they gave up any part of their claim, they had the air of yielding, of accepting a compromise. When their claims were of such an extreme nature that the anxiety they caused, the opposition they raised, was evident, Clemenceau put on an air of moderation and gave way at once. Sometimes, too, he showed moderation himself, when it suited his purpose, but in reality he only gave way when he saw that it was impossible to get what he wanted.

In points where English and American interests were not involved, given the difficult position in which Lloyd George was placed and Wilson’s utter ignorance of all European questions, with Italy keeping almost entirely apart, the French point of view always came out on top, if slightly modified. But the original claim was always so extreme that the modification left standing the most radically severe measure against the conquered countries.

Many decisions affecting France were not sufficiently criticized on account of the relations in which the English and Americans stood to France; objections would have looked like ill-will, pleading the enemy’s cause.

Previously, in nearly every case when peace was being made, the representatives of the conquered countries had been called to state their case, opportunity was given for discussion. The Russo-Japanese peace is an example. Undoubtedly the aggression of Russia had been unscrupulous and premeditated, but both parties participated in drawing up the peace treaty. At Paris, possibly for the first time in history, the destiny of the most cultured people in Europe was decided–or rather it was thought that it was being decided–without even listening to what they had to say and without hearing from their representatives if the conditions imposed could or could not possibly be carried out. Later on an exception, if only a purely formal one, was made in the case of Hungary, whose delegates were heard; but it will remain for ever a terrible precedent in modern history that, against all pledges, all precedents and all traditions, the representatives of Germany were never even heard; nothing was left to them but to sign a treaty at a moment when famine and exhaustion and threat of revolution made it impossible not to sign it.

If Germany had not signed she would have suffered less loss. But at that time conditions at home with latent revolution threatening the whole Empire, made it imperative to accept any solution, and all the more as the Germans considered that they were not bound by their signature, the decisions having been imposed by violence without any hearing being given to the conquered party, and the most serious decisions being taken without any real examination of the facts. In the old law of the Church it was laid down that everyone must have a hearing, even the devil: _Etiam diabulus audiatur_ (Even the devil has the right to be heard). But the new democracy, which proposed to install the society of the nations, did not even obey the precepts which the dark Middle Ages held sacred on behalf of the accused.

Conditions in Germany were terribly difficult, and an army of two hundred thousand men was considered by the military experts the minimum necessary. The military commission presided over by Marshal Foch left Germany an army of two hundred thousand men, recruited by conscription, a Staff in proportion, service of one year, fifteen divisions, 180 heavy guns, 600 field-guns. That is less than what little States without any resources have now, three years after the close of the War. But France at once imposed the reduction of the German army to 100,000 men, no conscription but a twelve years’ service of paid soldiers, artillery reduced practically to nothing, no heavy guns at all, very few field-guns. No opportunity was given for discussion, nor was there any. Clemenceau put the problem in such a way that discussion was out of the question: _C’est la France qui, demain comme hier, sera face a l’Allemagne_. Lloyd George and Colonel House confined themselves to saying that on this point France formally expressed their views, Great Britain and the United States had no right to oppose. Lloyd George was convinced that the measures were too extreme and had tried on May 23, 1919, to modify them; but France insisted on imposing on Germany this situation of tremendous difficulty.

I have referred to the military conditions imposed on Germany: destruction of all war material, fortresses and armament factories; prohibition of any trade in arms; destruction of the fleet; occupation of the west bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads for fifteen years; allied control, with wide powers, over the execution of the military and naval clauses of the treaty, with consequent subjection of all public administrations and private companies to the will of a foreigner, or rather of an enemy kept at the expense of Germany itself and at no small expense, etc. In some of the inter-allied conferences I have had to take note of what these commissions of control really are, and their absurd extravagance, based on the argument that the enemy must pay for everything.

The purport of France’s action in the Conference was not to ensure safe military guarantees against Germany but to destroy her, at any rate to cut her up. And indeed, when she had got all she wanted and Germany was helpless, she continued the same policy, even intensifying it. Every bit of territory possible must be taken, German unity must be broken, and not only military but industrial Germany must be laid low under a series of controls and an impossible number of obligations.

