FOOTNOTES:
[2] Webster, The Congress of Vienna, p. 93.
[3] Was von der Entente übrig bliebe wenn sie Ernst machte mit dem “Selbstbestimmungsrecht” (Berlin, D. Reimer).
[4] Atlantic Monthly, xc, pp. 728, 731 (1902).
[5] Keynes, Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 265.
[6] Dillon, The Inside History of the Peace Conference, p. 151.
[7] Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, pp. 30-32. M. Mantoux asserts that Mr. Keynes never attended a regular session of the Council of Four. London Times, February 14, 1920.
II
BELGIUM AND DENMARK
Our examination of the specific territorial problems of the Conference may most conveniently begin with the simplest, the frontier between Germany and Denmark. This had been established by force of arms when Schleswig was taken from Denmark in 1864, while a promise made in 1866 to consult the population had never been fulfilled. Only at the close of the World War did an opportunity come to fix the boundary in accordance with the will of the inhabitants. The duty of the Conference was to provide the means of giving effect to their desires.
The territory of the former duchy of Schleswig comprises the portion of the peninsula of Jutland lying between the Danish frontier on the north and the River Eider and the Kiel Canal on the south. Called by the Danes South Jutland (Sönderjylland), it is similar in most respects to Denmark, being chiefly agricultural, with a fishing population on the Frisian islands to the west and a considerable shipping industry in its principal town, Flensburg, a town of 63,000 at the head of the Flensburg fiord. The region has an area of 3385 square miles, and 474,355 inhabitants, not far from twice the extent and population of the state of Delaware. About one-third of the people speak Danish; these are chiefly in the northern portion of the province. The rest, save for an isolated group of Frisians on the west coast, speak German.
The earlier history of Schleswig would take us into the tangled history of the Schleswig-Holstein question, which is for present purposes unnecessary. Suffice it to say that, whatever the previous rights of the king of Denmark may have been, the attempt to unite the duchy of Schleswig fully to the kingdom of Denmark by the constitution of 1863 led in the following year to war with Austria and Prussia and to the defeat of Denmark, whose king, by the treaty of Vienna, renounced all rights over Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. In 1866, at the conclusion of the war between Austria and Prussia, the treaty of Prague transferred the rights of Austria to the king of Prussia, with the reservation that the “inhabitants of North Schleswig shall be again reunited with Denmark if they should express such a desire in a vote freely given.” Nothing could be clearer, and nothing more ineffective, for the article was contained in a treaty between two powers neither of which had the slightest interest in the performance of the obligation. As a matter of fact, the provision had been suggested by Napoleon III, but the interested parties, Denmark and the inhabitants of the district, were not put in a position to secure its execution. Bismarck, who seems at first to have expected a referendum, maintained in 1867 that the people as Prussian subjects had no right to demand it, the only right to such a demand resting with the emperor of Austria. Prussia made no effort to put the article into effect, and in 1878 it was abrogated by agreement with Austria.
So, since 1864, Schleswig has been under Prussian rule, and since 1867 an integral part of the kingdom of Prussia. Once probably wholly Danish, it had been subject for centuries to penetration from the south, and by this time possessed a large German element which henceforth had the active support of the Prussian government. The history of the attempt to Germanize Schleswig is, on a smaller scale, much the same as the history of the Germanization of Prussian Poland. Efforts at replacement of the population by Germans had little success, but the spread of German culture and the suppression of Danish culture were everywhere steadily pushed. German was made compulsory in the schools, the courts, and the churches; Danish was put under the ban in public meetings and theatres; and the Danish press and Danish societies were subjected to various forms of persecution. Intercourse with Denmark was in various ways restricted or made difficult. Constant war was waged against the Danish flag, and even against dresses which displayed the red and white colors of Denmark. It was even said that the owner of a white dog was obliged to repaint his red kennel! The regular agents of Prussian policy were omnipresent: the police, the pastor, and the schoolmaster. The officers’ duty was chiefly negative, the suppression of Danish tendencies; the schoolmaster’s was more positive, to instil Germanism into the rising generation, partly by teaching only in the German language save for a small amount of religious instruction, partly by the well known propagandist methods of German history and patriotic songs. Thus all were compelled to sing, “Ich bin ein Preusse, will ein Preusse sein”; and if a little girl should say, “Ich bin kein Preusse, will kein Preusse sein,” she was whipped and sent home.
Inevitably the zone of German speech crept gradually northward. In some villages of central Schleswig which spoke only Danish half a century ago, it is said that the language has disappeared save among the very old. Still the process of Germanization was slow, and as time went on active resistance was organized in the three great societies of the Language Union, the School Union, and the Voters’ Union. Leaders found in Denmark the Danish education which was forbidden them at home, and kept alive a strong tradition of Danish speech and Danish sympathies. A local political party was maintained, and the Danish vote increased after 1886, although under the German gerrymander of 1867 it was still allowed to return only one member of the Reichstag, and that in the extreme north. Treasonable acts were in general avoided, but the hope of reunion with Denmark was never entirely lost.
