The position of the plenipotentiaries was unenviable at best and they well deserve the benefit of extenuating circumstances. For not even a genius can efficiently tackle problems with the elements of which he lacks acquaintanceship, and the mass of facts which they had to deal with was sheer unmanageable. It was distressing to watch them during those eventful months groping and floundering through a labyrinth of obstacles with no Ariadne clue to guide their tortuous course, and discovering that their task was more intricate than they had imagined. The ironic domination of temper and circumstance over the fitful exertions of men struggling with the partially realized difficulties of a false position led to many incongruities upon which it would be ungracious to dwell. One of them, however, which illustrates the situation, seems almost incredible. It is said to have occurred in January. According to the current narrative, soon after the arrival of President Wilson in Paris, he received from a French publicist named M.B. a long and interesting memorandum about the island of Corsica, recounting the history, needs, and aspirations of the population as well as the various attempts they had made to regain their independence, and requesting him to employ his good offices at the Conference to obtain for them complete autonomy. To this demand M.B. is said to have received a reply[68] to the effect that the President "is persuaded that this question will form the subject of a thorough examination by the competent authorities of the Conference" Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon, and as much an integral part of France as the Isle of Man is of England, seeking to slacken the ties that link it to the Republic and receiving a promise that the matter would be carefully considered by the delegates sounds more like a mystification than a sober statement of fact. The story was sent to the newspapers for publication, but the censor very wisely struck it out.
These and kindred occurrences enable one better to appreciate the motives which prompted the delegates to shroud their conversations and tentative decisions in a decorous veil of secrecy.
It is but fair to say that the enterprise to which they set their hands was the vastest that ever tempted lofty ambitions since the tower-builders of Babel strove to bring heaven within reach of the earth. It transcended the capacity of the contemporary world's greatest men.[69] It was a labor for a wonder-worker in the pristine days of heroes. But although to solve even the main problems without residue was beyond the reach of the most genial representatives of latter-day statecraft, it needed only clearness of conception, steadiness of purpose, and the proper adjustment of means to ends, to begin the work on the right lines and give it an impulse that might perhaps carry it to completion in the fullness of time.
But even these postulates were wanting. The eminent parliamentarians failed to rise to the gentle height of average statecraft. They appeared in their new and august character of world-reformers with all the roots still clinging to them of the rank electoral soil from which they sprang. Their words alone were redolent of idealism, their deeds were too often marred by pettifogging compromises or childish blunders—constructive phrases and destructive acts. Not only had they no settled method of working, they lacked even a common proximate aim. For although they all employed the same phraseology when describing the objects for which their countries had fought and they themselves were ostensibly laboring, no two delegates attached the same ideas to the words they used. Yet, instead of candidly avowing this root-defect and remedying it, they were content to stretch the euphemistic terms until these covered conflicting conceptions and gratified the ears of every hearer. Thus, "open covenants openly arrived at" came to mean arbitrary ukases issued by a secret conclave, and "the self-determination of peoples" connoted implicit obedience to dictatorial decrees. The new result was a bewildering phantasmagoria.
And yet it was professedly for the purpose of obviating such misunderstandings that Mr. Wilson had crossed the Atlantic. Having expressed in plain terms the ideals for which American soldiers had fought, and which became the substance of the thoughts and purposes of the associated statesmen, "I owe it to them," he had said, "to see to it, in so far as in me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon them and no possible effort omitted to realize them." And that was the result achieved.
No such juggling with words as went on at the Conference had been witnessed since the days of medieval casuistry. New meanings were infused into old terms, rendering the help of "exegesis" indispensable. Expressions like "territorial equilibrium" and "strategic frontiers" were stringently banished, and it is affirmed that President Wilson would wince and his expression change at the bare mention of these obnoxious symbols of the effete ordering which it was part of his mission to do away with forever. And yet the things signified by those words were preserved withal under other names. Nor could it well be otherwise. One can hardly conceive a durable state system in Europe under the new any more than the old dispensation without something that corresponds to equilibrium. An architect who should boastingly discard the law of gravitation in favor of a different theory would stand little chance of being intrusted with the construction of a palace of peace. Similarly, a statesman who, while proclaiming that the era of wars is not yet over, would deprive of strategic frontiers the pivotal states of Europe which are most exposed to sudden attack would deserve to find few disciples and fewer clients. Yet that was what Mr. Wilson aimed at and what some of his friends affirm he has achieved. His foreign colleagues re-echoed his dogmas after having emasculated them. It was instructive and unedifying to watch how each of the delegates, when his own country's turn came to be dealt with on the new lines, reversed his tactics and, sacrificing sound to substance, insisted on safeguards, relied on historic rights, invoked economic requirements, and appealed to common sense, but all the while loyally abjured "territorial equilibrium" and "strategic guarantees." Hence the fierce struggles which MM. Orlando, Dmowski, Bratiano, Venizelos, and Makino had to carry on with the chief of that state which is the least interested in European affairs in order to obtain all or part of the territories which they considered indispensable to the security and well-being of their respective countries.