All know how, in Article 428 of the treaty, it is laid down, as a guarantee of the execution of the treaty terms on the part of Germany, or rather as a more extended military guarantee for France, that German territory on the west bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads are to be occupied by allied and associated troops for fifteen years, methods and regulations for such occupation following in Articles 429 and 432.

This occupation not only gives deep offence to Germany (France has always looked back with implacable bitterness on the few months’ military occupation by her Prussian conquerors in the war of 1870), but it paralyses all her activity and is generally judged to be completely useless.

All the Allies were ready to give France every military guarantee against any unjust aggression by Germany, but France wanted in addition the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine. It was a very delicate matter, and the notes presented to the Conference by Great Britain on March 26 and April 2, by the United States on March 28 and April 12, show how embarrassed the two Governments were in considering a question which France regarded as essential for her future. It has to be added that the action of Marshal Foch in this matter was not entirely constitutional. He claimed that, independently of nationality, France and Belgium have the right to look on the Rhine as the indispensable frontier for the nations of the west of Europe, _et par la, de la civilisation_. Neither Lloyd George nor Wilson could swallow the argument of the Rhine a frontier between the civilization of France and Belgium, all civilization indeed, and Germany.

In the treaty the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads by the allied and associated powers for fifteen years was introduced as a compromise. Such districts will be evacuated by degrees every five years if Germany shall have faithfully carried out the terms of the treaty. Now the conditions of the treaty are in large measure impossible of execution, and in consequence no execution of them can ever be described as faithful. Further, the occupying troops are paid by Germany. It follows that the conception of the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine was of a fact of unlimited duration. The harm that would result from the occupation was pointed out at the Conference by the American representatives and even more strongly by the English. What was the use of it, they asked, if the German army were reduced to 100,000 men? M. Tardieu himself tells the story of all the efforts made, especially by Lloyd George and Bonar Law, to prevent the blunder which later on was endorsed in the treaty as Article 428. Lloyd George went so far as to complain of political intrigues for creating disorder on the Rhine. But Clemenceau took care to put the question in such a form that no discussion was possible. In the matter of the occupation, he said to the English, you do not understand the French point of view. You live in an island with the sea as defence, we on the continent with a bad frontier. We do not look for an attack by Germany but for systematic refusal to carry out the terms of the treaty. Never was there a treaty with so many clauses, with, consequently, so many opportunities for evasion. Against that risk the material guarantee of occupation is necessary. There are two methods in direct contrast: _En Angleterre on croit que le moyen d’y reussir est de faire des concessions. En France nous croyons que c’est de brusquer_.

On March 14 Lloyd George and Wilson had offered France the fullest military guarantee in place of the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine. France wanted, and in fact got, the occupation as well as the alliances. “_Notre but_?” says Tardieu. “_Sceller la garantie offerte, mais y ajouter l’occupation_.” Outside the Versailles Treaty the United States and Great Britain had made several treaties of alliance with France for the event of unprovoked aggression by Germany. Later on the French-English Treaty was approved by the House of Commons, the French-American underwent the same fate as the Versailles Treaty. But the treaty with Great Britain fell through also on account of the provision that it should come into force simultaneously with the American Treaty.

In a Paris newspaper Poincare published in September, 1921, some strictly reserved documents on the questions of the military guarantees and the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine. He wished to get the credit of having stood firm when Clemenceau himself hesitated at the demand for an occupation of the left bank of the Rhine for even a longer period than fifteen years. He has published the letter he sent to Clemenceau to be shown to Wilson and Lloyd George and the latter’s reply.

He said that there must be no thought of giving up the occupation and renouncing a guarantee until every obligation in the treaty should have been carried out; he went so far as to claim that in occupation regarded as a guarantee of a credit representing an indemnity for damages, there is nothing contrary to the principles proclaimed by President Wilson and recognized by the Allies. Nor would it suffice even to have the faculty of reoccupation, because “this faculty” could never be a valid substitute for occupation. As regards the suggestion that a long occupation or one for an indeterminate period would cause bad feeling, M. Poincare was convinced that this was an exaggeration. A short occupation causes more irritation on account of its arbitrary limit; everyone understands an occupation without other limit than the complete carrying out of the treaty. The longer the time that passes the better would become the relations between the German populations and the armies of occupation.