The fortunes of the World War gave at first but little hope to the pro-Danish Schleswigers. They served in the German army up to their full capacity; probably, as is stated, their losses were proportionately greater than those among purely German troops. If they were not fighting their own kin and friends, like the soldiers of Alsace-Lorraine, they were at least fighting in another’s cause. Denmark, too, walked warily during the war, with the fate of other small nations ever before her eyes and the profits of German friendship dangled in front of her. It was no time for Schleswig to look for help in this quarter. With the armistice, matters took on a new aspect. Foreseeing that the Schleswig question would be raised at the peace table, Germany proposed a separate arrangement with Denmark, and it was some time before Denmark readjusted her policy to correspond to a world in which the victorious Allies were able to impose terms on a defeated Germany. Even then the readjustment was incomplete. Germany might become powerful again, and Denmark must beware, so many thought, of laying up vengeance for the future by acquiring territory which Germany might demand back. In many quarters there seemed to be genuine terror lest the Allies might impose territory and obligations upon an unwilling Denmark. A natural hesitation over absorbing alien elements was accompanied by a fear lest many new voters might upset the party balance in a small country. In determining the future of Schleswig, it appeared that the timidity of Denmark was to have its weight, as well as the hopes of the population. The Radical party, then in power, wished only limited accessions of population in the region of North Schleswig; while the Conservatives favored a more decided policy extending into southern Schleswig, though few went so far as to demand outright the ancient frontier of the Eider or even the old rampart of the Dannevirke.
No mention had been made of Schleswig in President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but a just determination of the question was promised by him in a letter to certain Danish-Americans just after the armistice (November 21). Diplomatic conversations had indeed already begun, and February 21 the Danish government formally placed the matter before the Peace Conference in an exposé made to the Council of Ten by its minister in Paris, Chamberlain Bernhoft. It asked for a plebiscite as soon as possible in the region of unquestioned Danish speech north of a line stretching west from the head of the Flensburg fiord to the north of the island of Sylt in the North Sea, a line which had been demanded, November 17, 1918, by the North Schleswig Voters’ Union at Aabenraa. By February sentiment was ready to ask for a plebiscite also in a zone to the south, which included Flensburg and certain adjacent territory. In order that all possibilities of pressure might be removed, the evacuation of German troops and German higher officials was requested in a considerable strip of territory farther south.
The commission to which the Conference referred the Schleswig problem heard delegates from the different parts of the territory, as well as reports of the various points of view in Denmark. The commission saw no reason why the right of voting should be refused to any part of the region to be evacuated, though it was plain that some judgment would need to be used in drawing a frontier upon the basis of the voting, so as to avoid enclaves and inconvenient meanderings. Definite evidence was before it of a desire to vote on the part of many persons in south Schleswig. Accordingly its report, incorporated in the draft treaty submitted to the Germans in May, provided for a plebiscite by three zones, so that the frontier between Germany and Denmark might be fixed in conformity with the wishes of the population. In the first or northernmost zone, where the voting was supposed to be largely a matter of form, the plebiscite was to take place for the whole district within three weeks of the German evacuation. In the second zone of mixed speech in middle Schleswig, where opinion was likely to vary in different districts and to be affected somewhat by the result in the first zone, the voting was to occur not more than five weeks later and to be taken commune by commune. The same method was to be applied two weeks thereafter in the third zone, which comprised the remainder of the evacuated territory extending to the Eider and the Schlei, a region of predominantly German speech, where the Danish tradition had been greatly weakened in course of time and where the people would likewise want to know the result in the neighboring zone to the northward. Within ten days of the coming into force of the treaty German troops and higher officials were to evacuate the whole territory north of the Eider and the Schlei, and the administration was to be carried on by an International Commission of five, one appointed by Norway, one by Sweden, and three by the Allied and Associated Powers. This commission was to hold the plebiscites in accordance with provisions which had been suggested by the Danish government; and upon the result of the voting, with due regard to geographic and economic conditions, recommend a permanent boundary to the Allied and Associated Powers. The whole plan was carefully drawn to secure as full and free an expression as possible of the desires of the population.
Opposition came from two sources. The German criticisms, as handed in to the Conference in May, had little weight. They proposed to limit the voting, and hence any possible loss of German territory, to a portion of the first zone, on the ground that only there did more than half of the population speak Danish. Apart from the fact that this affirmation was based on the official language statistics of the Prussian census, which was notoriously unfavorable to non-German elements, the proposal started from two inadmissible assumptions: one that language is the sole test of political sympathy; the other that no region where Germans were in a majority should be allowed self-determination, for, it was implicitly believed, no German could possibly want to leave the Fatherland. Germany thus sought to prevent free expression of opinion where it might turn to Germany’s disadvantage, at the very moment she clamored for it in Upper Silesia, where it might possibly turn out in her favor. How Germany hoped to control the plebiscite appeared from another proposal, namely that, all German officials still remaining in the country, the administration and the voting should be in charge of a commission of Germans and Danes, with a Swedish chairman!
