It was a magnificent programme of world policy. Not only would it have meant peace after war, but a peace calculated to heal the deep wounds of Europe and to renovate the economic status of nations.
On the basis of these principles, which constituted a solemn pledge, Germany, worn out by famine and even more by increasing internal unrest, demanded peace.
According to President Wilson's clear statements, made not only in the name of the United States but in that of the whole Entente, peace should therefore have been based on justice, the relations between winners and losers in a society of nations being exclusively inspired by mutual trust.
There were no longer to be huge standing armies, neither on the part of the ex-Central Empires or on that of the victorious States; adequate guarantees were to be given and received for the reduction of armies to the minimum necessary for internal defence; removal of all economic barriers; absolute freedom of the seas; reorganization of the colonies based on the development of the peoples directly concerned; abolition of secret diplomacy, etc.
As to the duties of the vanquished, besides evacuating the occupied territories, they were to reconstruct Belgium, to restore to France the territories taken in 1871; to restore all the territories belonging to Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro, giving Serbia a free and secure access to the sea; to constitute a free Poland with territories undoubtedly Polish to which there might be granted a free and secure access to the sea. Poland, founded on secure ethnical bases, far from being a military State, was to be an element of peace, and her political and economic independence and territorial integrity were to have been guaranteed by an international agreement.
After the rectification of the Italian frontier according to the principles of nationality, the peoples of Austria-Hungary were to agree on the free opportunity of their autonomous development. In other terms, each people could freely choose autonomy or throw in its lot with some other State. After giving a certain sovereignty to the Turkish populations of the Ottoman Empire the other nationalities were to be allowed to develop autonomously, and the free navigation of the Dardanelles was to be internationally guaranteed.
These principles announced by President Wilson, and already proclaimed in part by the Entente Powers when they stoutly affirmed that they were fighting for right, for democracy and for peace, did not constitute a concession but a duty towards the enemy. In each of the losing countries, in Germany as in Austria-Hungary, the democratic groups contrary to the War, and those even more numerous which had accepted the War as in a momentary intoxication, when they exerted themselves for the triumph of peace, had counted on the statements, or rather on the solemn promises which American democracy had made not only in the name of the United States but in that of all the Entente Powers.
Let us now try to sum up the terms imposed on Germany and the other losing countries by the treaty of June 28, 1919. The treaty, it is true, was concluded between the allied and associated countries and Germany, but it also concerns the very existence of other countries such as Austria-Hungary, Russia, etc.:
I.—TERRITORIAL AND POLITICAL CLAUSES
Until the payment of an indemnity the amount of which is as yet not definitely stated, Germany loses the fundamental characters of a sovereign state. Not only part of her territory remains under the occupation of the ex-enemy troops for a period of fifteen years but a whole series of controls is established, military, administrative, on transports, etc. The Commission for Reparations is empowered to effect all the changes it thinks fit in the laws and regulations of the German State, besides applying sanctions of a military and economic nature in the event of violations of the clauses placed under its control (Art. 240, 241).
The allied and associated governments declare and Germany recognizes that Germany and her allies are solely responsible, being the direct cause thereof, for all the losses and damages suffered by the allied and associated governments and their subjects as a result of the War, which was thrust upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies (Art. 231). Consequently the resources of Germany (and by the other treaties those of her allies as well) are destined, even if insufficient, to ensure full reparation for all losses and damages (Art. 232).
The allied and associated Powers place in a state of public accusation William II of Hohenzollern, ex-German Emperor, charging him with the gravest offences against international morality and the sacred authority of treaties. A special tribunal composed of representatives of the five great Entente Powers shall try him and will have the right of determining his punishment (Art. 227). The German Government likewise recognizes the right of the allied and associated Powers to try in their courts of justice the persons (and more especially the officers) accused of having committed acts contrary to the rules and customs of war.
Restitution of Alsace and Lorraine to France without any obligation on the latter's part, not even the corresponding quota of public debt (Art. 51 et seq.).
The treaties of April 19, 1839, are abolished, so that Belgium, being no longer neutral, may become allied to France (Art. 31); attribution to Belgium of the territories of Eupen, Malmédy and Moresnet.
Abolition of all the treaties which established political and economic bonds between Germany and Luxemburg (Art. 40).
Annulment of all the treaties concluded by Germany during the War.
