From the moment of its signature, the Treaty of Versailles had “a bad press” throughout the world. Ratification by the parliaments of most of the contracting nations seemed assured, but in no country did those who favored ratification support their case by any other argument than that of expediency. It was an inadequate treaty, disappointing along practical as well as idealistic lines, its supporters admitted; but what else was there to do than to make it, imperfect as it was, the foundation of peace? After all, the compromises among the Entente Powers left them with substantial gains; and Belgium and Poland were decidedly the winners. The weak features of the treaty could be remedied in later conferences. And yet, despite the reasonableness of this argument, to all nations that participated in the conference except Great Britain and China it was a problem, what attitude they should adopt toward the Treaty of Versailles.

China solved the problem by not accepting the treaty at all. Her delegates refused to sign the document that put millions of their fellow-citizens of the sacred and historic province of Shantung into the hands of Japan. At the command of the President of the United States, the American Minister to China had formally invited the Chinese to participate in the World War for the triumph of certain definite principles which had been clearly set forth in detail by the President, who said he spoke on behalf of the American people. Believing in President Wilson’s good faith, the Chinese came into the war. When they discovered that in the councils of the Big Four their confidence had been betrayed, they would have nothing to do with the Treaty of Versailles. In his spectacular trip west to defend the treaty, when it was before the Senate, President Wilson tried to explain away the Shantung arrangements. But he could not do it to the satisfaction of China.

The British Parliament ratified the treaty without debate. Naturally. For, like the Treaty of Vienna a hundred years earlier, it added greatly to Great Britain’s already overwhelming world power. The continental powers were weak and disrupted, incapable of threatening in the near future “the peace of the world” as Downing Street understands that term; that is, of contesting with the mistress of the seas extra-European markets and intercontinental carrying-trade. German naval power was destroyed. German colonial and commercial ambitions had received a serious setback. Russia was no longer a menace to British supremacy in Asia. The Treaty of Versailles established new safeguards to India by recognizing the British protectorate over Egypt, by ignoring the plea of Persia to be a signatory or at least a beneficiary of the treaty, by making no provision for the future of Asiatic and Transcaucasian Russia, and by giving international sanction to British secret treaties, no matter what unknown provisions those treaties might contain. It made Great Britain the dominant power in Africa. It accepted the right of the British cabinet to speak, and sign, for the 300,000,000 inhabitants of India. Above all, it provided that the United States should underwrite the aggrandized British Empire, with a self-governing population of only 60,000,000, by entering a League of Nations in which the British were to have six votes and the United States, with its self-governing population of 100,000,000, one vote. It was not until later that British public opinion began to realize the danger of a weak Germany in Europe—the danger to prosperity, through disorganization of trade, and the danger to security, through the looming up of another would-be dominant power in Europe.

The Treaty of Versailles was subject to long and penetrating criticism in the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Clear-headed and far-sighted men did not cease to protest against the treaty on the same ground as American senators: (1) fear that national interests had been sacrificed to questionable international advantages; (2) uncertainty as to the adequacy of the means of enforcing the provisions in the treaty; (3) dissatisfaction with the League of Nations Covenant as it stood in the treaty; (4) doubt as to the wisdom of having incorporated in one document the solution of two different questions, imposing peace upon Germany and setting up the machinery of a new world order.

During the Conference of Paris I had the privilege of coming into intimate contact with all classes of Frenchmen. They did not deceive themselves. They knew well enough where they would have been after a few months of war, had they been facing Germany alone. Now that Germany was temporarily disabled, they wanted either a free hand to take strategic precautions against a renewal of German aggression, which meant the Rhine frontier, or a new defensive alliance in place of the Russian alliance. They had no faith whatever in the League of Nations. M. Clemenceau had been persuaded to give up the Rhine frontier in exchange for an agreement by the terms of which Great Britain and the United States were to come to the aid of France in case of German aggression. At the best, owing to the geographical position of the new proposed defenders, the Anglo-American guarantee was not a very certain one. After the American Senate began to attack Article X of the League of Nations Covenant, the French saw that they had been deceived. The Anglo-American guarantee was an illusion. The Treaty of Versailles, in itself, provided no permanent security for France.

In Belgium I found ratification of the treaty regarded as a painful necessity. There was no enthusiasm for it, and no hope that a new order would be born of it. The prime ministers of Greece and Rumania told me that the Versailles Treaty could not be pronounced either good or bad by their countries until the other treaties with enemy countries were included. But they both felt that not peace but a series of new wars was likely to be the result of the secret pourparlers among the Big Four that gave birth to the Treaty of Versailles. The minister of foreign affairs of another small nation expressed to me his belief that the incorporation of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles killed the League’s chances of success.

“How could international machinery for righting injustice and establishing a new international morality belong in a document that furnishes numerous instances of just the sort of thing the League of Nations was created to abolish?” he cried. I can see him now as he walked up and down the room, shaking both arms with elbows bended, and saying, “Pooling of interests, renunciation of special privileges, refusal to transfer territories from one sovereignty to another without consulting their inhabitants, recognition of the right of self-determination—bah! bah! BAH!” The poor man had just been shown a draft of the clauses relating to his country that were to be put into the Treaty of St.-Germain.