The Danish objection, as voiced by the majority Radicals, was against the inclusion of the third zone in the voting. The reason most generally given was that districts in this zone might vote for Denmark from purely economic motives, especially the desire to escape German war taxes and war indemnities, and thus form an irredentist minority in a country with which they were not really in sympathy. Probably also there was still the lurking fear of the powerful neighbor of the past and the future, as well as some measure of friendliness for the new regime in Germany.
To such arguments the Conference yielded, cutting out of the final treaty the plebiscite in the third zone and its evacuation as well. The change was made at the last moment, without readjustment of the other provisions, so that this section of the treaty shows certain signs of haste. The effect was to take away all opportunity for self-determination in the third zone and to leave the German troops and administration here in a position to exert pressure on the region to the northward.[8]
The vote in the first zone, held February 10, 1920, resulted in a decisive Danish majority of three to one, and led to occupation by Denmark, as the treaty had provided. Feeling ran high in the second zone, where the German government sought to influence the decision by threats in the Reichstag; the struggle centred around Flensburg, certain in either event to be a frontier town now that the third zone had been eliminated. The plebiscite, held March 14, resulted decisively for Germany, the vote in Flensburg being overwhelming and only a few scattered villages on the islands voting for Denmark. The result failed to satisfy either party entirely, a large Danish group still wanting Flensburg, while in the first zone the Germans wished to recover Tönder, where the voting had favored Germany. Indeed it remains to be seen whether German hopes of recovery will be limited to Tönder.
One question of which Denmark and the Schleswigers showed great desire to keep clear was the Kiel Canal. Even the widest limit of evacuation proposed carefully left a belt of Schleswig territory between its southern border and the canal, lest what was fundamentally a question of popular rights might become complicated with a wholly distinct international problem. Only in case of the internationalization of the canal would its fate have reacted on the Schleswig problem by leaving an isolated strip of German territory to the north which might then have been separated from Germany and attached to the adjacent Danish territory. Whatever might have been said for the internationalization of this great waterway, the question was not seriously considered at the Conference. The parallel to Suez and Panama was too close! The treaty leaves the canal under German control, but provides that it shall be open on terms of entire equality to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations at peace with Germany.[9]
The island of Heligoland, which England had seized from Denmark in 1807 and ceded to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar in 1890, is not restored to either of its former owners. Instead it is stipulated that all fortifications and harbor works there shall be destroyed by German labor and at Germany’s expense, and that no similar works shall be constructed in the future.[10] Immunity for the future might do something to offset the great price which England had paid for Zanzibar throughout the World War.
The case of Belgium at the Peace Conference was widely different from that of Denmark. Denmark had remained neutral; her neutrality had been respected by others, and had even been a source of commercial profit; and at the end of the war, without the slightest effort on her part, she saw all her desires gratified in Schleswig. Indeed, her only fear was lest she should receive more territory than she wanted. The neutrality of Belgium, specially guaranteed by an international treaty, and thus far more binding on her neighbors than that of Denmark, had been violated by Germany at the very outbreak of the war. Belgium had suffered more than four years of German occupation, including the systematic spoliation of her farms, her factories, and her railroads, and the deliberate attempt to divide her people into two separate Walloon and Flemish states; she had barely escaped permanent incorporation with Germany. Yet all this time she had fought as best she could beside the Allies; she had made heavy sacrifices; she had stood for international right. Belgium expected much from the peace, and Belgium was in large measure disappointed.
Belgium was disappointed on the economic side, for she was flooded with depreciated German currency which the Allies did not take over, and her hopes for full priority on the account of restoration and reparation were not entirely fulfilled. Indeed, it soon became apparent that the general bill for reparation would far exceed the ability of Germany to pay, and that there were not resources enough in all Germany to meet that restoration of invaded territory upon which President Wilson had declared “the whole world was agreed.” Belgium had suffered less than France by the destruction of war itself, for her territory, save in the case of the Meuse fortresses and the battle zone in Flanders, had not been fought over; but the German occupation which she had borne in equal measure was relatively far more serious, for it affected the whole country and not merely a part, and it produced stagnation of industry and cessation of commerce on a scale that destroyed enterprise and left idleness as well as poverty in its stead.
In territorial matters Belgium’s desires, save for a small correction of the German frontier, concerned neutral powers, Holland and Luxemburg, which were not members of the Peace Conference and not subject to its jurisdiction. The most that the Conference could do was to help in the adjustment of Belgium’s claims, and Belgium feels strongly that the Conference did not help enough.