German-Austria, reduced to a little State of hardly more than 6,000,000 inhabitants, about one-third of whom live in the capital (Art. 80), cannot become united to Germany without the consent of the Society of Nations, and is not allowed to participate in the affairs of another nation, namely of Germany, before being admitted to the League of Nations (Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Art. 88). As the consent of the League of Nations must be unanimous, a contrary vote on the part of France would be sufficient to prevent German-Austria from becoming united to Germany.
Attribution of North Schleswig to Denmark (Art. 109).
Creation of the Czeko-Slovak State (Art. 87), which comprises the autonomous territory of the Ruthenians south of the Carpathians, Germany abandoning in favour of the new State all her rights and claims on that part of Silesia mentioned in Art. 83.
Creation of the State of Poland (Art. 87), to whom Posnania and part of Western Prussia are made over. Upper Silesia is to decide by a plebiscite (Art. 88) whether it desires to be united to Germany or to Poland. The latter, even without Upper Silesia, becomes a State of 31,000,000 inhabitants, with about fifty per cent. of the population non-Polish, including very numerous groups of Germans.
Creation of the Free State of Danzig within the limits of Art. 100, under the protection of the League of Nations. The city is a Free City, but enclosed within the Polish Customs House frontiers, and Poland has full control of the river and of the railway system. Poland, moreover, has charge of the foreign affairs of the Free City of Danzig and undertakes to protect its subjects abroad.
Surrender to the victors, or, to be more precise, almost exclusively to Great Britain and France, of all the German colonies (Art. 119 and 127). The formula (Art. 119) is that Germany renounces in favour of the leading allied and associated Powers all her territories beyond the seas. Great Britain has secured an important share, but so has France, receiving that part of Congo ceded in 1911, four-fifths of the Cameroons and of Togoland.
Abandonment of all rights and claims in China, Siam, Liberia, Morocco,
Egypt, Turkey, Bulgaria and Shantung (Art. 128 and 158).
Creation of a League of Nations to the exclusion, practically, of
Germany and of the other losing countries, with the result that the
League is nothing but a juridical completion of the Commission of
Reparations. In all of the various treaties, the pact of the League of
Nations, the Covenant, left standing among the collapse of President
Wilson's other ideas and proposals, is given precedence over all other
clauses.
II.—MILITARY CLAUSES AND GUARANTEES
Germany is obliged, and with her, by the subsequent treaties, all the other losing countries, to surrender her arms and to reduce her troops to the minimum necessary for internal defence (Art. 159 and 213). The German army has no General Staff; its soldiers are mercenaries who enlist for a period of ten years; it cannot be composed of more than seven infantry and three cavalry divisions, not exceeding 100,000 men including officers: no staff, no military aviation, no heavy artillery. The number of gendarmes and of local police can only be increased proportionately with the increase of the population. The maximum of artillery allowed is limited to the requirements of internal defence. Germany is strictly forbidden to import arms, ammunition and war material of any kind or description. Conscription is abolished, and officers must remain with the colours at least till they have attained the age of forty-five. No institute of science or culture is allowed to take an interest in military questions. All fortifications included in a line traced fifty kilometres to the east of the Rhine are to be destroyed, and on no account may German troops cross the said line.
Destruction of Heligoland and of the fortresses of the Kiel Canal.
Destruction under the supervision of the allied commissions of control of all tanks, flying apparatus, heavy and field artillery, namely 35,000 guns, 160,000 machine guns, 2,700,000 rifles, besides the tools and machinery necessary for their manufacture. Destruction of all arsenals. Destruction of the German fleet, which must be limited to the proportions mentioned in Art. 181.
Creation of inter-allied military commissions of control to supervise and enforce the carrying out of the military and naval clauses, at the expense of Germany and with the right to install themselves in the seat of the central government.
Occupation as a guarantee, for a period of fifteen years after the application of the treaty, of the bridgeheads and of the territories now occupied west of the Rhine (Art. 428 and 432). If, however, the Commission of Reparations finds that Germany refuses wholly or in part to fulfil her treaty obligations, the zones specified in Article 421 will be immediately occupied by the troops of the allied and associated Powers.