At the outset Mr. Wilson stood for an ideal Europe of a wholly new and undefined type, which would have done away with the need for strategic frontiers. Its contours were vague, for he had no clear mental picture of the concrete Europe out of which it was to be fashioned. He spoke, indeed, and would fain have acted, as though the old Continent were like a thinly inhabited territory of North America fifty years ago, unencumbered by awkward survivals of the past and capable of receiving any impress. He seemingly took no account of its history, its peoples, or their interests and strivings. History shared the fate of Kolchak's government and the Ukraine; it was not recognized by the delegates. What he brought to Europe from America was an abstract idea, old and European, and at first his foreign colleagues treated it as such. Some of them had actually sneered at it, others had damned it with faint praise, and now all of them honestly strove to save their own countries' vital interests from its disruptive action while helping to apply it to their neighbors. Thus Britain, who at that time had no territorial claims to put forward, had her sea-doctrine to uphold, and she upheld it resolutely. Before he reached Europe the President was notified in plain terms that his theory of the freedom of the seas would neither be entertained nor discussed. Accordingly, he abandoned it without protest. It was then explained away as a journalistic misconception. That was the first toll paid by the American reformer in Europe, and it spelled failure to his entire scheme, which was one and indivisible. It fell to my lot to record the payment of the tribute and the abandonment of that first of the fourteen commandments. The mystic thirteen remained. But soon afterward another went by the board. Then there were twelve. And gradually the number dwindled.
This recognition of hard realities was a bitter disappointment to all the friends of the spiritual and social renovation of the world. It was a spectacle for cynics. It rendered a frank return to the ancient system unavoidable and brought grist to the mill of the equilibrists. And yet the conclusion was shriked. But even the tough realities might have been made to yield a tolerable peace if they had been faced squarely. If the new conception could not be realized at once, the old one should have been taken back into favor provisionally until broader foundations could be laid, but it must be one thing or the other. From the political angle of vision at which the European delegates insisted on placing themselves, the Old World way of tackling the various problems was alone admissible. Their program was coherent and their reasoning strictly logical. The former included strategic frontiers and territorial equilibrium. Doubtless this angle of vision was narrow, the survey it allowed was inadequate, and the results attainable ran the risk of being ultimately thrust aside by the indignant peoples. For the world problem was not wholly nor even mainly political. Still, the method was intelligible and the ensuing combinations would have hung coherently together. They would have satisfied all those—and they were many—who believed that the second decade of the twentieth century differs in no essential respect from the first and that latter-day world problems may be solved by judicious territorial redistribution. But even that conception was not consistently acted on. Deviations were permitted here and insisted upon there, only they were spoken of unctuously as sacrifices incumbent on the lesser states to the Fourteen Points. For the delegates set great store by their reputation for logic and coherency. Whatever other charges against the Conference might be tolerated, that of inconsistency was bitterly resented, especially by Mr. Wilson. For a long while he contended that he was as true to his Fourteen Points as is the needle to the pole. It was not until after his return to Washington, in the summer, that he admitted the perturbations caused by magnetic currents—sympathy for France he termed them.
The effort of imagination required to discern consistency in such of the Council's decisions as became known from time to time was so far beyond the capacity of average outsiders that the ugly phrase "to make the world safe for hypocrisy" was early coined, uttered, and propagated.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] Cf. Le Temps, May 23, 1919. It is an adaptation of the inscription over the Pantheon, "Aux grands hommes, la Patrie reconnaissante."
[47] The Daily Mail, April 25, 1919 (Paris edition).
[48] In Germany.
[49] General Pétain is said to have rejected the suggestion.
[50] Cf. Bulletin des Droits de l'Homme, 19ème année, p. 461.
[51] It was either Friday, the 4th, or Saturday, the 5th of July.
[52] At the end of August, 1919.
[53] One delegate from a poor and friendless country had to take the maps of a rival state and retouch them in accordance with the ethnographical data, which he considered alone correct.
[54] L'Homme Enchatné, December 14, 1914.
[55] "With its causes and objects we have no concern." Speech delivered by Mr. Wilson before the League to Enforce Peace in Washington on May 24, 1916.