Finally, Belgium was dissatisfied with her whole position at the Conference. During the war she had acted as one of the Allies and had her representation in the Allied councils. At Paris she was only a small power, limited to three delegates—at first even to two—and excluded from the guiding and deciding group of the Five Great Powers. Even the decisions which directly concerned her were taken by the Council of Ten or the Council of Four. She was outside, while Italy and Japan were inside. Individually her delegates sat on important committees, but there were times when Belgium must have felt far removed from the central tasks of the Conference, in the outer limbo occupied by Liberia, Panama, and Siam. A Belgian told the story of an officer who had lost both legs. “You will always be a hero,” said a consoling friend. “No,” replied the officer, “I shall be a hero for a year and a cripple for the rest of my life.” Belgium felt that the days of her position as a hero were over. You will recall Mr. Dooley on Lieutenant Hobson: “I’m a hero,” said the Lieutenant. “Are ye, faith?” said Admiral Dewey, “Well, I can’t do anything f’r ye in that line. All th’ hero jobs on this boat is compitintly filled be mesilf.”
Let us call to mind so much of Belgium’s history as is necessary to approach her modern problems. Belgium as a separate and independent state has existed only since 1830, but her national history goes back into the Middle Ages. Easy of access from both the Rhine and the north of France, the territory of modern Belgium has always been a highroad of peoples, for migration, commerce, and war, and the natural meeting-point of races and civilizations from north and south. It formed a part of the great middle kingdom created between France and Germany by the partition of the Frankish empire in the ninth century, and with the break-up of the middle kingdom it became a natural object of ambition from both sides. The various feudal principalities which shared this territory in the Middle Ages divided their allegiance between the king of France and the German emperor; and it was not till the fifteenth century that the rise of a new middle kingdom under the dukes of Burgundy brought the region of the Netherlands, northern as well as southern, under a single hand and made them for practical purposes independent of France and Germany. Enlarged toward the east by the Emperor Charles V in the sixteenth century, the territories of the Netherlands comprised seventeen provinces and included substantially what is now Holland and Belgium.
By the marriage of Mary, heiress of Burgundy, to Maximilian of Austria in 1477 the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands passed to the house of Hapsburg, and thus to their grandson, the Emperor Charles V. Upon the division of his possessions in 1556 they went with Spain to the so-called Spanish branch of the family, represented by Philip II. Religious and political reasons led to the great revolt against Philip II in 1568, a movement in which the whole seventeen provinces joined. The skilful policy of Philip’s general, Alexander Farnese, succeeded in detaching the southern provinces, which had remained for the most part Catholic, from the Protestant, or United, Netherlands of the north, and from 1579 on the southern provinces led a separate existence under Spanish rule, being generally known as the Spanish Netherlands. In this period they lost considerable territory on the north to the Dutch and on the south to the French.
Upon the division of the Spanish dominions by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the Spanish Netherlands were in the following year transferred to Austria, and were known as the Austrian Netherlands until their conquest by the armies of the French Revolution in 1794. They were then incorporated with France (1795) and organized into nine departments, a state of affairs which lasted until 1814.
By the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the northern and the southern Netherlands were reunited, under the rule of a king of the house of Nassau. After a separation of one hundred and thirty-five years the union proved unsatisfactory to the southern population. Marked differences of religion, economic interest, and language produced friction from the start, which was aggravated by the exclusive policy of the Dutch, who, though a minority, monopolized the higher offices and enforced the use of the Dutch language. The revolutionary movement of 1830 kindled a revolt in the southern provinces, and a separate government was organized under a constitutional monarch, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. The separation was declared “final and irrevocable” by a convention of representatives of the five Great Powers meeting in London in 1831, and the treaty was accepted by Holland in 1839. The boundaries of the new kingdom were, as we shall see, drawn in a manner quite unsatisfactory to the Belgians.
The treaty of 1839 guaranteed the independence and the neutrality of Belgium, while at the same time it placed restrictions on the new state. By Article VII it was provided that
Belgium ... shall form an independent and perpetually neutral state. It shall be bound to observe the same neutrality toward all other states.
It will thus be seen that, while the roots of Belgian nationality lie deep in the past, the modern state was established in a somewhat artificial form, its boundaries drawn and its international status fixed by the Powers, not by Belgium itself. Its frontiers are in no direction ‘natural’ frontiers. At the same time Belgium is dependent in the closest way upon the outside world. It possesses the densest population of any country in Europe—the same number of inhabitants as the state of Pennsylvania, with one-fourth the area. In spite of a highly intensive cultivation, the soil is unable to produce sufficient food, so that sixty per cent of the consumption of cereals is imported. For this large importation Belgium is unable to pay in minerals, its only considerable underground resource being coal, of which there has been no surplus for export since 1910. It must consequently pay for its imports by exports of manufactured products, for which the raw materials are likewise for the most part imported.
Belgium is thus a highly industrialized country, with a large manufacturing population. Its principal industries are iron furnaces and rolling mills, zinc works, machinery, arms, and tools; textiles, especially cotton goods; glass, cement, and ceramic wares; leather; and chemical products. Commerce is also of the highest importance in the economic life of Belgium. She requires foreign imports of raw materials and foreign markets for her manufactured articles. She has a very large transit trade, en route to and from Germany and northern France. In volume of trade Antwerp is one of the greatest of European ports, abreast of Hamburg and London. The system of railways and canals is elaborate, with the highest per capita mileage in Europe.