III.—FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CLAUSES
The principle being recognized that Germany alone is responsible for the War which she willed and which she imposed on the rest of the world, Germany is bound to give complete and full reparation within the limits specified by Art. 232. The amount of the damages for which reparation is due will be fixed by the Commission of Reparations, consisting of the representatives of the winning countries.
The coal fields of the Saar are to be handed over, in entire and absolute ownership, free of all liens and obligations, to France, in compensation for the destruction of the coal mines in the north of France. Before the War, in 1913, the output of the Saar basin amounted to 17,000,000 tons. The Saar is incorporated in the French douane system and after fifteen years will be submitted to a plebiscite.
Germany may not charge heavier duties on imports from allied countries than on those from any other country. This treatment of the most favoured nation to be extended to all allied and associated States does not imply the obligation of reciprocity (Art. 264). A similar limitation is placed on exports, on which no special duty may be levied.
Exports from Alsace and Lorraine into Germany to be exempt from duty, without right of reciprocity (Art. 268).
Germany delivers to the Allies all the steamers of her mercantile fleet of over I,600 tons, half of those between 1,000 and I,600 tons, and one-fourth of her fishing vessels. Moreover, she binds herself to build at the request of the Allies every year, and for a period of five years, 200,000 tons of shipping, as directed by the Allies, and the value of the new constructions will be credited to her by the Commission of Reparations (Part viii, 3).
Besides giving up all her colonies, Germany surrenders all her rights and claims on her possessions beyond the seas (Art. 119), and all the contracts and conventions in favour of German subjects for the construction and exploiting of public works, which will be considered as part payment of the reparations due. The private property of Germans in the colonies, as also the right of Germans to live and work there, come under the free jurisdiction of the victorious States occupying the colonies, and which reserve unto themselves the right to confiscate and liquidate all property and claims belonging to Germans (Art. 121 and 297).
The private property of German citizens residing in Alsace-Lorraine is subject to the same treatment as that of residents in the ex-German colonies. The French Government may confiscate without granting any compensation the private property of Germans and of German concerns in Alsace-Lorraine, and the sums thus derived will be credited towards the partial settlement of eventual French claims (Art. 53 and 74). The property of the State and of local bodies is likewise surrendered without any compensation whatever. The allies and associates reserve the right to seize and liquidate all property, claims and interests belonging, at the date of the ratification of the treaty, to German citizens or to firms controlled by them, situated in their territories, colonies, possessions and protectorates, including the territories surrendered in accordance with the clauses of the treaty (Art. 217).
Germany loses everything with the exception of her territory: colonies, possessions, rights, commercial investments, etc.
After giving the Saar coal fields in perpetual ownership to France in reparation of the temporary damages suffered by the French coal mines, the treaty goes on to establish the best ways and means to deprive Germany, in the largest measure possible, of her coal and her iron. The Saar coal fields have been handed over to France absolutely, while the war damages of the French mines have been repaired or can be repaired in a few years. Upper Silesia being subject to the plebiscite with the occupation of the allied troops, Germany must have lost several of her most important coal fields had the plebiscite gone against her.
Germany is forced to deliver in part reparation to France 7,000,000 tons of coal a year for ten years, besides a quantity of coal equal to the yearly ante-bellum output of the coal mines of the North of France and of the Pas-de-Calais, which were entirely destroyed during the War; the said quantity not to exceed 20,000,000 tons in the first five years and 8,000,000 tons during the five succeeding years (Part viii, 5). Moreover, Germany must give 8,000,000 tons to Belgium for a period of ten years, and to Italy a quantity of coal which, commencing at 4,500,000 tons for the year 1919-1920, reaches the figure of 8,500,000 tons in the five years after 1923-1924. To Luxemburg Germany must provide coal in the same average quantity as in pre-war times. Altogether Germany is compelled to hand over to the winners as part reparation about 25,000,000 tons of coal a year.
For three years Polish exports to Germany, and for five years exports from Luxemburg into Germany, will be free of all duty, without right of reciprocity (Art. 268).
The Allies have the right to adopt, on the territories left of the Rhine and occupied by their troops, a special customs regime both as regards imports and exports (Art. 270).
After having surrendered, as per Par. 7 of the armistice terms, 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 trucks and carriages with all their accessories and fittings (Art. 250), Germany must hand over the railway systems of the territories she has lost, with all the rolling stock in a good state of preservation, and this measure applies even to Prussian Poland occupied by Germany during the War (Art. 371).