[56] The testimony of a leading French press organ is worth reproducing here: "La situation du Président Wilson dans nos démocraties est magnifique, souveraine et extrêmement périlleuse. On ne connaît pas d'hommes, dans les temps contemporains, ayant eu plus d'autorité et de puissance; la popularité lui a donné ce que le droit divin ne conférait pas toujours aux monarques héréditaires. En revanche et par le fait du choc en retour, sa responsabilité est supérieure à celle du prince le plus absolu. S'il réussit à organiser le monde d'après ses rêves, sa gloire dominera les plus hautes gloires; mais il faut dire hardiment que s'il échouait il plongerait le monde dans un chaos dont le bolchevisme russe ne nous offre qu'une faible image; et sa responsabilité devant la conscience humaine dépasserait ce que peut supporter un simple mortel. Redoutable alternative!"—Cf. Le Figaro, February 10, 1919.
[57] From Mr. Wilson's address to Congress read on December 2, 1918. Cf. The Times, December 4, 1918.
[58] Cf. Secretary Lansing's evidence before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, The Chicago Tribune, August 27, 1919.
[59] La Démocratie Nouvelle, May 27, 1919
[60] Le Figaro, March 26, 1919.
[61] Both of them occurred before the armistice, but during the war.
[62] For the accuracy of this and the preceding story I vouch absolutely. I have the names of persons, places, and authorities, which are superfluous here.
[63] The Kurds are members of the great Indo-European family to which the Greeks, Italians, Celts, Teutons, Slavs, Hindus, Persians, and Afghans belong, whereas the Turks are a branch of a wholly different stock, the Ural-Altai group, of which the Mongols, Turks, Tartars, Finns, and Magyars are members.
[64] April 16, 1919.
[65] Madame N—— showed a friend of mine an autograph letter which she claims to have received from one of her clients, "a world's famous man." I was several times invited to inspect it at the clairvoyante's abode, or at my own, if I preferred.
[66] Articles on the subject appeared in the French press. To the best of my recollection there was one in _Bonsoir_.
[67] The American Red Cross buried sixteen hundred of them in August, 1919. _The Chicago Tribune_ (Paris edition), August 30, 1919.
[68] The reply, of which I possess what was given to me as a copy, is dated Paris, January 9, 1919, and is in French.
[69] Imagine, for instance, the condition of mind into which the following day's work must have thrown the American statesman, beset as he was with political worries of his own. The extract quoted is taken from The Daily Mail of April 18, 1919 (Paris edition).
President Wilson had a busy day yesterday, as the following list of engagements shows:
11 A.M. Dr. Wellington Koo, to present the Chinese Delegation to the Peace Conference.
11.10 A.M. Marquis de Vogué had a delegation of seven others, representing the Congrès Français, to present their view as to the disposition of the left bank of the Rhine.
11.30 A.M. Assyrian and Chaldean Delegation, with a message from the Assyrian-Chaldean nation.
11.45 A.M. Dalmatian Delegation, to present to the President the result of the plebiscite of that part of Dalmatia occupied by Italians.
Noon. M. Bucquet, Chargé d'Affaires of San Marino, to convey the action of the Grand Council of San Marino, conferring on the President Honorary Citizenship in the Republic of San Marino.
12.10 P.M. M. Colonder, Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs.
12.20 P.M. Miss Rose Schneiderman and Miss Mary Anderson, delegates of the National Women's Trade Union League of the United States.
12.30 P.M. The Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Orthodox Eastern Church.
12.45 P.M. Essad Pasha, delegate of Albania, to present the claims of Albania.
1 P.M. M. M.L. Coromilas, Greek Minister at Rome, to pay his respects.
Luncheon. Mr. Newton D. Baker, Secretary for War. 4 P.M. Mr. Herbert Hoover.
4.15 P.M. M. Bratiano, of the Rumanian Delegation.
4.30 P.M. Dr. Affonso Costa, former Portuguese Minister, Portuguese Delegate to the Peace Conference.
4.45 P.M. Boghos Nubar Pasha, president of the Armenian National Delegation, accompanied by M.A. Aharoman and Professor A. Der Hagopian, of Robert College.