Of the territorial adjustments desired by Belgium, the least considerable concerned her Prussian frontier. Belgium (or at that time the Belgian part of Holland) and Prussia became neighbors in 1815, in consequence of the Prussian annexations on the left bank of the Rhine. The boundary then drawn was not based upon considerations of language or history, still less upon any expressed desire of the inhabitants, but was fixed primarily so as to give Prussia a certain number of people as compensation for her failure to receive Saxony. She thus acquired the eastern part of the lands of the abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy; the territory of St. Vith, which had belonged to Luxemburg; and a portion of Limburg in the region of Eupen. This land was largely hill and forest, of no great economic value, and it was used by Prussia chiefly for military purposes. Strategic railroads, of little importance in time of peace, were constructed along the Belgian and Luxemburg frontiers, and the great military camp of Elsenborn was built in this very region to serve for the concentration of troops against the invasion of Belgium. Liège, Belgium’s great industrial center, was only eighteen miles from the German border, and the taking of Liège in 1914 opened up the whole valley of the Meuse.
Belgium asked a minimum of protection for the future. It was plain that such protection could not come from any considerable advance of the frontier on the part of so small a state, but must be found chiefly in the demilitarization of the Left Bank and in measures for general peace. At least, however, Belgium might ask control over some of the military railroads and over the camp of Elsenborn.
If purely strategic arguments had prevailed, they would have carried the Belgian frontier forward to the Rhine or to the mountain range of the Eiffel. Within the narrower limits chosen, the strategic considerations were reënforced by others: the economic orientation of this region toward Belgium rather than toward Germany; the historic connection before 1815; and the opportunity for reparation, for this sparsely peopled territory was rich in forests, which might serve to replace the Belgian forests which had been systematically destroyed by Germany during the war, leaving a frontier line which can be followed for miles by the standing timber on the German side and its absence on the Belgian. The linguistic line was less sharp. German was spoken in certain districts on the Belgian side; while, in spite of a century of Germanization, Walloon still prevailed in Malmedy and the neighboring Prussian villages. Indeed, Malmedy was in many ways like a Belgian town, and German troops in 1914 are said to have begun pillaging here under the impression that they were already in Belgium.
The actual wishes of the population in the ceded districts had not been expressed, so it was provided in the treaty that during the six months after its coming into force the Belgian authorities should open registers in which the inhabitants might record a desire to have any part of the ceded territory remain under German sovereignty, the results to be passed upon by the League of Nations. It would have been more consistent with the rest of the treaty if the League had also been entrusted with securing the original expression of opinion. The territory transferred by the treaty comprised 376 square miles with a population of 61,000, constituting the Kreise of Malmedy and Eupen, whose administrative limits were preserved in order to interfere as little as possible with local conditions.[11]
The treaty also settled an old controversy in this region respecting the district of Moresnet, disputed between Belgium (until 1839 Holland) and Prussia since 1815, when two inconsistent boundary lines of the treaty of Vienna left in doubt the sovereignty over a triangular area of about 900 acres which contained the valuable zinc mine of Vieille Montagne. Neither side would yield, and a convention of 1816 which provided for the neutralization of the area under a condominium or joint administration lasted until the war. With the exhaustion of the mine the district has declined in importance, but the anomaly needed clearing up, as the Germans had frequently declared. The treaty assigns the disputed territory to Belgium, and adds a square mile or so in Prussian Moresnet, comprising the domanial and communal woods.[12]
Far more important for Belgium was the question of her relations with another eastern neighbor, the duchy of Luxemburg. An integral part of the southern Netherlands until the French Revolution, Luxemburg had in 1815 been made into a grand duchy and handed over to the king of Holland. It revolted with Belgium in 1830 and sent members to the Belgian Parliament, but on the final separation of Belgium and Holland in 1839 it was divided, the western or Walloon portion going to Belgium, and the eastern or German-speaking portion continuing as the grand duchy. The dynastic union with Holland came to an end in 1890, when a divergence in the laws of succession established a separate line of grand dukes.
The neutrality of Luxemburg was specially and perpetually guaranteed by the Powers, Prussia included, in 1867; but the state was not in every respect independent. Cut off from its Belgian markets by the separation of 1839, it entered three years later the German Zollverein, of which it continued a member until the close of the World War. Its railroads also passed under German control in 1871, with a proviso that they should not be used for military purposes. They were nevertheless extended and double-tracked in the direction of France and Belgium, for military reasons which became clearly apparent in 1914. August 1 of that year the German occupation of Luxemburg began, and the country remained a base of military operations throughout the war. Unlike Belgium, Luxemburg made no resistance. Indeed, its government was considered very friendly to Germany—une dynastie boche, the French called it—and the final victory of the Allies was followed January 15 by the abdication of the grand duchess, Marie Adelheid, in favor of her sister Charlotte.