The German transport system is placed under control, and the administration of the Elbe, the Rhine, the Oder, the Danube, owing to the fact that they pass through more than one state and give access to the sea, is entrusted to inter-allied commissions. In all these commissions Germany is represented by a small minority. France and Great Britain, who are not directly interested, have numerous representatives on all the important river commissions, while on the Rhine commission Germany has only four votes out of nineteen (Art. 382 to 337). A privilege of first degree is established on all production and resources of the German States to ensure the payment of reparations and other charges specified by the treaty (Art. 248).
The total cost of the allied and associated armies will be borne by Germany, including the upkeep of men and beasts, pay and lodging, heating, clothing, etc., and even veterinary services, motor lorries and automobiles. All these expenses must be reimbursed in gold marks (Art. 249).
The privilege, as per Art. 248 of the treaty, is to be applied in the following order:
(a) Reimbursement of expenses for the armies of occupation during the armistice and after the peace treaty.
(b) Payment of the reparations as established by the treaty or treaties or supplementary conventions.
(c) Other expenses deriving from the armistice terms, from the peace treaty and from other supplementary terms and conventions (Art. 251). Restitution, on the basis of an estimate presented sixty days after the application of the treaty by the Commission of Reparations, of the live stock stolen or destroyed by the Germans and necessary for the reconstruction of the invaded countries, with the right to exact from Germany, as part reparations, the delivery of machinery, heating apparatus, furniture, etc.
Reimbursement to Belgium of all the sums loaned to her by the allied and associated Powers during the War.
Compensation for the losses and damages sustained by the civilian population of the allied and associated Powers during the period in which they were at war with Germany (Art. 232 and Part viii, I).
Payment, during the first two years, of twenty milliard marks in gold or by the delivery of goods, shipping, etc., on account of compensation (Art. 235).
The reparations owed by Germany concern chiefly:
1st. Damages and loss of life and property sustained by the civilian population.
2nd. Damages sustained by civilian victims of cruelty, violence or ill-treatment.
3rd. Damages caused on occupied or invaded territories.
4th. Damages through cruelty to and ill-treatment of prisoners of war.
5th. Pensions and compensations of all kinds paid by the allied and associated Powers to the military victims of the War and to their families.
6th. Subsidies paid by the allied and associated Powers to the families and other dependents of men having served in the army, etc., etc. (Part viii, I). These expenses, which have been calculated at varying figures, commencing from 350 billions, have undergone considerable fluctuations.
I have given the general lines of the Treaty of Versailles.
The other treaties, far less important, inasmuch as the situation of all the losing countries was already well defined, especially as regards territorial questions, by the Treaty of Versailles, are cast in the same mould and contain no essential variation.
Now these treaties constitute an absolutely new fact, and no one can affirm that the Treaty of Versailles derives even remotely from the declarations of the Entente and from Wilson's solemn pledges uttered in the name of those who took part in the War.
If the terms of the armistice were deeply in contrast with the pledges to which the Entente Powers had bound themselves before the whole world, the Treaty of Versailles and the other treaties deriving therefrom are a deliberate negation of all that had been promised, amounting to a debt of honour, and which had contributed much more powerfully towards the defeat of the enemy than the entry in the field of many fresh divisions.
In the state of extreme exhaustion in which both conquerors and losers found themselves in 1918, in the terrible suffering of the Germanic group of belligerents, deprived for four years of sufficient nourishment and of the most elementary necessaries of life, in the moral collapse which had taken the place of boasting and temerity, the words of Wilson, who pledged himself to a just peace and established its terms, proclaiming them to the world, had completely broken down whatever force of resistance there still remained. They were the most powerful instruments of victory, and if not the essential cause, certainly not the least important among the causes which brought about the collapse of the Central Empires.
Germany had been deeply hit by the armistice. Obliged to hand over immediately 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 railway trucks and carriages at the very time when she had to demobilize, during the first months she found her traffic almost completely paralysed.
Every war brings virulent germs of revolution in the vanquished countries. The war of 1870 gave France the impulsive manifestations of La Commune in exactly the same manner as war gave rise in Germany during the first months after the armistice to a violent revolutionary crisis, overcome not without difficulty and still representing a grave menace.