5.15 P.M. M. Pasitch, of the Serbian Delegation.
5.30 P.M. Mr. Frank Walsh, of the Irish-American Delegation.
Never was political veracity in Europe at a lower ebb than during the Peace Conference. The blinding dust of half-truths cunningly mixed with falsehood and deliberately scattered with a lavish hand, obscured the vision of the people, who were expected to adopt or acquiesce in the judgments of their rulers on the various questions that arose. Four and a half years of continuous and deliberate lying for victory had disembodied the spirit of veracity and good faith throughout the world of politics. Facts were treated as plastic and capable of being shaped after this fashion or that, according to the aim of the speaker or writer. Promises were made, not because the things promised were seen to be necessary or desirable, but merely in order to dispose the public favorably toward a policy or an expedient, or to create and maintain a certain frame of mind toward the enemies or the Allies. At elections and in parliamentary discourses, undertakings were given, some of which were known to be impossible of fulfilment. Thus the ministers in some of the Allied countries bound themselves to compel the Germans not only to pay full compensation for damage wantonly done, but also to defray the entire cost of the war.
The notion that the enemy would thus make good all losses was manifestly preposterous. In a century the debt could not be wiped out, even though the Teutonic people could be got to work steadily and selflessly for the purpose. For their productivity would be unavailing if their victorious adversaries were indisposed to admit the products to their markets. And not only were the governments unwilling, but some of the peoples announced their determination to boycott German wares on their own initiative. None the less the nations were for months buoyed up with the baleful delusion that all their war expenses would be refunded by the enemy.[70]
It was not the governments only, however, who, after having for over four years colored and refracted the truth, now continued to twist and invent "facts." The newspapers, with some honorable exceptions, buttressed them up and even outstripped them. Plausible unveracity thus became a patriotic accomplishment and a recognized element of politics. Parties and states employed it freely. Fiction received the hall-mark of truth and fancies were current as facts. Public men who had solemnly hazarded statements belied by subsequent events denied having ever uttered them. Never before was the baleful theory that error is helpful so systematically applied as during the war and the armistice. If the falsehoods circulated and the true facts suppressed were to be collected and published in a volume, one would realize the depth to which the standard of intellectual and moral integrity was lowered.[71]
The censorship was retained by the Great Powers during the Conference as a sort of soft cushion on which the self-constituted dispensers of Fate comfortably reposed. In Paris, where it was particularly severe and unreasoning, it protected the secret conclave from the harsh strictures of the outside world, concealing from the public, not only the incongruities of the Conference, but also many of the warnings of contemporary history. In the opinion of unbiased Frenchmen no such rigorous, systematic, and short-sighted repression of press liberty had been known since the Third Empire as was kept up under the rule of the great tribune whose public career had been one continuous campaign against every form of coercion. This twofold policy of secrecy on the part of the delegates and censorship on the part of the authorities proved incongruous as well as dangerous, for, upheld by the eminent statesmen who had laid down as part of the new gospel the principle of "open covenants openly arrived at," it furnished the world with a fairly correct standard by which to interpret the entire phraseology of the latter-day reformers. Events showed that only by applying that criterion could the worth of their statements of fact and their promises of amelioration be gaged. And it soon became clear that most of their utterances like that about open covenants were to be construed according to the maxim of lucus a non lucendo.
It was characteristic of the system that two American citizens were employed to read the cablegrams arriving from the United States to French newspapers. The object was the suppression of such messages as tended to throw doubt on the useful belief that the people of the great American Republic were solid behind their President, ready to approve his decisions and acts, and that his cherished Covenant, sure of ratification, would serve as a safe guarantee to all the states which the application of his various principles might leave strategically exposed. In this way many interesting items of intelligence from the United States were kept out of the newspapers, while others were mutilated and almost all were delayed. Protests were unavailing. Nor was it until several months were gone by that the French public became aware of the existence of a strong current of American opinion which favored a critical attitude toward Mr. Wilson's policy and justified misgivings as to the finality of his decisions. It was a sorry expedient and an unsuccessful one.
On another occasion strenuous efforts are reported to have been made through the intermediary of President Wilson to delay the publication in the United States of a cablegram to a journal there until the Prime Minister of Britain should deliver a speech in the House of Commons. An accident balked these exertions and the message appeared.
Publicity was none the less strongly advocated by the plenipotentiaries in their speeches and writings. These were as sign-posts pointing to roads along which they themselves were incapable of moving. By their own accounts they were inveterate enemies of secrecy and censorship. The President of the United States had publicly said that he "could not conceive of anything more hurtful than the creation of a system of censorship that would deprive the people of a free republic such as ours of their undeniable right to criticize public officials." M. Clemenceau, who suffered more than most publicists from systematic repression, had changed the name of his newspaper from the L'Homme Libre to L'Homme Enchaîné, and had passed a severe judgment on "those friends of liberty" (the government) who tempered freedom with preventive repression measured out according to the mood uppermost at the moment.[72] But as soon as he himself became head of the government he changed his tactics and called his journal L'Homme Libre again. In the Chamber he announced that "publicity for the 'debates' of the Conference was generally favored," but in practice he rendered the system of gagging the press a byword in Europe. Drawing his own line of demarcation between the permissible and the illicit, he informed the Chamber that so long as the Conference was engaged on its arduous work "it must not be said that the head of one government had put forward a proposal which was opposed by the head of another government."[73] As though the disagreements, the bickerings, and the serious quarrels of the heads of the governments could long be concealed from the peoples whose spokesmen they were!