The statesmen of most of the smaller countries, including the neutrals invited to become charter members of the League, were afraid that the inclusion of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles would make their position in this organization embarrassing. For Mr. Wilson had succeeded in his determination to connect the league inextricably with the treaty. Here was a punitive treaty, imposed upon a defeated nation, which gave great advantages to a few countries. But many countries—in fact, almost all the countries of the world—were supposed to join in the responsibility of enforcing the Treaty of Versailles, in whose advantages and loot they were not sharing. Some of them had not even been enemies of Germany. Several of them, like Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland, had common boundaries with Germany and did most of their business with her. Others, like Sweden, Finland, and Lithuania, not only had closer cultural relations with Germany than with the Entente Powers, but also were vitally interested in not having Germany remain in the position of economic serfdom to which the Treaty of Versailles doomed her. When the draft treaty was published, the press in all the countries neighboring on Germany, which for the most part had been unsympathetic or even actually hostile during the war, pronounced its terms impracticable and war-breeding.

In Italy the spirit of revolt against the League of Nations and a punitive treaty imposed upon Germany had begun before the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Signor Orlando was replaced in the premiership by Signor Nitti while the Germans were still debating whether they should sign or not. Italian public opinion was inflamed over the injustice of denying to Italy “sacred treaty rights,” when Japan and Poland and France (there was much talk in Italy about the Saar Valley) were granted territorial gains in defiance of the principle of self-determination. But Italy could not have Fiume! And yet the British could have Egypt! Italian newspapers declared that Italy was coming out at the small end of the horn. The Treaty of Versailles recognized and guaranteed in every way all British demands and selfish interests, and in almost every way French demands and selfish interests. What Japan wanted she got in defiance of Wilsonian principles. Why should Italy ratify a treaty so much to the advantage of the other Entente nations before she was sure that the Treaty of St.-Germain and the other treaties were going to give her as much loot as Great Britain, France, and Japan received from the Treaty of Versailles?

Japan was profoundly dissatisfied. It was certain that the United States, put into a hole by Mr. Wilson’s compromise, would try to wring a definite promise of restitution of Shantung to China, with a date set. But the Japanese people did not attach vital importance to the Shantung clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. They blamed their negotiators for not having made the promise of willingness to give Shantung back to China contingent upon the surrender by European Powers of footholds, concessions, and special economic and political privileges in China. What was good for the goose was good for the gander. If there was to be an open door in China, said the Japanese press, let it be really open. Morally speaking, the Treaty of Versailles, with its emasculated League of Nations Covenant, was a deception to the Japanese. They suffered in their pride by our refusal to recognize racial equality. But the worst feature of the Treaty of Versailles was the continued mortgaging it consecrated of the colonizable areas of the world by the white race. They had little hope that the League of Nations, as it was conceived in the treaty, would bring about a world-wide state of peace. For it begged the question of recognizing the world-wide rights of peoples to reciprocal and equal privileges and opportunities. The whole spirit of the Treaty of Versailles made the Japanese feel that Asiatic peoples would never get a square deal without fighting Europe for it.

Among Latin American delegates at Paris two strong currents were battling for mastery. Ought the Treaty of Versailles, giving birth to the League of Nations, to be welcomed in Central and South America and the West Indies as the document by which the other states of the western hemisphere were emancipated from Yankee overlordship? Or ought the Latin-American republics to fear the abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine by their entry into a world federation built upon European ideals and European atmosphere?

The League might prove a means of resisting Yankee imperialism. On the other hand, it might open the doors to something worse. The transplanting to America of the doctrine of European eminent domain would be deadly to the self-respect and prosperity of weak non-European nations. A distinguished South American jurist said to me at Paris: “I think you do not need to be worried about our taking this League of Nations business too seriously. For the first time in my life, since I have been sitting in this conference, I have been made to feel that I represent what Kipling calls the ‘lesser breeds without the law.’ It frightens me!”

The modified form of Article XXI of the Covenant, inserted to preserve the Monroe Doctrine, was an ambiguous sop thrown to American public opinion to quiet the apprehensions born of our traditional instincts.6 The belief, expressed several times by President Wilson in his speeches justifying the Treaty of Versailles, that the United States would have the leadership in the League was not shared by the representatives of Latin America. They could not take home with them any such curious notion. For they saw how the United States, with all the personal prestige of Mr. Wilson, had no real influence in the conference. Proof of this statement will be found in comparing Mr. Wilson’s war speeches with the Treaty of Versailles. Had we reason to think that our influence, after our army was disbanded and we were sitting at Geneva, would be greater than immediately after a victory won because of our aid? If the Treaty of Versailles was the result of what American prestige at its zenith was able to accomplish in leading the world morally, how could any thinking man suppose that we were going to lead the world along paths of peace in later years?

