THE PEACE CONFERENCE
“War or peace, or both at once.”
Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Act V, Sc. ii.
The colossal strain of the last year of the Great War left both Ministers and peoples of the conquering Allies in a state of profound exhaustion. So near had been the peril of defeat that for a time it was scarcely possible to realise the fact of victory. For the first two weeks after the Armistice of November 11th, 1918, London, Paris, and New York were given over to a delirium of rejoicing such as the world never before witnessed. Mr. Lloyd George, speaking from the windows of Downing Street on the day of the Armistice, told the people plainly that they had a right to rejoice. He rejoiced with them.
But gradually, as the days passed, the world woke to the fact that the Armistice was only the opening of a new phase in the crisis of change. The Armistice terms imposed on Germany by the Allies had left her prone and helpless. She could not resume the fighting. Both the Central Empires were beaten and broken. The Emperors and the Kings were in flight. But the world could not be left to live in a vacuum. Desolation is not peace. Europe was like a shattered puzzle which had to be pieced together again before humanity could resume its normal life. It was urgent that a Conference should be summoned speedily both to make peace and to settle the future governance of the world.
There were some necessary delays. President Wilson came swiftly to Europe; but before attending the Conference he wished to consult the Governments of the Allies and to visit their capitals. He arrived in Paris on December 13th, and visited both Rome and London. His presence was acclaimed everywhere by enthusiastic multitudes, possessed by a great hope that the New World had truly come to redress the balance of the Old.
There was also the British General Election, which Mr. Lloyd George deemed necessary to confirm and strengthen his position at the Conference as spokesman for Great Britain. No time was lost. The General Election was announced immediately after the Armistice. Nominations were taken on December 4th after a very brief election campaign; the polls were held on one day, December 14th, under the new electoral arrangements; and the results were declared on December 28th. The result was an overwhelming vote for Mr. Lloyd George as the British representative at the Conference, and as the mandatory of a strong and decisive peace.[[125]]
There was some preliminary debate as to the city that should be chosen for the Conference. President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George were at first disposed to choose a neutral capital; but the claims of France were strong. She had borne the territorial brunt of the war. So it was agreed that the Conference should meet in Paris at first, with the reservation that they should afterwards shift to Geneva. But once the huge machine of counsel was settled in Paris it was found impossible to move it. In spite of the preponderant power thus given to the pressure of the French Press, it is difficult to see now how any other capital could have been chosen.
The burden of British responsibility was far too heavy for the Prime Minister to bear alone. He decided to share it, as far as possible, with his whole Ministry and Government; and the result was that the fashioning of the Peace by Great Britain was far less of a personal affair than in any other of the victorious countries. Mr. Lloyd George took with him to Paris, as joint delegates, Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. Balfour, Lord Milner, and Mr. Barnes. Mr. Bonar Law, being leader of the House of Commons, was soon compelled to return to his duties in England; but he flew over to Paris at every serious crisis in the discussions. Mr. Balfour and Mr. Barnes remained all the time, and performed great services. Lord Milner went over when colonial affairs required his counsel and decision; and Mr. Montagu attended for Indian matters. But Ministers from all Departments attended in Paris whenever their advice was required; on critical occasions Mr. Lloyd George summoned meetings of the War Cabinet so that his decisions might have the full weight of the Coalition behind them.[[126]]
But besides the men of Great Britain the men of the Dominions were there too. The whole weight of the British Empire was behind the decision of the British Delegations. Each Dominion sent two delegates, one of whom in every case was the Prime Minister. The British Empire Delegation sat every day, and considered every big decision; their secretary was a member of the Secretariat of the Peace Conference; powerful men like Mr. Hughes, Mr. Robert Borden and General Botha had their say through this channel; and thus the whole Empire was kept in touch. There was here the beginning of a new Imperial organisation.
Behind all these leaders stood the great body of British officials; cool, experienced, industrious, alert, no body of men in that great crisis served their country better.