That bargainings went on at the Conference which a plain-dealing world ought to be apprised of is the conclusion which every unbiased outsider will draw from the singular expedients resorted to for the purpose of concealing them. Before the Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, State-Secretary Lansing confessed that when, after the treaty had been signed, the French Senate called for the minutes of the proceedings on the Commission of the League of Nations, President Wilson telegraphed from Washington to the Peace Commission requesting it to withhold them. He further admitted that the only written report of the discussions in existence was left in Paris, outside the jurisdiction of the United States Senate. When questioned as to whether, in view of this system of concealment, the President's promise of "open covenants openly arrived at" could be said to have been honestly redeemed, Mr. Lansing answered, "I consider that was carried out."[74] It seems highly probable that in the same and only in the same sense will the Treaty and the Covenant be carried out in the spirit or the letter.
During the fateful days of the Conference preventive censorship was practised with a degree of rigor equaled only by its senselessness. As late as the month of June, the columns of the newspapers were checkered with blank spaces. "Scarcely a newspaper in Paris appears uncensored at present," one press organ wrote. "Some papers protest, but protests are in vain."[75]
"Practically not a word as to the nature of the Peace terms that France regards as most vital to her existence appears in the French papers this morning," complained a journal at the time when even the Germans were fully informed of what was being enacted. On one occasion Bonsoir was seized for expressing the view that the Treaty embodied an Anglo-Saxon peace;[76] on another for reproducing an interview with Marshal Foch that had already appeared in a widely circulated Paris newspaper.[77] By way of justifying another of these seizures the French censor alleged that an article in the paper was deemed uncomplimentary to Mr. Lloyd George. The editor replied in a letter to the British Premier affirming that there was nothing in the article but what Mr. Lloyd George could and should be proud of. In fact, it only commended him "for having served the interests of his country most admirably and having had precedence given to them over all others." The letter concluded: "We are apprehensive that in the whole business there is but one thing truly uncomplimentary, and that is that the French censorship, for the purpose of strangling the French press, should employ your name, the name of him who abolished censorship many weeks ago."[78]
Even when British journalists were dealing with matters as unlikely to cause trouble as a description of the historic proceedings at Versailles at which the Germans received the Peace Treaty, the censor held back their messages, from five o'clock in the afternoon till three the next morning.[79] Strange though it may seem, it was at first decided that no newspaper-men should be allowed to witness the formal handing of the Treaty to the enemy delegates! For it was deemed advisable in the interests of the world that even that ceremonial should be secret.[80] These singular methods were impressively illustrated and summarized in a cartoon representing Mr. Wilson as "The new wrestling champion," throwing down his adversary, the press, whose garb, composed of journals, was being scattered in scraps of paper to the floor, and under the picture was the legend: "It is forbidden to publish what Marshal Foch says. It is forbidden to publish what Mr. George thinks. It is forbidden to publish the Treaty of Peace with Germany. It is forbidden to publish what happened at ... and to make sure that nothing else will be published, the censor systematically delays the transmission of every telegram."[81]
In the Chamber the government was adjured to suppress the institution of censorship once the Treaty was signed by the Germans, and Ministers were reminded of the diatribes which they had pronounced against that institution in the years of their ambitions and strivings. In vain Deputies described and deplored the process of demoralization that was being furthered by the methods of the government. "In the provinces as well as in the capital the journals that displease are seized, eavesdroppers listen to telephonic conversations, the secrets of private letters are violated. Arrangements are made that certain telegrams shall arrive too late, and spies are delegated to the most private meetings. At a recent gathering of members of the National Press, two spies were surprised, and another was discovered at the Federation of the Radical Committees of the Oise."[82] But neither the signature of the Treaty nor its ratification by Germany occasioned the slightest modification in the system of restrictions. Paris continued in a state of siege and the censors were the busiest bureaucrats in the capital.