Clemenceau communicated Poincare’s letter to Lloyd George. The British Prime Minister replied on May 6 in the clearest terms. In his eyes, forcing Germany to submit to the occupation of the Rhine and the Rhine Provinces for an unlimited period, was a provocation to renew the war in Europe.

During the Conference France put forward some proposals the aim of which was nothing less than to split up Germany. A typical example is the memorandum presented by the French delegation claiming the annexation of the Saar territory. This is completely German; in the six hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants before the War there were not a hundred French. Not a word had ever been said about annexation of the Saar either in Government pronouncements or in any vote in the French Parliament, nor had it been discussed by any political party. No one had ever suggested such annexation, which certainly was a far more serious thing than the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany, as there was considerable German population in Alsace-Lorraine. There was no French population at all in the Saar, and the territory in question could not even be claimed for military reasons but only for its economic resources. Reasons of history could not count, for they were all in Germany’s favour. Nevertheless the request was put forward as a matter of sentiment. Had not the Saar belonged in other days entirely or in part to France? Politics and economics are not everything, said Clemenceau; history also has great value. For the United States a hundred and twenty years are a long time; for France they count little. Material reparations are not enough, there must be moral reparations too, and the conception of France cannot be the same as that of her Allies. The desire for the Saar responded, according to Clemenceau, to a need of moral reparation. On this point, too, the extreme French claim was modified. The Saar mines were given to France, not provisionally as a matter of reparations, but permanently with full right of possession and full guarantees for their working. For fifteen years from the date of the treaty the government of the territory was put in the hands of the League of Nations as trustee; after fifteen years the population, entirely German, should be called to decide under what government they desired to live. In other words, in a purely German country, which no one in France had ever claimed, of which no one in France had ever spoken during the War, the most important property was handed to a conquering State, the country was put under the administration of the conquerors (which is what the League of Nations actually is at present), and after fifteen years of torment the population is to be put through a plebiscite. Meanwhile the French douane rules in the Saar.

It was open to the treaty to adopt or not to adopt the system of plebiscites. When it was a case of handing over great masses of German populations, a plebiscite was imperative–at any rate, where any doubt existed, and the more so in concessions which formed no part of the War aims and were not found in any pronouncement of the Allies. On the other hand, in all cessions of German territory to Poland and Bohemia, no mention is made of a plebiscite because it was a question of military necessity or of lands which had been historically victims of Germany. But only for Schleswig, Upper Silesia, Marienwerder, Allenstein, Klagenfurth and the Saar were plebiscites laid down–and with the exception that the plebiscite itself, when, as in the case of Upper Silesia, it resulted in favour of Germany, was not regarded as conclusive.

But where the most extreme views clashed was in the matter of reparations and the indemnity to be claimed from the enemy.

We have already seen that the theory of reparation for damage found its way incidentally, even before the treaty was considered, into the armistice terms. No word had been said previously of claiming from the conquered enemy anything beyond restoration of devastated territories, but after the War another theory was produced. If Germany and her allies are solely responsible for the War, they must pay the whole cost of the War: damage to property, persons and war works. When damage has been done, he who has done the wrong must make reparation for it to the utmost limit of his resources.

The American delegation struck a note of moderation: no claim should be made beyond what was established in the peace conditions, reparation for actions which were an evident violation of international law, restoration of invaded country, and reparation for damage caused to the civil population and to its property.

During the War there were a number of exaggerated pronouncements on the immense resources of Germany and her capacity for payment.

Besides all the burdens with which Germany was loaded, there was a discussion on the sum which the Allies should claim. The War had cost 700 milliard francs, and the claims for damage to persons and property amounted to at least 350 milliards for all the Allies together.