Forced to surrender immediately a large quantity of live stock, to demobilize when the best part of her railway material had gone, still hampered by the blockade, Germany, against the interest of the Allies themselves, has been obliged to sacrifice her exchange because, in the absence of sufficient help, she has had to buy the most indispensable foodstuffs in neutral countries. Her paper currency, which at the end of 1918 amounted to twenty-two milliard marks, not excessive as compared with that of other countries, immediately increased with a growing crescendo till it reached, in a very short time, the figure of eighty-eight milliards, thus rendering from the very first the payment of indemnities in gold extremely difficult.
The most skilled men have been thrust into an absolute impossibility of producing. To have deprived Germany of her merchant fleet, built up with so much care, means to have deprived the freight market of sixty thousand of the most skilled, intelligent and hard-working seamen.
But what Germany has lost as a result of the treaty surpasses all imagination and can only be regarded as a sentence of ruin and decay voluntarily passed over a whole people.
Germany, without taking into account the countries subject to plebiscite, has lost 7.5 per cent. of her population. Should the plebiscites prove unfavourable to her, or, as the tendency seems to be, should these plebiscites be disregarded, Germany would lose 13.5 per cent. of her population. Purely German territories have been forcibly wrenched from her. What has been done in the case of the Saar has no precedents in modern history. It is a country of 650,000 inhabitants of whom not even one hundred are French, a country which has been German for a thousand years, and which was temporarily occupied by France for purely military reasons. In spite of these facts, however, not only have the coal fields of the Saar been assigned in perpetuity to France as compensation for the damages caused to the French mines in the North, but the territory of the Saar forms part of the French customs regime and will be subjected after fifteen years to a plebiscite, when such a necessity is absolutely incomprehensible, as the population is purely German and has never in any form or manner expressed the intention of changing its nationality.
The ebb and flow of peoples in Europe during the long war of nationalities has often changed the situation of frontier countries. Sometimes it may still be regarded as a necessity to include small groups of alien race and language in different states in order to ensure strategically safe frontiers. But, with the exception of the necessity for self-defence, there is nothing to justify what has been done to the detriment of Germany.
Wilson had only said that France should receive compensation for the wrong suffered in 1871 and that Belgium should be evacuated and reconstructed. What had been destroyed was to have been built up again; but no one had ever thought during the War of handing over to Belgium a part, however small, of German territory or of surrendering predominantly and purely German territories to Poland.
The German colonies covered an area of nearly 3,000,000 square kilometres; they had reached an admirable degree of development and were managed with the greatest skill and ability. They represented an enormous value; nevertheless they have been assigned to France, Great Britain and in minor proportion to Japan, without figuring at all in the reparations account.
It is calculated that as a result of the treaty, owing to the loss of a considerable percentage of her agricultural area, Germany is twenty-five per cent. the poorer in regard to the production of cereals and potatoes and ten to twelve per cent. in regard to the breeding of live stock.
The restitution of Alsace-Lorraine (the only formal claim advanced by the Entente in its war programme) has deprived Germany of the bulk of her iron-ore production. In 1913 Germany could count on 21,000,000 tons of iron from Lorraine, 7,000,000 from Luxemburg, 138,000 from Upper Silesia and 7,344 from the rest of her territory. This means that Germany is reduced to only 20.41 per cent. of her pre-war wealth in iron ore.
In 1913 the Saar district represented 8.95 per cent. of the total production of coal, and Upper Silesia 22.85 per cent.
Having lost about eighty per cent. of her iron ore and large stocks of coal, while her production is severely handicapped, Germany, completely disorganized abroad after the suppression of all economic equilibrium, is condemned to look on helplessly while the very sources of her national wealth dry up and cease to flow. In order to form a correct estimate of the facts we must hold in mind that one-fifth of Germany's total exports before the War consisted of iron and of tools and machinery mostly manufactured with German iron.
If we now consider the fourteen points of President Wilson, accepted by the Entente as a peace programme, comparing the actual results obtained by the Treaty of Versailles, we are faced with the following situation:
1. "After loyal peace negotiations and the conclusion and signing of peace treaties, secret diplomatic agreements must be regarded as abolished," says Wilson. On the contrary, secret peace negotiations have been protracted for more than six months, and no hearing was even granted to the German delegates who wished to expose their views. By a system of treaties France has created a military alliance with Belgium and Poland, thus completely cornering Germany.