One undesirable result of this régime of keeping the public in the dark and indoctrinating it in the views always narrow, and sometimes mischievous, which the authorities desired it to hold, was that the absurdities which were allowed to appear with the hall-mark of censorship were often believed to emanate directly from the government. Britons and Americans versed in the books of the New Testament were shocked or amused when told that the censor had allowed the following passage to appear in an eloquent speech delivered by the ex-Premier, M. Painlevé: "As Hall Caine, the great American poet, has put it, 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?'"[83]
Every conceivable precaution was taken against the leakage of information respecting what was going on in the Council of Ten. Notwithstanding this, the French papers contrived now and again, during the first couple of months, to publish scraps of news calculated to convey to the public a faint notion of the proceedings, until one day a Nationalist organ boldly announced that the British Premier had disagreed with the expert commission and with his own colleagues on the subject of Dantzig and refused to give way. This paragraph irritated the British statesman, who made a scene at the next meeting of the Council. "There is," he is reported to have exclaimed, "some one among us here who is unmindful of his obligations," and while uttering these and other much stronger words he eyed severely a certain mild individual who is said to have trembled all over during the philippic. He also launched out into a violent diatribe against various French journals which had criticized his views on Poland and his method of carrying them in council, and he went so far as to threaten to have the Conference transferred to a neutral country. In conclusion he demanded an investigation into the origin of the leakage of information and the adoption of severe disciplinary measures against the journalists who published the disclosures.[84] Thenceforward the Council of Ten was suspended and its place taken by a smaller and more secret conclave of Five, Four, or Three, according as the state of the plenipotentiaries' health, the requirements of their home politics, or their relations among themselves caused one or two to quit Paris temporarily.
This measure insured relative secrecy, fostered rumors and gossip, and rendered criticism, whether helpful or captious, impossible. It also drove into outer darkness those Allied states whose interests were described as limited, as though the interests of Italy, whose delegate was nominally one of the privileged five, were not being treated as more limited still. But the point of this last criticism would be blunted if, as some French and Italian observers alleged, the deliberate aim of the "representatives of the twelve million soldiers" was indeed to enable peace to be concluded and the world resettled congruously with the conceptions and in harmony with the interests of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. But the supposition is gratuitous. There was no such deliberate plan. After the establishment of the Council of Five, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Wilson made short work of the reports of the expert commissions whenever these put forward reasoned views differing from their own. In a word, they became the world's supreme and secret arbiters without ceasing to be the official champions of the freedom of the lesser states and of "open covenants openly arrived at." They constituted, so to say, the living synthesis of contradictories.
The Council of Five then was a superlatively secret body. No secretaries were admitted to its gatherings and no official minutes of its proceedings were recorded. Communications were never issued to the press. It resembled a gang of benevolent conspirators, whose debates and resolutions were swallowed up by darkness and mystery. Even the most modest meeting of a provincial taxpayers' association keeps minutes of its discussions. The world parliament kept none. Eschewing traditional usages, as became naïve shapers of the new world, and ignoring history, the Five, Four, or Three shut themselves up in a room, talked informally and disconnectedly without a common principle, program, or method, and separated again without having reached a conclusion. It is said that when one put forth an idea, another would comment upon it, a third might demur, and that sometimes an appeal would be made to geography, history, or ethnography, and as the data were not immediately accessible either competent specialists were sent for or the conversation took another turn. They very naturally refused to allow these desultory proceedings to be put on record, the only concession which they granted to the curiosity of future generations being the fixation of their own physical features by photography and painting. When the sitting was over, therefore, no one could be held to aught that he had said; there was nothing to bind any of the individual delegates to the views he had expressed, nor was there anything to mark the line to which the Council as a whole had advanced. Each one was free to dictate to his secretary his recollections of what had gone on, but as these précis were given from memory they necessarily differed one from the other on various important points. On the following morning, or a few days later, the world's workers would meet again, and either begin at the beginning, traveling over the same familiar field, or else break fresh ground. In this way in one day they are said to have skimmed the problems of Spitzbergen, Morocco, Dantzig, and the feeding of the enemy populations, leaving each problem where they had found it. The moment the discussion of a contentious question approached a climax, the specter of disagreement deterred them from pursuing it to a conclusion, and they passed on quickly to some other question. And when, after months had been spent in these Penelopean labors, definite decisions respecting the peace had to be taken lest the impatient people should rise up and wrest matters into their own hands, the delegates referred the various problems which they had been unable to solve to the wisdom and tact of the future League of Nations.
