The decisions of the Supreme Council of the Allies are without any moral sanction, because, owing to its past acts, the moral sense of the entire world is blunted. Despair and misery prevail throughout Central and Eastern Europe; around and beyond the main centres of infection, the poison is spreading to the world’s remotest parts; India and Northern Africa are filled with vague but menacing unrest. When the lassitude of war is passed, more serious developments must be expected: D’Annunzio and Bermondt are but the forerunners of many similar adventurers who, both in Europe and in Asia, will find followers and funds.
Truly, Old Europe has committed suicide. The autocratic Empires have perished by the sword; the Western States, under the rule of spurious democrats, bid fair to perish by the Peace. Democracy has been betrayed by its own ignorance and apathy, by misplaced confidence in mediocre men, by failure to be democratic, by permitting politicians and officials to usurp the people’s sovereign power.
A new danger is on the horizon. The men who scoffed at progress, who at first derided the League of Nations, and to whose influence were due the prolongation of the Armistice and the worst features of the Treaties, are alarmed by the present situation. The official mind is seeking for a remedy, and it now professes to have found it in the “League of Nations,” to which it does lip-service, meaning to use it, in the first place, as a buffer, and later as an instrument. These men do not recognize that with the downfall of the autocratic Empires materialism in its most efficient form has proved a failure; the fallen fortunes of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia convey no warning to them. They think that once again the public can be tricked. They have made a German peace and are so blind to facts that, in spite of the testimony of Ludendorff, they do not realize that victory was gained by peoples, who were unconquerable because they thought their cause was just. Theirs is the frame of mind of German “Junkers”; to them the masses are like cattle to be driven in a herd; they will, if given a free rein, once more subserve the interests of capitalists, and Governments will be influenced by men who, having great possessions, take counsel of selfish fears.
A League which includes Liberia and excludes Germany, Austria, Hungary and Russia, and whose covenant is embodied in the Peace Treaties, makes a bad start. The intention has been expressed of inviting Germany, at some future date, to become a member of the League. Whether this invitation will be accepted will depend on circumstances; in Europe’s present state of instability the omens are far from favourable to acceptance. A truly democratic Germany will be a tremendous force in Europe, and may find in Russia, under a Soviet Government, an ally more in sympathy with progress than either Great Britain or the Latin Powers under reactionary governments. The Russians, once our allies, regard the French and British with hatred and resentment, and these same feelings animate all the nationalities on whom have been forced insulting terms of Peace. Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Yougo-Slavia and the Greater Rumania are political experiments. These States contain men of great ability, who may, in the abstract, accept the principles of the League, but their position is neither safe nor easy; in no single case can national aspirations obtain full satisfaction without impinging on the territory of a neighbour, on each and every frontier fixed in Paris there is a pocket in dispute. It is doubtful whether any of the small Allied States can be considered trustworthy members of a League, which, while preaching internationalism, has perverted nationalism into a “will to power,” for which conditions of membership are defined by conquerors, whose conduct hitherto has revealed an entire lack of an international spirit, save in regard to international finance. So many temptations to recalcitrance exist that, if Germany remains outside the League, another combination might be formed, under German leadership, and including Russia, Austria, Hungary, Greater Roumania and Bulgaria. A combination untrammelled by self-denying ordinances, compact, almost continuous, controlling the land routes of two continents. No limitation of its armaments could be enforced on such a combination; it would have access to Russia’s vast natural resources, and, if war came, for the first time in history, a coalition of belligerent States would be impervious to blockade by sea.
While the Treaties stand, and while the present frame of mind of the Allied Governments continues, such is the situation into which the world is drifting, and for which the Covenant of the League, as drafted, provides no panacea. Even the leading members of that League are dubious adherents to its moral implications; each of them makes some reservation, not based on the principles of progress, but inspired by a distorted sense of patriotism which, in its essence, is the outcome and cult of private interests.
The League of Nations was unfortunate in its birthplace. Throughout the Conference the frenzied merriment in Paris was characteristic of the cosmopolitan class which has grown up in an industrial age. These parasites on the wealth of nations possess neither the spirit of nobless oblige nor any sympathy with the masses, and yet they influence affairs; they appear light and frivolous, as though they had no interest in life beyond dancing and feasting on the ruins of Old Europe, and deadening reflection with the discords of jazz bands; but behind these puppets in the show are cold and calculating men, who use “Society” and the atmosphere it creates to kill enthusiasm, to fetter and sensualize weaker minds. After listening to the conversation at a semi-official and fashionable gathering last June in Paris, a French priest pronounced the opinion that only a second redemption could save the world. This old man was always charitable in his judgments, he had heard the confessions of many sinners, but he was roused to moral indignation by the heartless cynicism of the talk around him; his feelings as a Christian had been outraged, and, although the remark was made simply and without affectation, it rang like the denunciation of a prophet, the speaker’s kind eyes kindled and his small, frail body seemed to grow in size. My mind went back to the Cathedral Church at Jassy one Easter Eve. There, for a time, had reigned the proper spirit; it had been fugitive, like all such moods. As Renan says: “On n’atteint l’idéal qu’un moment.”[50]
If Europe is not to relapse into a race of armaments, world politics must be controlled by forces less selfish and insidious. A more serious element is required in public life, an element which will represent the innumerable men and women who work with their hands and brains. These are the people who desire peace, who find and seek no profit in a state of war. They are neither revolutionaries nor faddists, they are workers; they protest against the Treaties as a flagrant violation of all principles of right, as an attempt to crush the spirit of the conquered peoples, to visit the crimes of “irresponsible Governments” on the heads of innocents; they denounce a policy in Russia which makes the Russian people pariahs, and despise the men who, before peace had been ratified with Germany, invited collaboration in the blockade of Russia from the men they had called the Huns.
A great fact in evolution has occurred, and now mankind is at the parting of the ways. Those who await a miracle or a hero to save them from themselves are unworthy citizens and use an idle form of speech when they talk of a new world. Old Europe’s suicide will culminate in world-wide chaos, unless Democracy asserts itself and counsels of wisdom and sanity prevail.