2. Absolute freedom of the sea beyond territorial waters. Nothing, as a matter of fact, has been changed from the pre-war state of things; with the difference that the losers have had to surrender their mercantile fleets and are therefore no longer directly interested in the question.
3. Removal of all economic barriers and equality of trade conditions. The treaty imposes on Germany terms without reciprocity, and almost all Entente countries have already adopted protectionist and prohibitive tariffs.
4. Adequate guarantees to be given and received for the reduction of armaments to a minimum compatible with home defence. The treaties have compelled the vanquished countries to destroy or to surrender their navies, and have reduced the standing armies of Germany to 100,000 men, including officers, of Bulgaria to 23,000, of Austria to 30,000 (in reality only 21,000), of Hungary to 35,000. The conquering states, on the other hand, maintain enormous armies numerically superior to those which they had before the War. France, Belgium and Poland have between them about 1,400,000 men with the colours. Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria altogether have only 179,000 men under arms, while Rumania alone has 206,000 and Poland more than 450,000 men.
5. Loyal and straightforward settlement of colonial rights and claims, based chiefly on the advantage of the peoples directly concerned. All her colonies have been taken from Germany, who needed them more than any other country of continental Europe, having a density of population of 123 inhabitants per square kilometre (Italy has a density of 133 per square kilometre) while France has 74, Spain 40, and European Russia before the War had only 24.
6. Evacuation of all Russian territories and cordial co-operation for the reconstruction and development of Russia. For a long time the Entente has given its support to the military ventures of Koltchak, Judenic, Denikin and Wrangel, all men of the old regime.
7. Evacuation and reconstruction of Belgium. This has been done, but to Belgium have been assigned territories which she never dreamt of claiming before the War.
8. Liberation of French territories, reconstruction of invaded regions and restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to France in respect of the territories taken from her in 1871. France occupies a dominating position in the Saar which constitutes an absolute denial of the principle of nationality.
9. Rectification of the Italian frontier, according to clearly defined lines of nationality. As these lines have never been clearly defined or recognized, the solution arrived at has been distasteful both to the Italians and to their neighbours.
10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary to be left free to unite together or to form autonomous states in the manner best suited to their development. As a matter of fact the treaties have taken the greatest possible number of Germans from Austria and of Magyars from Hungary in order to hand them over to Poland, to Czeko-Slovakia, to Rumania and to Jugo-Slavia, namely to populations for the most part inferior to the Germans.
11. Evacuation of Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro. This has been effected, but whereas the Entente Powers have always proclaimed their fundamental duty for the reconstruction of Montenegro, they all contributed to its disappearance, chiefly at the instigation of France.
12. A limited sovereignty to the Turkish parts of the Ottoman Empire, liberation of other nationalities and freedom of navigation in the Dardanelles placed under international guarantees. What really happened was that the Entente Powers immediately tried to possess themselves of Asia Minor; but events rendered it necessary to adopt a regime of mandates because direct sovereignty would have been too perilous an experiment. A sense of deep perturbation and unrest pervades the whole of Islam.
13. An independent Polish state with populations undoubtedly Polish to be founded as a neutral State with a free and secure outlet to the sea and whose integrity is to be guaranteed by international accords. In reality a Polish state has been formed with populations undoubtedly non-Polish, having a markedly military character and aiming at further expansion in Ukranian and German territory. It has a population of 31,000,000 inhabitants while it should not exceed 18,000,000, and proposes to isolate Russia from Germany. Moreover the Free State of Danzig, practically dependent from Poland, constitutes a standing menace to Germany.
14. Foundation of the League of Nations for the sole purpose of re-establishing order among nations, and laying the basis of reciprocal guarantees of territorial integrity and political independence for all states, both great and small. After more than two years have elapsed since the conclusion of peace and three since the armistice the League of Nations is still nothing but a holy alliance the object of which is to guarantee the privileges of the conquerors. After the vote of the Senate, deserving of all praise from every point of view, the United States does not form part of the League nor do the losing countries, including Germany.
It is therefore obvious that the most solemn pledges on which peace was based have not been maintained; the noble declarations made by the Entente during the War have been forgotten; forgotten all the solemn collective pledges; forgotten and disregarded Wilson's proclamations which, without being real contracts or treaties, were something far more solemn and binding, a pledge taken before the whole world at its most tragic hour to give the enemy a guarantee of justice.