The first meeting of the Conference was held on January 18th, 1919, at the Palace of Versailles, and was an impressive gathering of the representatives of all the thirty Allied Nations who had taken part in the defeat of Germany. But as soon as vital decisions were approached it became obvious that it would be necessary to narrow the Council-chamber and to throw a veil over their debates. There was much inflammable stuff lying about, explosive national hopes and greeds, incredible aspirations after greatness. There were Cæsars and Malvolios among the Powers, both great and little. If the discussions had been published, great popular emotions would have been roused, hatreds stimulated, passions excited. The Conference might not have lasted a week. No sane advocate of “open diplomacy” will ever exclude the right of private debate.
The world watched impatiently while the inner Council was gradually narrowed from ten to five, from five to four, and finally, after Italy’s withdrawal, from four to three. There was something of a sneer in the adjective applied—“The Big Five,” “The Big Four,” and the “Big Three.” And yet the narrowing of the number was absolutely necessary for decision. Slow as decision was, it would have been far slower in a larger Council. It was vital that those who debated should keep confidence, and should be able to decide. With ten it was found that no secrets could be kept. With four confidence was easier, and decisions were possible.
The defects of this narrowing of the Council-chamber are painfully obvious. The arguments which led to decisions were known only to a few. Minutes were kept by the Secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey, and were distributed to the ten, five, four or three. But the world outside was fed on gossip, and mostly malicious gossip. The great concourse of able writers who had journeyed to Paris from all countries looked up, but could not be adequately fed. They became angry and irritated. They spread their spleen against the Conference through a thousand conduits, daily and weekly, and ultimately through a vast and growing literature of discontent. It is notable that the books published about the Conference since its close have been almost unanimous in their bitter scorn and condemnation.[[127]]
The Peace Treaty emerged with few friends and many enemies. That is the chief danger to its vitality and permanence.
At the foot of the Falls of Niagara there eddies a gigantic whirlpool round which objects are driven in endless fury, the prey of conflicting currents, tossed to and fro by buffeting waves, now hurled to the surface and then sucked down into the depths by irresistible forces. In that whirlpool guidance is nearly impossible. Man himself becomes a helpless victim; only by yielding could he survive. Resistance to such powers only increases the peril.
So it was at Paris in 1919. The Great War had been the Falls of Niagara; the Conference was the whirlpool. In that tumult of waters it was a miracle to survive at all, much less to achieve mastery. Not since Phaethon strove to drive the horses of the sun had any human being faced a greater task than the three men who emerged as the leaders in this vast event—Mr. Lloyd George, President Wilson, and M. Clemenceau. No man who has looked closely into their work will be inclined to judge swiftly or harshly. It was a burden too great for human shoulders. After six months of it Mr. Lloyd George returned to London whitened and lined, looking to his friends as if ten years had been added to his age.
But he fared far better than his colleagues. President Wilson returned to collapse into a grave illness. M. Clemenceau, the invincible “Tiger,” the “Young old Man,” continues his intrepid existence—but now retired—with a bullet in his back. Botha returned to South Africa to die.
They all worked terribly hard, both by day and by night. They sat in council for two and a half hours in the mornings and two and a half hours again in the afternoons. They went out little into society. In the evenings they read their piles of documents or saw important witnesses.
Yet no one was satisfied. What is the reason?
The chief reason is that the Conference worked throughout by process of compromise: and compromise has no lovers. It was in the main a compromise between three points of view—the French, the American, and the British. Hateful to strenuous souls! To yield nothing and to gain everything is to them the only statesmanship. But let us remember the other side. The war was not won alone; the peace could not be made alone. The armies had to combine for victory; the peace had to be combined too. No Great Power could have a peace entirely of its own, either in material gain or ideal aims.
The American aim, as shaped by their remarkable President and voiced in his splendid oratory, was for a peace of final world-conciliation.[[128]] He held up the “banner of the ideal.” The French aim was a peace of security. The British aim lay somewhere between the two, a practical peace combining conciliation and security, punishing Germany without crushing it, improving the world but not seeking all at once to achieve the Millennium.
Clemenceau was an honest nationalist. But he did not seek so much to exalt France as to depress Germany. The idea of Foch was to stand guard over Germany with a flaming sword. The aim of the French Chauvinists was to break Germany up and disable her permanently. Clemenceau did not share these extreme views. He rebuked Foch for the interview in which he claimed that Germany should retire beyond the Rhine. He was too much of a statesman to believe that a modern nation could be permanently crushed. But he sought to weaken her to the ground for the next fifty years; and then he hoped for security in the new Alliance with America and Great Britain.