When misunderstandings arose as to what had been said or done it was the official translator, M. Paul Mantoux—one of the most brilliant representatives of Jewry at the Conference—who was wont to decide, his memory being reputed superlatively tenacious. In this way he attained the distinction of which his friends are justly proud, of being a living record—indeed, the sole available record—of what went on at the historic council. He was the recipient and is now the only repository of all the secrets of which the plenipotentiaries were so jealous, lest, being a kind of knowledge which is in verity power, it should be used one day for some dubious purpose. But M. Mantoux enjoyed the esteem and confidence not only of Mr. Wilson, but also of the British Prime Minister, who, it was generally believed, drew from his entertaining narratives and shrewd appreciations whatever information he possessed about French politics and politicians. It was currently affirmed that, being a man of method and foresight, M. Mantoux committed everything to writing for his own behoof. Doubts, however, were entertained and publicly expressed as to whether affairs of this magnitude, involving the destinies of the world, should have been handled in such secret and unbusiness-like fashion. But on the supposition that the general outcome, if not the preconceived aim, of the policy of the Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries was to confer the beneficent hegemony of the world upon its peoples, there could, it was argued, be no real danger in the procedure followed. For, united, those nations have nothing to fear.
Although the translations were done rapidly, elegantly, and lucidly, allegations were made that they lost somewhat by undue compression and even by the process of toning down, of which the praiseworthy object was to spare delicate susceptibilities. For a limited number of delicate susceptibilities were treated considerately by the Conference. A defective rendering made a curious impression on the hearers once, when a delegate said: "My country, unfortunately, is situated in the midst of states which are anything but peace-loving—in fact, the chief danger to the peace of Europe emanates from them." M. Mantoux's translation ran, "The country represented by M. X. unhappily presents the greatest danger to the peace of Europe."
On several occasions passages of the discourses of the plenipotentiaries underwent a certain transformation in the well-informed brain of M. Mantoux before being done into another language. They were plunged, so to say, in the stream of history before their exposure to the light of day. This was especially the case with the remarks of the English-speaking delegates, some of whom were wont to make extensive use of the license taken by their great national poet in matters of geography and history. One of them, for example, when alluding to the ex-Emperor Franz Josef and his successor, said: "It would be unjust to visit the sins of the father on the head of his innocent son. Charles I should not be made to suffer for Franz Josef." M. Mantoux rendered the sentence, "It would be unjust to visit the sins of the uncle on the innocent nephew," and M. Clemenceau, with a merry twinkle in his eye, remarked to the ready interpreter, "You will lose your job if you go on making these wrong translations."
But those details are interesting, if at all, only as means of eking out a mere sketch which can never become a complete and faithful picture. It was the desire of the eminent lawgivers that the source of the most beneficent reforms chronicled in history should be as well hidden as those of the greatest boon bestowed by Providence upon man. And their motives appear to have been sound enough.
The pains thus taken to create a haze between themselves and the peoples whose implicit confidence they were continuously craving constitute one of the most striking ethico-psychological phenomena of the Conference. They demanded unreasoning faith as well as blind obedience. Any statement, however startling, was expected to carry conviction once it bore the official hall-mark. Take, for example, the demand made by the Supreme Four to Bela Kuhn to desist from his offensive against the Slovaks. The press expressed surprise and disappointment that he, a Bolshevist, should have been invited even hypothetically by the "deadly enemies of Bolshevism" to delegate representatives to the Paris Conference from which the leaders of the Russian constructive elements were excluded. Thereupon the Supreme Four, which had taken the step in secret, had it denied categorically that such an invitation had been issued. The press was put up to state that, far from making such an undignified advance, the Council had asserted its authority and peremptorily summoned the misdemeanant Kuhn to withdraw his troops immediately from Slovakia under heavy pains and penalties.