Whatever the sum might be, when it had been laid down in the treaty what damage was to be indemnified, the French negotiators claimed sixty-five per cent., leaving thirty-five per cent. for all the others.

What was necessary was to lay down proportions, not the actual amount of the sum. It was impossible to say at once what amount the damages would reach: that was the business of the Reparations Commission.

Instead of inserting in the treaty the enormous figures spoken of, the quality, not the quantity, of the damages to be indemnified was laid down. But the standard of reckoning led to fantastic figures.

An impossible amount had to be paid, and the delegations were discussing then the very same things that are being discussed now. The American experts saw the gross mistake of the other delegations, and put down as the maximum payment 325 milliard marks up to 1951, the first payment to be 25 milliard marks in 1921. So was invented the Reparations Commission machine, a thing which has no precedent in any treaty, being a commission with sovereign powers to control the life of the whole of Germany.

In actual truth no serious person has ever thought that Germany can pay more than a certain number of milliards a year, no one believes that a country can be subjected to a regime of control for thirty years.

But the directing line of work of the treaties has been to break down Germany, to cut her up, to suffocate her.

France had but one idea, and later on did not hesitate to admit it: to dismember Germany, to destroy her unity. By creating intolerable conditions of life, taking away territory on the frontier, putting large districts under military occupation, delaying or not making any diplomatic appointments and carrying on communications solely through military commissions, a state of things was brought about which must inevitably tend to weaken the constitutional unity of the German Empire. Taking away from Germany 84 thousand kilometres of territory, nearly eight million inhabitants and all the most important mineral resources, preventing the unity of the German people and the six million and five hundred thousand of German Austrians to which Austria was then reduced, putting the whole German country under an interminable series of controls–all this did more harm to German unity than would have been done by taking the responsibility of a forcible and immediate division to which the Germans could not have consented and which the Allies could not have claimed to impose.

What has been said about Germany and the Versailles Treaty can be said about all the other conquered countries and all the other treaties, with merely varying proportions in each case.

The verdict that has to be passed on them will very soon be shown by facts–if indeed facts have not shown already that, in great measure, what had been laid down cannot be carried out. One thing is certain, that the actual treaties threaten to ruin conquerors and conquered, that they have not brought peace to Europe, but conditions of war and violence. In Clemenceau’s words, the treaties are a way of going on with war.

But, even if it were possible to dispute that, as men’s minds cannot yet frame an impartial judgment and the danger is not seen by all, there is one thing that cannot be denied or disputed, and that is that the treaties are the negation of the principles for which the United States and Italy, without any obligation on them, entered the War; they are a perversion of all the Entente had repeatedly proclaimed; they break into pieces President Wilson’s fourteen points which were a solemn pledge for the American people, and to-morrow they will be the greatest moral weapon with which the conquered of to-day will face the conquerors of to-day.

IV

THE CONQUERORS AND THE CONQUERED

How many are the States of Europe? Before the War the political geography of Europe was almost tradition. To-day every part of Europe is in a state of flux. The only absolute certainty is that in Continental Europe conquerors and conquered are in a condition of spiritual, as well as economic, unrest. It is difficult indeed to say how many political unities there are and how many are lasting, and what new wars are being prepared, if a way of salvation is not found by some common endeavour to install peace, which the peace of Paris has not done. How many thinking men can, without perplexity, remember how many States there are and what they are: arbitrary creations of the treaties, creations of the moment, territorial limitations imposed by the necessities of international agreements. The situation of Russia is so uncertain that no one knows whether new States will arise as a result of her continuous disintegration, or if she will be reconstructed in a solid, unified form, and other States amongst those which have arisen will fall.

Without taking into account those traditional little States which are merely historical curiosities, as Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, Monte Santo, not counting Iceland as a State apart, not including the Saar, which as a result of one of the absurdities of the Treaty of Versailles is an actual State outside Germany, but considering Montenegro as an existing State, Europe probably comprises thirty States. Some of them are, however, in such a condition that they do not give promise of the slightest guarantee of life or security.