The part that Mr. Lloyd George played at Paris during those strenuous months was often that of conciliator between these two points of view—the French and the American. Such a conciliator was wanted: for the clash could not be concealed. “President Wilson has Fourteen Points,” mocked Clemenceau; “the good God was content with Ten.” “Every morning,” he said on another occasion, “I repeat to myself—‘I believe in the League of Nations!’ ”[[129]] It was difficult to achieve harmony between such a spirit and the lofty faith and austere hopes of the great Crusader from across the seas.
Here came in Mr. Lloyd George’s characteristic qualities—his genius for compromise, his twinkling good humour, his amazing capacity for finding a middle way between different points of view. Again and again, when matters seemed at a deadlock—on the Saar Valley, the Polish Corridor, or even the perplexing question of Fiume—Mr. Lloyd George achieved, or nearly achieved, a settlement. It is scarcely too much to say that without him the Conference would have inevitably broken down, and one of the other two would have flung out of the Conference like Signor Orlando.
But Mr. Lloyd George was not only a conciliator—not merely the middle figure. He had a very definite view of his own as to the right peace to aim at. He was the first to formulate a peace; the first to insist on a decision. He was out for a peace stern but just. On Dantzig he took the initiative for moderation. He insisted on a settlement that would not create a new Baltic question. He was against Poland annexing a city of Germans—against it also for the sake of Poland. “We must set up a Poland that can live,” he would say. “If swollen by enemy populations she will explode from within. Dantzig is outside the real orbit of Poland. Make it International.” President Wilson supported him; M. Clemenceau was persuaded; and Mr. Lloyd George got his way.
Poland had good friends at the Conference. Not only was it the policy of France to aggrandise Poland as a substitute for Russia, but President Wilson was enthusiastically pro-Polish. On the general issue Mr. Lloyd George was entirely with them. He wished Poland to flourish as a self-governing State, but not to enter on its existence by inflicting on others the crime of Partition from which it had so deeply suffered itself. For that reason, in the last stage, he took a strong solitary line on the demand for a plebiscite that came from Silesia. The whole British Cabinet supported him, and there again in the end he achieved his purpose.
But on other matters the combination varied: Mr. Lloyd George sometimes took a sterner line than the other two. He was always for the trial of the Kaiser, as a supreme lesson to rulers. President Wilson opposed; M. Clemenceau was indifferent; Venizelos was opposed. But Mr. Lloyd George insisted, and persuaded them to agree to London as the place of trial.
On the Rhine question and the Saar Valley he supported President Wilson in opposing the extreme French claims, and finally achieved the compromise inserted in the Peace Treaty.[[130]] He opposed the French proposals to separate the Rhine Provinces from Germany and occupy in permanence the bridge-heads. He looked far ahead. “See here,” he said to the French, “you will create another Alsace-Lorraine: you will give Germany a great cause.”
He saw in such proposals the certain seeds of future wars, and wars to which he could not summon the youth of Great Britain. For he kept clearly in view that, under the League of Nations settlement, we, as a contracting party, might be called upon (under Clause 10) to defend with arms any detail of the settlement. It was always his aim to keep British obligations within the limits of the powers of the British Empire.
He supported President Wilson in the difference with Italy over Fiume, and Clemenceau supported both. But he always hoped to effect a settlement by persuasion. When President Wilson had made up his mind to issue an appeal to the Italian nation, Mr. Lloyd George persuaded him to agree to a postponement of twenty-four hours. President Wilson kept precisely to his promise. But it unfortunately happened that, just as the twenty-four hours expired, delicate negotiations were proceeding between Orlando and Mr. Lloyd George, and there were still hopes of a settlement. The appeal was published in the afternoon papers of Paris, and its immediate effects were to offend the Italian delegates, throw them back on to the point of honour, and drive them out of the Peace Conference. President Wilson acted with his usual high and simple honesty; but in this case, at any rate, if the aim was peace, open diplomacy did not score a conspicuous triumph.