Subsequently, however, the official correspondence was published, when it was seen that the implicit invitation had really been issued and that the denial ran directly counter to fact. By this exposure the Council of Four, which still sued for the full confidence of their peoples, was somewhat embarrassed. This embarrassment was not allayed when what purported to be a correct explanation of their action was given out and privately circulated by a group which claimed to be initiated. It was summarized as follows: "The Israelite, Bela Kuhn, who is leading Hungary to destruction, has been heartened by the Supreme Council's indulgent message. People are at a loss to understand why, if the Conference believes, as it has asserted, that Bolshevism is the greatest scourge of latter-day humanity, it ordered the Rumanian troops, when nearing Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing it in that stronghold, first to halt, and then to withdraw.[85] The clue to the mystery has at last been found in a secret arrangement between Kuhn and a certain financial group concerning the Banat. About this more will be said later. In one of my own cablegrams to the United States I wrote: "People are everywhere murmuring and whispering that beneath the surface of things powerful undercurrents are flowing which invisibly sway the policy of the secret council, and the public believes that this accounts for the sinister vacillation and delay of which it complains."[86]
In the fragmentary utterances of the governments and their press organs nobody placed the slightest confidence. Their testimony was discredited in advance, on grounds which they were unable to weaken. The following example is at once amusing and instructive. The French Parliamentary Committee of the Budget, having asked the government for communication of the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with finances, were told that their demand could not be entertained, every clause of the Treaty being a state secret. The Committee on Foreign Affairs made a like request, with the same results. The entire Chamber next expressed a similar wish, which elicited a firm refusal. The French Premier, it should be added, alleged a reason which was at least specious. "I should much like," he said, "to communicate to you the text you ask for, but I may not do so until it has been signed by the President of the Republic. For such is the law as embodied in Article 8 of the Constitution." Now nobody believed that this was the true ground for his refusal. His explanation, however, was construed as a courteous conventionality, and as such was accepted. But once alleged, the fiction should have been respected, at any rate by its authors. It was not. A few weeks later the Premier ordered the publication of the text of the Treaty, although, in the meantime, it had not been signed by M. Poincaré. "The excuse founded upon Article 8 was, therefore, a mere humbug," flippantly wrote an influential journal.[87]
An amusing joke, which tickled all Paris was perpetrated shortly afterward. The editor of the Bonsoir imported six hundred copies of the forbidden Treaty from Switzerland, and sent them as a present to the Deputies of the Chamber, whereupon the parliamentary authorities posted up a notice informing all Deputies who desired a copy to call at the questor's office, where they would receive it gratuitously as a present from the Bonsoir. Accordingly the Deputies, including the Speaker, Deschanel, thronged to the questor's office. Even solemn-faced Ministers received a copy of the thick volume which I possessed ever since the day it was issued.
Another glaring instance of the lack of straightforwardness which vitiated the dealings of the Conference with the public turned upon the Bullitt mission to Russia. Mr. Wilson, who in the depths of his heart seems to have cherished a vague fondness for the Bolshevists there, which he sometimes manifested in utterances that startled the foreigners to whom they were addressed, despatched through Colonel House some fellow-countrymen of his to Moscow to ask for peace proposals which, according to the Moscow government, were drafted by himself and Messrs. House and Lansing. Mr. Bullitt, however, who must know, affirms that the draft was written by Mr. Lloyd George's secretary, Mr. Philip Kerr, and himself and presented to Lenin by Messrs. Bullitt, Steffins, and Petit. If the terms of this document should prove acceptable the American envoys were empowered to promise that an official invitation to a new peace conference would be sent to them as well as to their opponents by April 15th. The conditions—eleven in number—with a few slight modifications in which the Americans acquiesced—were accepted by the dictator, who was bound, however, not to permit their publication. The facts remained secret until Mr. Bullitt, thrown over by Mr. Wilson, who recoiled from taking the final and decisive step, resigned, and in a letter reproduced by the press set forth the reasons for his decision.[88]
Now, vague reports that there was such a mission had found its way into the Paris newspapers at a relatively early date. But an authoritative denial was published without delay. The statement, the public was assured, was without foundation. And the public believed the assurance, for it was confirmed authoritatively in England. Sir Samuel Hoare, in the House of Commons, asked for information about a report that "two Americans have recently returned from Russia bringing offers of peace from Lenin," and received from Mr. Bonar Law this noteworthy reply: "I have said already that there is not the shadow of foundation for this information, otherwise I would have known it. Moreover, I have communicated with Mr. Lloyd George in Paris, who also declares that he knows nothing about the matter."[89] E pur si muove. Mr. Lloyd George knew nothing about President Wilson's determination to have the Covenant inserted in the Peace Treaty, even after the announcement was published to the world by the Havas Agency, and the confirmation given to pressmen by Lord Robert Cecil. The system of reticence and concealment, coupled with the indifference of this or that delegation to questions in which it happened to take no special interest, led to these unseemly air-tight compartments.
From this rank soil of secrecy, repression, and unveracity sprang noxious weeds. False reports and mendacious insinuations were launched, spread, and credited, impairing such prestige as the Conference still enjoyed, while the fragmentary announcements ventured on now and again by the delegates, in sheer self-defense, were summarily dismissed as "eye-wash" for the public.
For a time the disharmony between words and deeds passed unnoticed by the bulk of the masses, who were edified by the one and unacquainted with the other. But gradually the lack of consistency in policy and of manly straightforwardness and moral wholeness in method became apparent to all and produced untoward consequences. Mr. Wilson, whose authority and influence were supposed to be paramount, came in for the lion's share of criticism, except in the Polish policy of the Conference, which was traced to Mr. Lloyd George and his unofficial prompters. The American press was the most censorious of all. One American journal appearing in Paris gave utterance to the following comments on the President's rôle:[90]