Europe has rather Balkanized herself: not only the War came from the Balkans, but also many ideas, which have been largely exploited in parliamentary and newspaper circles. Listening to many speeches and being present at many events to-day leaves the sensation of being in Belgrade or at Sarajevo.

Europe, including Russia and including also the Polar archipelagos, covers an area of a little more than ten million square kilometres. Canada is of almost the same size; the United States of America has about the same territory.

The historical procedure before the War was towards the formation of large territorial unities; the _post-bellum_ procedure is entirely towards a process of dissolution, and the fractionizing, resulting a little from necessity and a little also from the desire to dismember the old Empires and to weaken Germany, has assumed proportions almost impossible to foresee.

In the relations between the various States good and evil are not abstract ideas: political actions can only be judged by their results. If the treaties of peace which have been imposed on the conquered would be capable of application, we could, from an ethnical point of view, regret some or many of the decisions; but we should only have to wait for the results of time for a definite judgment.

The evil is that the treaties which have been signed are not applicable or cannot be applied without the rapid dissolution of Europe.

So the balance-sheet of the peace, after three years from the armistice–that is, three years from the War–shows on the whole a worsening of the situation. The spirit of violence has not died out, and perhaps in some countries not even diminished; on the other hand the causes of material disagreement have increased, the inequality has augmented, the division between the two groups has grown, and the causes of hatred have been consolidated. An analysis of the foreign exchanges indicated a process of undoing and not a tendency to reconstruction.

We have referred in a general manner to the conditions of Germany as a result of the Treaty of Versailles; even worse is the situation of the other conquered countries in so far that either they have not been treated with due regard, or they have lost so much territory that they have no possibility of reconstructing their national existence. Such is the case with Austria, with Turkey and with Hungary. Bulgaria, which has a tenacious and compact population composed of small agriculturists, has less difficult conditions of reconstruction.

Germany has fulfilled loyally all the conditions of the disarmament. After she had handed over her fleet she destroyed her fortifications, she destroyed all the material up to the extreme limit imposed by the treaties, she disbanded her enormous armies. If in any one of the works of destruction she had proceeded with a bad will, if she had tried to delay them, it would be perfectly understandable. A different step carries one to a dance or to a funeral. At the actual moment Germany has no fleet, no army, no artillery, and is in a condition in which she could not reply to any act of violence. This is why all the violence of the Poles against Germany has found hardly any opposition.

All this is so evident that no one can raise doubts on the question.

Everyone remembers, said Hindenburg, the difficult task that the United States had to put in the field an army of a million men. Nevertheless they had the protection of the ocean during the period when they were preparing their artillery and their aerial material.

Germany for her aviation, for her heavy artillery, for her armaments, is not even separated by the ocean from her Allies, and, on the contrary, they are firmly established in German territory; it would require many months to prepare a new war, during which France and her Allies would not be resting quietly.

General Ludendorff recently made certain declarations which have a capital importance, since they fit the facts exactly. He declared that a war of reconquest by Germany against the Allies and especially against France is for an indefinite time completely impossible from the technical and military point of view. France has an army largely supplied with all the means of battle, ready to march at any time, which could smash any German military organization hostile to France. The more so since by the destruction of the German war industries Germany has lost every possibility of arming herself afresh. It is absurd to believe that a German army ready for modern warfare can be organized and put on a war footing secretly. A German army which could fight with the least possible hope of success against an enemy army armed and equipped in the most modern manner would first of all have to be based on a huge German war industry, which naturally could not be improvised or built up in secret. Even if a third power wished to arm Germany, it would not be possible to arm her so quickly and mobilize her in sufficient time to prevent the enemy army from obtaining an immediate and decisive victory.

It would be necessary, as everyone realizes even in France, that Germany should wish to commit suicide. In consequence of the treaty there is the “maximum of obstacles which mind can conceive” to guard against any German peril; and against Germany there have been accumulated “_such guarantees that never before has history recorded the like_” (Tardieu), and Germany cannot do anything for many years. Mobilization requires years and years for preparation and the greatest publicity for its execution.