In regard to Russia, there also Mr. Lloyd George always craved for a settlement as part of the new peace of the world. This was not his second, but his first thought. He started instantly after the Armistice with the idea of a joint meeting between the Russian parties. His first proposal was that they should meet at Paris; and this was laid before the Allied Chiefs early in the Peace Conference, in a conversation held at the French Foreign Office on Tuesday, January 21st, 1919.[[131]] The French Premier objected to the presence of the Bolshevists of Paris as a danger to French society. Mr. Lloyd George then proposed Salonika or Lemnos, as easily accessible from Russia. It was as the afterthought of an official that the island of Prinkipos was suggested; perhaps it was a measure of the fear of Bolshevism already existing among the Governments of Western Europe. The appeal to the Russian parties was issued as a result of this meeting of January 21st. We all know how it failed. It withered from sheer lack of support. The Bolshevists refused to stop fighting. The Russian “loyalists,” already divided from the Bolshevist rule by gulfs of hatred and terror, rejected the very idea of a meeting. The French official class, always very powerful, was openly hostile, and actively worked against the proposal. The propertied classes in Great Britain, supported by a powerful Press, denounced and ridiculed the whole policy. The time expired for the meeting; and the policy expired too.
Then in February came the Bullitt Mission originally devised as a “feeler” by Colonel House. Mr. Bullitt went to Russia and experienced one of those astounding conversions which the leading Bolshevists, by showing only their better side, seem capable of producing. The American Delegation asked Mr. Lloyd George to see Mr. Bullitt; and, with his usual accessibility, he invited the young American to breakfast. The proposal brought by Mr. Bullitt was not an offer from the Bolshevists, but the suggestion of an offer by the Allies—a very different affair.[[132]] President Wilson himself refused to meet Mr. Bullitt, a course which seems to gather some justification from Mr. Bullitt’s subsequent proceedings in America. But the proposals embodied in the Bolshevist memorandum were not such as, at this time at any rate, had any chance of serious consideration. The mere proposal to take the whole matter out of the hands of the Peace Conference was not calculated to conciliate that body.[[133]]
Then in April came the Nansen episode, which turned out, in Mr. Bullitt’s adroit hands, to be yet another effort to renew the peace negotiations of February. The gulf still proved impassable. The Allies would not authorise Nansen to undertake his intrepid and humane adventure without the power to distribute food and control the Russian railways: and the Bolshevists would on no account agree to that course. Neither side trusted one another. A civil war was raging, and the issue was still undecided. Neither side would give way; and once more the time limit expired.[[134]]
Still eager to attain peace in Russia, and finding that the hope of conciliation was vain, Mr. Lloyd George now swung over to the policy of helping Admiral Koltchak and General Denikin on the condition of obtaining democratic and constitutional guarantees. The guarantees were given, and seemed favourable. Help was sent. But there was one point on which the “White” Russians would make no concessions—the independence of the Border States. We all know how since on that rock of adventures of the “White” Russians have shipwrecked; and so the hopes of the Allies have been disastrously thwarted. It seems at the present moment as if an immense mass of human suffering might have been averted if the original policy of Mr. Lloyd George in January-February of 1919 had received reasonable and friendly consideration in London and in Paris.
In regard to the League of Nations, Mr. Lloyd George was never the prime mover, but always a faithful follower of President Wilson. Thus it was that Mr. Lloyd George never framed a scheme, but took the schemes of others as the basis for his advice and counsel. He profoundly believed in the League of Nations as the only way out for the human race. But he had not a very deep faith in schemes or constitutions. His idea was rather, in the good old British way, to evolve a League from the Peace Conference. He had in mind the precedent of the Imperial Conference, and he believed that periodical meetings of the Peace Conference, gradually including nations at first excluded, would lead to a slow growth of understanding between nations now too ardent for sovereignty to be affected by any decisions from Paris or Geneva.