It was plain that the Allies, Belgium and France most of all, could not permit a return of Luxemburg to German control; and it was equally plain that, whatever political independence the grand duchy retained, it could not stand economically alone. With but 260,000 people and 1000 square miles of territory, it was not large enough for that; and its principal industry, iron, needed the coal and the markets of adjacent lands. Belgium felt that Luxemburg would naturally turn to her. The people were Catholic; the language of government and of the educated classes was French; there were strong ties of tradition and sentiment between the two countries. Belgium counted, counted too confidently, on the result. She forgot the strong feeling for local independence among the Luxemburgers, who, as their national song runs, ‘want to remain what they are’; she forgot the strength of dynastic tradition and clerical influence. For any union with Belgium spelled the end of the local dynasty and of national identity, and might, it was feared, mean the swallowing up of a conservative Catholic people by a larger and more Socialistic neighbor.
France also wanted Luxemburg. She wanted it for purposes of defence, so as to prevent a repetition of 1914; she wanted its iron mines and blast furnaces. And, unlike the Belgians, she knew how to wait. The treaty of peace merely insisted upon the permanent detachment of Luxemburg from the Zollverein, and the abandonment of all German control over its railways.[13] It did not touch the dynasty; it compelled no new attachments. Meanwhile France, in the full glamor of victory, with a brilliant staff quartered in the duchy itself, dazzled the imagination of the Luxemburgers. They were brought to think that, while any arrangement with Belgium threatened their independence, this could be amply safeguarded in a merely economic union with France. In the winter French troops even suppressed a little revolution against the dynasty. And when the plebiscite came, September 28, 1919, a decided majority pronounced for the reigning duchess and for a customs union with France. Women voted for the first time in this election, and while no separate returns were made of their votes, it is not likely that they diminished the proportion of votes for the duchess.
Of all the German ruling families which were in power in 1918, the sole survivor today is that of the grand duchess of Luxemburg. And the only surviving Austrian prince is her consort, Prince Felix of Bourbon-Parma, naturalized as a Luxemburger November 5, 1919, by a close vote in the Chamber and married the following day. And if some time these two should disappear in another revolution, the republic which would follow seems likely to seek support from France rather than from Belgium.
Belgium’s chief territorial difficulties lie on the side of Holland, which controls the lower courses of her two great rivers, the Scheldt and the Meuse, and hems in Belgium on her northeast corner in Limburg and on her northwest corner in Flanders. The embarrassment is partly strategic, limiting Belgium’s freedom in time of war, partly economic, restricting the foreign commerce which is the lifeblood of the Belgian people. From any point of view, the Dutch-Belgian frontier is unnatural. It requires explanation as soon as you see it on the map. No one would draw such a frontier if he were starting afresh. But it is an historic frontier, and the ancient frontiers of a neutral power are hard things for a peace congress to disturb.
The long tongue of land which constitutes the southern prolongation of Dutch Limburg has diverse historical origins. Its chief town, Maestricht, with parts of the adjacent country, has been Dutch since the seventeenth century. Other parts belonged to the southern Netherlands, and were acquired by the king of Holland as ‘compensation’ in 1839. Like Luxemburg, Limburg joined in the Belgian revolution of 1830 and had representatives in the Belgian parliament until 1839. But in the final separation the peninsula was given to Holland, greatly to Belgium’s dissatisfaction. An outlying region, it complained of neglect by the Dutch government, and its economic relations were rather with the adjacent lands of Belgium and Germany on either side. Recently, with the development of its important coal mines, the Dutch have taken much more interest in Limburg, and active efforts have been made to counteract pro-Belgian tendencies.
The grievances of the Belgians respecting Limburg are twofold. From a military point of view, it cannot be defended by Holland, whose troops were withdrawn therefrom early in the late war. The Dutch claimed that its neutrality was a protection for Belgium. The Belgians, with no illusions as to German respect for neutral territory, replied that they had no permanent assurance of this, and that Limburg would have been crossed in 1914 if a breach had not finally been forced at Liège. They made much of the fact that after the armistice German troops, to the number of some 80,000, had been allowed to go home with their booty by this route, thus escaping capture or internment in Holland. The explanations of the Dutch were lame, but the offence could hardly be said to merit severe punishment. The economic grievances of the Belgians were more serious. Astride the Meuse at Maestricht, the Dutch have delayed improvement and hindered canal navigation. In eight miles of canal there are four sets of customs formalities, consuming several days. Moreover, the best route for a Rhine-Scheldt canal, to the construction of which Germany consented in the treaty,[14] lies via Limburg, the levels across the region of the upper Meuse being too difficult. If Belgium could not have Limburg, she at least wanted military guarantees and economic facilities.
Important as is the Meuse to Belgium, her great highway is the Scheldt. To all intents and purposes an arm of the sea, the Scheldt is navigable for ocean-going vessels as far as Antwerp, 55 miles from its mouth. Without it, Belgium becomes practically an inland country, for its 42 miles of North Sea coast have no harbors of value. Yet the lower Scheldt is not Belgian nor even neutral; it belongs to Holland, through whose territories it passes for 45 miles of its course. And it has belonged to Holland since the sixteenth century, when the weakness of Spain and the strength of the Dutch fixed the northern boundary of the Spanish Netherlands. When the treaty of Westphalia (1648) confirmed the northern provinces in the possession of the left bank of the Scheldt, it also gave them the right to close completely the mouths of the river and its tributaries. The purpose of this was to favor Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and in consequence grass grew in the streets of Antwerp. The revival of Belgium’s great port became possible only with the French Revolution, which reopened the river, while the treaty of Vienna declared navigation free on the Scheldt as well as the Meuse. The existing state of affairs on the Scheldt was established by the treaty of 1839, which created “a special regime which is neither that of the sea nor that of ordinary rivers.”