Without expressing any opinion on the treaties it cannot be denied that the manner in which they have been applied has been even worse. For the first time in civilized Europe, not during the War, when everything was permissible in the supreme interests of defence, but now that the War is over, the Entente Powers, though maintaining armies more numerous than ever, for which the vanquished must pay, have occupied German territories, inhabited by the most cultured, progressive and technically advanced populations in the world, as an insult and a slight, with coloured troops, men from darkest and most barbarous Africa, to act as defenders of the rights of civilization and to maintain the law and order of democracy.
III
THE PEACE TREATIES—THEIR ORIGIN AND AIMS
How, after the solemn pledges undertaken during the War, a peace could have been concluded which practically negatives all the principles professed during the War and all the obligations entered into, is easily explained when the progress of events is noted from the autumn of 1918 to the end of the spring of 1919. I took no direct part in those events, as I had no share in the government of Italy from January to the end of June, 1919, the period during which the Treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye were being prepared. The Orlando Ministry was resigning when the Treaty of Versailles was drawn up for signature, and the situation which confronted the Ministry of which I was head was clearly defined. Nevertheless I asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the delegates of the preceding Cabinet to put their signatures to it. Signing was a necessity, and it fell to me later on to put my signature to the ratification.
The Treaty of Versailles and those which have followed with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey have been validly signed, and they pledge the good faith of the countries which have signed them. But in the application of them there is need of great breadth of view; there is need of dispassionate study to see if they can be maintained, if the fulfilment of the impossible or unjust conditions demanded of the conquered countries will not do more harm to the conquerors, will not, in point of actual fact, pave the way to their ruin.
If there is one thing, Lloyd George has said, which will never be forgotten or forgiven, it is arrogance and injustice in the hour of triumph. We have never tired of saying that Germany is the most barbarous among civilized countries, that under her civilization is hidden all the barbarism of mediaeval times, that she puts into practice the doctrine of might over right. At the present moment it is our duty to ask ourselves if something of the principles which we have for so long been attributing to Germany has not passed over to the other side, if in our own hearts there is not a bitterness of hatred clouding our judgment and robbing our programme of all action that can do real good.
Prussia won the war against Austria-Hungary in 1866, and did not ask 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, Poincaré, 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 André 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 était celui de la conversation; nul apparat, nulle pose. M. Orlando parlait peu; l'activité de l'Italie à la conference a été, jusqu'à l'excès, absorbée par la question de Fiume, et sa part dans les débats a été de ce fait trop réduite. Restait un dialogue à 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 réparations et des tonnages. On ne comprenderait pas chez nous, en France, que nous n'inscrivions pas dans l'armistice une clause à cet effet. Ce que je vous demande c'est l'addition de trois mots: "Réparations des dommages" sans autre commentaire.
Le dialogue suivant s'établit_:
M. HYMANS: Cela serait-il une condition d'armistice?
M. SONNINO: C'est plutôt une condition de paix.
M. BONAR LAW: Il est inutile d'insérer dans les conditions d'armistice une clause qui ne pourrait être exécutée dans un bref délai.
M. CLEMENCEAU: Je ne veux que mentionner le principe. Vous ne devez pas oublier que la population française est une de celles qui ont le plus souffert. Elle ne comprendrait pas que nous ne fissions pas allusion à cette clause.
M. LLOYD GEORGE: Si vous envisages le principe des réparations sur terre, il faut mentionner aussi celui des réparations pour les navires coulés.
M. CLEMENCEAU: Je comprends tout cela dans mes trois mots, "Réparations des dommages." Je supplie le Conseil de se mettre dans l'esprit de la population française….
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 Président Wilson, qui la comuniquera à l'Allemagne. Il est inutile de la dire deux fois.
M. ORLANDO: J'accepte en principe, quoiqu'il n'en ait pas été fait mention dans les conditions de l'armistice avec l'Autriche.
L'addition "Réparations des dommages" est alors adoptée. M. Klotz propose de mettre en tête de cette addition les mots: "Sous réserve de toutes revendications et restaurations ultérieures de la part des Alliés et des Etats-Unis." Il est ainsi décidé.
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. Poincaré 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, "Réparation 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.