President Wilson brought to Paris a scheme which he had already worked out. He had based it on the Phillimore Report amended by Colonel House, and rewritten by himself.[[135]] He then read General Smuts’s remarkable memorandum, and revised his scheme again. That scheme was considered at an early meeting of the Conference and referred to a League of Nations Committee. President Wilson himself sat on the Committee along with Mr. Lansing, thus giving up to the creation of the Covenant a large part of his great energies and genius. Lord Robert Cecil was placed on the Committee as the British Representative by Mr. Balfour, and we know what a great part he played. Lord Robert was in frequent consultation with Mr. Lloyd George, who always kept in close touch with the drafting of the Covenant, and made many suggestions. When the Covenant was in danger, he supported President Wilson on his return from America in his insistence that it should be made part of the Treaty. Still, Mr. Lloyd George perhaps never shook off his instinctive feeling that there was an element of unreality in the drafting of a set constitution for the League. He doubted whether the intense patriotism created by the war could at once be poured, glowing hot, into the mould of a new international discipline. The action of Italy, and still more of the United States itself, seems since to have given some confirmation to his view.
Throughout all these discussions Mr. Lloyd George and President Wilson remained close friends. They were really kindred spirits, with the difference that Mr. Lloyd George had a longer experience of politics and diplomacy in the rusé old Europe. But both came from Puritan stock, and the high idealism and noble integrity of President Wilson’s character must have often recalled to Mr. Lloyd George that splendid uncle who had taught and nurtured him. Of their relationships it may be said, as of Carlyle and Sterling, that they always ended their discussions friends—“except in opinion not disagreeing.”
No two honest men, indeed, could expect to agree on all the questions raised at this multifarious Conference. Take the problems of the Near East. There Mr. Lloyd George very strongly took the view that the Turks had forfeited the right to rule over Christians. He was always disposed to look to the great Prime Minister, Venizelos, as the prop of the Alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean. That made him lean to the Greeks. M. Clemenceau followed the traditional policy of the Quai D’Orsay in its leniency towards the Turks. President Wilson, perhaps influenced by the American professors of the Roberts College at Constantinople, was disposed to advocate clemency to Bulgaria. This is an instance of minor differences which never threatened cleavage, but harassed and delayed the proceedings of the Conference. For Mr. Lloyd George was never inclined to neglect the Near East. There was the home and cradle of those little nations in whose destiny he so profoundly believed.
There were crises in the Conference when he boldly acknowledged that he had been wrong. Such a moment came when, in April, he was challenged on the Indemnity question by a mandatory telegram from 200 members of Parliament. He returned and faced his critics with defiance. “A good Peace,” he said, “is better than a good Press.” He had discovered in Paris that it was vain to hope for the great indemnities from Germany which Great Britain deserved, and for which he himself had hoped. He faced Parliament with realities; and Parliament bowed to the facts.
Speaking broadly, Mr. Lloyd George and his colleagues followed throughout a sound British tradition. Instinctively they were, in 1919, pursuing in Paris the same policy that Wellington and Castlereagh pursued during 1815 in the Congress of Vienna, and the Second Treaty of Paris after the victory of Waterloo. Just as they prevented a triumphant Prussia from crushing France, so Mr. Lloyd George and President Wilson prevented a triumphant France from shattering Germany to atoms.[[136]]
On the human side, Mr. Lloyd George lived in Paris a simple and homely life. He occupied a modest flat in the 23 Rue Nitot, near the Arc de Triomphe, in the pleasant neighbourhood of the Champs Elysées. European observers were surprised at the contrast between the daily life of the British Prime Minister and the high state which surrounded the American President, who occupied the Villa Murat over the way. But when they criticised the posting of sentries both inside and outside the President’s house, and when the French people objected to being forbidden to walk on the American side of their own beloved Parisian street, they perhaps forgot that President Wilson stood in the place of Royalty as the sovereign head of the country for which he spoke.
The French, with their genius for affability, preferred the easy ways of Mr. Lloyd George with his love for their café life and their restaurants, and his general sociability. He was often received in the cafés and theatres with an almost embarrassing friendliness and respect, and sometimes the audience would rise and sing “God Save the King.” At one café in the Champs Elysées the orchestra knew so well his passion for the “Sambre et Meuse” march, that they would play it whenever he entered without waiting for his request. He was, as ever, kindly to the journalists, and would, whenever possible, take a cup of tea with them at the Hotel Majestic—humorously renamed “Megantic,” after his daughter. On Saturdays it was the pleasant custom of the British exiles to hold dances at this hotel, and Mr. Lloyd George would often look in and watch the dancing. He loved to see his youngest daughter Megan and his son Gwylem enjoying themselves at these democratic dances, to which only an Arctic prudery could find any objection. On Sundays he would often go touring in his motor-car through the devastated areas of France, in company with the general who commanded that part of the battle-field. In this way he visited most of the Western Front and had the chief battles reconstructed for him. He paid a special visit to Verdun, penetrated the forts where the blood-stains are still on the walls, and lunched in the Citadelle. All these things made him popular in France.