The regime created by the treaty of 1839 has never been satisfactory to the Belgians. One of its provisions reads:[15]
So far as regards specially the navigation of the Scheldt and of its mouths, it is agreed that the pilotage and the buoying of the channel, as well as the conservation of the channels of the Scheldt below Antwerp, shall be subject to a joint superintendence, and that this joint superintendence shall be exercised by commissioners to be appointed for this purpose by the two parties. Moderate pilotage dues shall be fixed by mutual agreement.
The Dutch have interpreted this strictly as giving the joint commission control only over the pilotage (two concurrent services) and over keeping the channels open and properly marked and buoyed. The Belgians, on the other hand, have contended that the commission should have cognizance of matters upon which the extent and security of the channels depend, such as diking, drainage, encroachments on the river and its accessory waters, etc., their ground being that the Scheldt constitutes a single hydrographic problem, no portion of which can be properly treated without reference to the whole. They allege the failure to make sufficient modern improvements on the western Scheldt because of the indifference of the Dutch authorities, and they also complain of the serious difficulties of drainage in Belgian Flanders caused by raising the level of the Dutch lands between it and the Scheldt. Being interested in the use of the river to a far greater degree than the Dutch, the Belgians find it intolerable to be dependent on Dutch consent to every act of maintenance or improvement. Belgium pays the entire cost of improvements, but the consent of Holland is necessary. Thus the Terneuzen canal, which connects Ghent with the Scheldt, was built by Dutch engineers but at Belgium’s expense, and the Dutch portion does not correspond to the portion south of the frontier. Holland’s position throughout is essentially negative. The Scheldt furthers no major interest of hers; she has no important towns along its banks, no foreign trade which it carries; its improvement benefits only a commercial rival.
In time of war Holland interprets her sovereignty as compelling her to close the river to belligerents. In August 1914 English reënforcements were thus forbidden to relieve Antwerp, although their purpose was to maintain Belgian neutrality, while Belgian troops were denied exit by the river and forced, to the number of several thousand, to suffer internment in Holland. Such control of the river nullifies the centre of Belgium’s defensive system at Antwerp; it might also permit the turning of her Flemish defences in case of a war with Holland. The Dutch maintain that the neutrality of the Scheldt during the Great War was of real assistance to the Allies, who would otherwise have suffered from German submarine bases along its banks; but the Belgians point out that the closing of the river in war destroys at one blow the whole foreign commerce of Antwerp, a result that might ensue even in a war in which Holland was a party and Belgium neutral.
The simplest solution of the problem of the Scheldt would be the elimination of Holland from its southern shore, which she has held for more than three hundred years. This land, called Maritime or Zealand Flanders (Flandre zélandaise, Ryksvlaanderen), has an area of 275 square miles and a population of 78,677, chiefly Catholic. Its economic relations are mainly with Belgium, but it has manifested no desire to change its political affiliations, and has recently been assiduously cultivated by Holland. A less drastic measure would be the admission of Belgium to co-sovereignty on the lower Scheldt, leaving Holland in possession of its banks. Still another possibility would be the complete internationalization of the river, under the League of Nations. These solutions, especially the first two, have been energetically opposed in Holland as infringements on her sovereignty. The question of her boundaries was not, she declared, a matter for the Peace Conference.
It was indeed suggested at Paris that Holland might be induced to relinquish Zealand Flanders and Limburg in return for a compensation in the Prussian territory on her eastern frontier, either in East Friesland or in the region of Cleves and Wesel on the lower Rhine, districts which once had much in common with the adjacent portions of the Netherlands. There was, however, no indication of any desire on the part of the inhabitants of these territories to change their political allegiance, nor was Holland in the least disposed to face the uncertainties arising out of any such exchange. The whole idea smacked too strongly of the methods of the Congress of Vienna.
One matter affecting Holland did, however, concern the Conference, namely Belgium’s compulsory and guaranteed neutrality, and it was the Belgian contention that this involved also her frontiers. The international status of Belgium rests upon the three treaties of April 19, 1839, one between the Five Great Powers and Belgium, one between these powers and Holland, and one between Holland and Belgium. These documents, in substance identical, fix the boundaries of Belgium at the same time that they establish her as an independent and perpetually neutralized state, “bound to observe the same neutrality toward all other states.” This whole system of neutrality collapsed in 1914, and Belgium wanted no more of it. By the time of the Peace Conference Prussia, Austria, and Russia were certainly in no position to guarantee Belgium’s neutrality, while France and England joined with Belgium in considering a revision of the treaties necessary. Upon the advice of its Commission on Belgian Affairs, the Conference took the position that the treaties, as constituting a single entity, should be revised in the entirety of their clauses, at the joint request of these three powers, and that Holland as a signatory of one of the treaties should take part in the revision, together with the Great Powers whose interests were general. The declared object of the revision was “to free Belgium from that limitation on her sovereignty which was imposed on her by the treaties of 1839, and, in the interest both of Belgium and of general peace, to remove the dangers and disadvantages arising from the said treaties.” Belgium and Holland were accordingly invited to appear before the Conference in order to set forth their views with regard to such a revision.