It was never true that the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles without reservation by the United States would have brought peace to Europe. It was never true that “the heart of the world” was yearning for the kind of a League of Nations that was established by the Treaty of Versailles. Our associates in the World War were eager to have a real ally in the United States, whose continued military and financial support would have enabled them to put into execution the Treaty of Versailles. For our moral leadership they cared nothing. They were not thinking about being “morally led” by any one.

General Sir Ian Hamilton, in the Manchester “Guardian” and the historian, Signor G. Ferrero, in the Rome “Secolo,” have pointed out the fallacy of considering the League of Nations of the Versailles Treaty a bona fide effort toward international organization and coöperation. General Hamilton believes that “the abstention of the United States is less damaging to the decisions of the so-called League of Nations than the exclusion of Germany; what Europe should have quickly is a true League of European nations, where a German can state his case and then cast his vote.” Signor Ferrero is of the opinion that the present League of Nations is doomed because of its partizan character, which its connection with the Treaty of Versailles makes it impossible to shake off. Signor Ferrero writes:

The Treaty of Versailles subjects Germany to the collective protectorate of Italy, France, and England. To imagine that the nation which, up to November, 1918, was the most powerful in the world may be thrust over night under the guardianship of three powers, each weaker than itself, is to imagine not along the lines of political realism, but of political futurism. The truth of this statement is apparent in the fact that four years after the armistice France and Belgium are caught in the snarl of this impossible protectorate and involved in coercive measures that will ruin Germany without saving her enemies.

It was a sad and startling fact that the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and the merits of the proposed League of Nations became a party question immediately after the return of Mr. Wilson. Administration and anti-administration forces were pitted against each other in the Senate. Most senators voted on party lines. The Republican opponents of unreserved ratification and advocates of rejection charged that the obligations imposed upon us by the treaty were incompatible with the Constitution. President Wilson answered that the Republicans were Bolshevists, narrow-minded, out of tune with the world of to-day, contemptible quitters, German sympathizers, betrayers of the trust put in them by our soldiers, provokers of new wars to draw our boys across seas, and unconscious but none the less responsible agents of Armenian massacres, who should be “hanged high as Haman.” Denouncing the Senate for performing its duty under the Constitution; imputing unworthy motives to every senator who did not show an inclination to accept the treaty without examination, discussion, or investigation; ridiculing the members of our upper house; threatening or attempting to influence them by an appeal to their constituents; insinuating that opponents of immediate and unqualified ratification were pro-German—all this campaign of passion detracted singularly from the solemnity and spirit of earnestness that should have surrounded the choice of the people of the United States to abandon or to preserve unbroken the traditions that had been maintained since the birth of the republic.

Of course treaty ratification became the issue in the Presidential Campaign a year later. President Wilson announced that the election of 1920 should be a solemn referendum. The result was an overwhelming victory for the Republican party, despite the efforts of some eminent Republicans to defend the League of Nations. The new Congress terminated war with Germany and Austria by resolution, which was signed by President Harding on July 2, 1921. Six weeks later a brief peace treaty was signed in Berlin, in which Germany agreed to give the United States all the rights and advantages stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles, with the exception of certain portions specifically mentioned as excluded at the volition of the United States. The repudiated portions were: the Covenant of the League of Nations; the boundaries of Germany; the political clauses for Europe; the sections concerning German rights outside Germany, with the exception of the cession of the German colonies “in favor of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers”; and the provisions concerning the organization of labor. By these omissions the United States dissociated itself from the other signatories of the treaty in regard to the responsibility of the war, the trial of war criminals, and the guarantees for the fulfilment of the treaty. The right was reserved to be represented on the Reparations Commission or any other commission established under the Treaty of Versailles. But “the United States is not bound to participate in any such commission unless it shall elect to do so.”

The defection of the United States was an accepted fact in Paris when the Senate failed to ratify the treaty in November, 1919, a year before the presidential election put the stamp of popular approval upon this action. So when the Peace Conference broke up the United States was already counted out of European affairs. We did not enter at all into the other treaties.

There were three serious consequences of the failure of the United States to ratify the Treaty of Versailles: destroying the authority of the treaty as the basis of a new political and economic order; reducing the League of Nations to impotence as a tool of the Entente Powers; and making the French people realize that the Anglo-American guarantee of security, proposed as the alternative to the Rhine frontier, was worthless. Of the Rhine frontier we shall speak in a later chapter; for the problem of the security of France has dominated all other considerations in post-bellum Europe. At this point we have only to consider the effect upon public opinion throughout the world of the abstention of the United States from any part in enforcing the Treaty of Versailles.

The war could not have been won without the aid of the United States. The treaty could not have been imposed upon Germany without the aid of the United States. Could the treaty be enforced without the aid of the United States? Thinking men everywhere realized that the logical result of the failure of the American Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles would be the scrapping of the treaty. British public opinion, which had begun to turn against the treaty because of its heavy responsibilities and its supposed connection with British unemployment, clamored for revision of the treaty and the League, drastically if need be, in order to get the United States back into European affairs. French public opinion demanded that the French Government be prepared to use its army to collect reparations and destroy the unity of Germany, a policy which should end in a new treaty, directly between France and Germany, in which France was to dictate the terms mistakenly abandoned or modified during the Paris Conference.