Wilson spoke of guarantees _given and received_ for the reduction of armaments. Instead, after the treaties had been concluded, if the conquered were completely disarmed, the conquering nations have continued to arm. Almost all the conquering nations have not only high expenses but more numerous armies. If the conditions of peace imposed by the treaties were considered supportable, remembering the fact that the late enemies were harmless, against whom are these continuous increase of armaments?

We have already seen the military conditions imposed on Germany–a small mercenary army, no obligatory conscription, no military instruction, no aviation, no artillery except a minimum and insignificant quantity required by the necessities of interior order. Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary can only have insignificant armies. Austria may maintain under arms 30,000 men, but her ruined finances only permit her, according to the latest reports, to keep 21,700; Bulgaria has 20,000 men plus 3,082 gendarmes; Hungary, according to the Treaty of Trianon, has 35,000. Turkey in Europe, which hardly exists any more as a territorial State, except for the city of Constantinople, where the sovereignty of the Sultan is more apparent than real, has not an actual army.

Taken all together the States which formed the powerful nucleus of war of Germany as they are now reduced territorially have under arms fewer than 180,000 men, not including, naturally, those new States risen on the ruins of the old Central Empires, and which arm themselves by the request and sometimes in the interest of some State of the Entente.

The old enemies, therefore, are not in a condition to make war, and are placed under all manner of controls. Sometimes the controls are even of a very singular nature. All have been occupied in giving the sea to the victors. Poland has obtained the absurd paradox of the State of Danzig because it has the sea. The constant aim of the Allies, even in opposition to Italy, has been to give free and safe outlets on the sea coast to the Serb-Croat-Slovene State.

At the Conference of London and San Remo I repeatedly referred to the expenses of these military missions of control and often their outrageous imposition on the conquered who are suffering from hunger. There are generals who are assigned as indemnity and expenses of all sorts, salaries which are much superior to that of the President of the United States of America. It is necessary to look at Vienna and Budapest, where the people are dying of hunger, to see the carnival of the Danube Commission. For the rest it is only necessary to look at the expense accounts of the Reparations Commissions to be convinced that this sad spectacle of greed and luxury humiliates the victors more than the conquered.

German-Austria has lost every access to the sea. She cannot live on her resources with her enormous capital in ruins. She cannot unite with Germany, though she is a purely German country, because the treaty requires the unanimous consent of the League of Nations, and France having refused, it is therefore impossible. She cannot unite with Czeko-Slovakia, with Hungary and other countries which have been formed from the Austrian Empire, because that is against the aspirations of the German populations, and it would be the formation anew of that Danube State which, with its numerous contrasts, was one of the essential causes of the War. Austria has lost every access to the sea, has consigned her fleet and her merchant marine, but in return has had the advantage of numerous inter-allied commissions of control to safeguard the military, naval and aeronautic clauses. But there are clauses which can no longer be justified, as, for instance, when Austria no longer has a sea coast. (Art. 140 of the Treaty of St. Germain, which forbids the construction or acquisition of: any sort of submersible vessel, even commercial.) It is impossible to understand why (Art. 143) the wireless high-power station of Vienna is not allowed to transmit other than commercial telegrams under the surveillance of the Allied and Associated Powers, who take the trouble to determine even the length of the wave to be used.

Before the War, in 1914, France desired to bring her army to the maximum of efficiency; opposite a great German army was to be found a great French army.

Germany had in 1913, according to the Budget presented to the Reichstag, a standing army of 647,000 soldiers of all arms, of which 105,000 were non-commissioned officers and 30,000 officers. It was the greatest army of Europe and of the world, taking into account its real efficiency.

Whilst Germany has no longer an army, France on July 1, 1921, had under arms 810,000 men, of which 38,473 were officers, therefore many more than Germany had before the War. Given its demographic character, it is the greatest military force which has been seen in modern times, and can only have two reasons–either military domination or ruin. The military budget proposed for the present year in the ordinary section is for 2,782 millions of francs, besides that portion paid by Germany for the army of occupation; the extraordinary section of the same budget is for 1,712 millions of francs, besides 635 millions for expenses repayable for the maintenance of troops of occupation in foreign countries.