This action was taken by the Council of Ten March 8; but the Conference was busy with more pressing things, and it was not until May 19 and 20 that the representatives of the two countries were at last heard. The Belgians maintained that Belgium had been given weak frontiers in 1839 on the ground that she was to be protected by the Powers; such protection having failed disastrously in 1914, she should be given frontiers which would enable her to hold her own with her neighbors, in war and in peace. The unlimited sovereignty which had been promised her in President Wilson’s seventh point ought to carry with it the frontiers denied her in the days of her weakness. Holland had no objection to the abandonment of Belgium’s neutrality, which had been guaranteed to her as well as to Belgium, but she would not consider for a moment any cession of her own territory. She declared, however, that she was ready to discuss amicably with Belgium any adjustments of the conditions of navigation, etc.
A commission was then appointed, representing Belgium and Holland as well as the principal Allied and Associated Powers, but its field was specifically restricted to “proposals involving neither transfer of territorial sovereignty nor the creation of international servitudes.” As any thoroughgoing settlement satisfactory to Belgium could not help touching in some way the sovereignty of Holland, and as the regime of the Scheldt already constituted an international servitude, the terms of reference were generally regarded as a triumph for the Dutch. The commission went to work in the summer in two sections, one military and the other economic, but no final results had been reached when the Peace Conference dissolved in December. The reference of such outstanding matters to the governments concerned is another victory for Holland, who desires no change in the existing situation. In these matters Belgium has derived little advantage from the support of her allies. Holland still holds the lower Scheldt and the lower Meuse; Luxemburg seems permanently lost; except in the matter of her neutrality, Belgium stands substantially where she stood in 1839.
If the territorial status of Belgium has not been essentially bettered by the war, her economic status is certainly worse. No share in a problematic indemnity will compensate her for her direct losses, not to speak of her other expenses—the stripping of her resources, the enforced idleness of her factories, the disappearance of her foreign markets and her transit trade. Dependent in an extraordinary degree on the outside world, Belgium was cut off from it for nearly five years, and it is a question how fully she can recover her previous position. A hero in 1914, is Belgium to remain a cripple for the future? The German is gone, but he left ruin and disillusion behind him. Small wonder that many a Belgian asks whether it was all worth while, as he contrasts his lean and hungry country with the prosperity of neutral Holland. Small wonder that the neutral world, as it looks to the future, is encouraged to imitate the Holland that stood pat, the Luxemburg that succumbed, rather than the Belgium that resisted. The neutral is more prosperous than the ally.
In order to get a just perspective in the face of such considerations, it is necessary to go back a few months. Germany’s plan was not merely to use Belgium as a highroad to France, but to make Belgium permanently subject to German interests, if not politically subject, at least under complete military and economic control. The German literature of the war, official and unofficial, is full of plans for the permanent control of Belgium—political annexation, at least of that great Flemish-speaking half of the country which the German administration had separated from the rest of Belgium, and which, if not annexed outright, was to remain apart as the great support of German policy in the Belgium of the future; military control, of railroads and telegraphs, perhaps of the Flemish coast and the fortresses of the Meuse; economic control, through a customs union, railway tariffs, port privileges, and the domination of Belgian industrial enterprises. Now Belgium has at least escaped all this. She has maintained her independence while she has saved her soul. When discouraged about the present state of the world, it is well to remind ourselves that the war accomplished, at least for the time being, one great thing it set out to secure, the destruction of German militarism and the protection of small states against the imperial ambitions of Germany. Belgium has also improved her colonial position, not only by frustrating German plans against the Belgian Congo, but by receiving a mandate over an adjacent portion of German East Africa.
For the future Belgium’s security lies in a strong League of Nations and in what such a League stands for. At first Belgian statesmen took the League somewhat coldly, for the treaty of 1839 was an international covenant, and they had ample experience of the futility of mere paper guarantees. If the League covenant were merely another piece of paper, they would be right. The hopeful side of the League lies rather in its assurance of general coöperation, its growth as an administrative and informing body, its development of an international habit of mind and an international conscience. After all, it was the sense of international right that brought the world to Belgium’s side in the Great War, and it is in the broadening and deepening of that sense that the chief hope lies in the future. For centuries the position of Belgium surrounded by France, Germany, and England has made it the battleground of Europe, and it is only by diminishing the likelihood of battles that it can hope to escape this fate. The best guarantees of the security of small states are a stronger sense of right and justice throughout the world.