On most week-days he refused to go out in the evenings, retiring early, but not always to rest. He kept to his habit of holding his hospitable and homely breakfasts. He would sometimes take a Sunday off for a motor-drive to Fontainebleau with his friends. On such occasions he would talk no politics, but would indulge that precious capacity of gay and happy recreation which has so often been his salvation.
The negotiations, after long delay, ended with a final speed-up. President Wilson, on his return from his visit to America in February, insisted on the inclusion of the League of Nations in the Peace Treaty, and there was a rapid process of redrafting. On May 6th the draft was completed, and it was presented at Versailles to the German Foreign Minister, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau on May 7th. There followed six weeks of parley with Germany, which led to some important modifications in regard to the Saar Valley, the Polish Corridor, and Silesia. During this final crisis Mr. Lloyd George played the part of a bold and fearless conciliator: and he tried in every permissible way to make the peace possible for Germany’s acceptance. President Wilson, on the other hand, hardened, and took the view that he was pledged to support the Treaty as now framed. But Mr. Lloyd George gained some important points, and by softening the terms certainly added to the hope of future peace in Europe.
On June 22nd the German Assembly ratified the Treaty, and on June 29th it was signed at Versailles by the German envoys. Mr. Lloyd George returned to England and eloquently defended the Treaty before Parliament, which unanimously ratified it on July 3rd.
As far as Great Britain was concerned, Mr. Lloyd George had now achieved peace.
[125] For further particulars of the election see Chapter XXIV.
[126] President Wilson brought with him four delegates, including Secretary Lansing, Colonel House, and one Republican, Mr. Henry White. M. Clemenceau was supported by General Foch, M. Pichon, M. Tardieu, and M. Loucheur.
[127] See, for instance, Dr. Dillon’s very able book The Peace Conference (Hutchinson & Co: London), Peace Making in Paris, by Sisley Huddleston (Fisher Unwin: London), The Peace in the Making, by H. Wilson Harris (The Swarthmore Press: London), and The Economic Consequences of the Peace, by John Maynard Keynes, C.B. (Macmillan & Co., London.)
[128] See Appendix D.
[129] Some of these reported speeches are even more mordant, as for instance—“President Wilson talks like the good Christ, but acts like Lloyd George.”
[130] The Saar Valley was finally given to the League of Nations for fifteen years, giving the French the output of the mines. At the close of that period there is to be a plebiscite, but if the vote goes in favour of Germany the mines must be bought back by Germany from France.
[131] See pp. 1240-2 of the Bullitt evidence: “Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate,” vol. ii. The minutes of the meeting are given. I give them in full in Appendix C in order to show Mr. Lloyd George’s point of view at this time.
[132] See Mr. Bullitt’s statement to the Committee of Foreign Relations, United States Senate. “The Soviets undertook to accept proposals if made by the Allies not later than April 10th, 1919” (Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, vol. ii. p. 1248). The proposals were not written down by the Bolshevists but conveyed through Mr. Bullitt, who placed them on record.
[133] See Mr. Bullitt’s evidence, Hearings Before the Committtee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, vol. ii. p. 1246. Mr. Bullitt’s account of the conditions prevailing in Russia did not, of course, tally with other and more responsible evidence.
[134] See Mr. Bullitt’s evidence, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, vol. ii. pp. 1264-71, for full details.
[135] See President Wilson’s first scheme in the Bullitt evidence. At the end of it nothing remained but a few clauses (Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, vol. ii).
[136] In framing the Second Treaty of Paris signed on November 20th, 1815, it was with the utmost difficulty that Wellington and Castlereagh prevented the Prussian and Austrian representatives from annexing Alsace-Lorraine.