Again, language statistics, even when trustworthy, do not necessarily yield a sharp dividing line. There may be more than two significant elements in the population, or, as in parts of the Balkans and Asia Minor, villages of different speech may be interspersed in a checkerboard fashion.
Finally, language, even when accurately ascertained, is not a certain test of political affiliation. There has been a strong pro-French tradition among the German-speaking Alsatians. The small German-speaking districts of Belgium are not pro-German.
After all, it is the opinion of the people concerned which we wish to ascertain with respect to a given frontier, and language is important chiefly as a guide to that. Unequivocal expressions of popular opinion are, however, hard to reach, especially in times of stress and in regions that are under dispute. At best a plebiscite may be but a poor indication of real opinion, and the opinion it registers well may be only transitory. Moreover, caution may be required in giving effect to a vote or an otherwise well ascertained expression of opinion. Thus it is open to debate whether the vote of a small district should necessarily carry with it the disposal of a great key deposit of mineral wealth which concerns a much wider constituency. It is also possible that in the long run commercial intercourse and economic interest may create ties more lasting than language or national sentiment, and that a given boundary may do more ultimate harm by violating the fundamental economic interests of a region than by violating its momentary political sentiments.
Again, the political sentiment of the moment may run counter to strong historic forces, as in Bohemia, where the considerable German element has been settled for centuries, so that its incorporation with adjacent German-speaking countries would tear apart the historic unity of the Czech state. Indeed, it is a nice question how far it was the task of the Peace Conference to right ancient territorial wrongs. “The wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine” was a clear case for rectification, if only because, in President Wilson’s phrase, it had “unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years.” Much the same could be said for the restoration of North Schleswig, seized by Prussia in 1864, and even for Poland, though its destruction dates back to the eighteenth century. On the other hand, more recent acts of injustice, such as the Prussian annexations of 1814, the Conference left untouched, except on the Belgian frontier, evidently considering them as internal German questions which time had adjusted. Some notion of prescription had evidently to be admitted, else in seeking to right ancient wrongs the Conference would have done a greater wrong by introducing confusion into every part of the world. The only noteworthy attempt to reach far back into history would be the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, now inhabited by a preponderantly Mohammedan and Christian population. Here, as in many parts of eastern Europe, religion becomes an important element in national cleavage.
In general, the Paris Conference was disposed to give more weight to the principle of nationality, in its broader historic sense, than to economic or strategic considerations. This idea of nationality runs through the programme of President Wilson, which the members of the Conference had accepted in advance. It is, of course, easier to set peoples free from their rulers than from economic necessity, and the creation of new political frontiers undoubtedly complicates questions of trade and commercial policy. Nevertheless, it is a curious inconsistency that some who are most eager to find discrepancies between the programme of the Conference and its achievements should at the same time propose to destroy the economic and political independence of the newly liberated peoples of central Europe and the Balkans by imposing on them a compulsory customs union after the manner of Germany’s Mitteleuropa.[5]
Finally, the nature of the frontiers to be drawn at Paris depended on the kind of world for which they were to be made. If Europe was to continue to be an armed camp, divided between two competing systems of alliances, then the strongest possible military frontiers would be required—along the Rhine and the Danube, in the Alps and in the Balkans—, and the strategic element must preponderate in every boundary. If, on the other hand, some better form of international organization could be found through a League of Nations, however rudimentary, strategic considerations could drop into the background in favor of the economic convenience and the political desires of the people concerned. If colonial rivalries were to be reduced in the interest of world peace, the German colonies ought to be subjected to some international control, and they could not be internationalized without creating some international authority. An international control of ports and rivers might affect the whole problem of access to the sea, while areas of special tension or perplexity, like Danzig or the Saar valley, might be placed under some form of international administration such as commissions of the League of Nations. This explains why the problem of the League could not be postponed until after the conclusion of peace, but formed an integral part of the negotiations and of the treaty itself. At every turn the problem of the League of Nations obtruded itself, and the elaboration of the plan for a League facilitated, instead of hindering, the work of the Conference.
In addition to the fundamental principle of self-determination expressed in President Wilson’s speeches, Germany and the Allies had accepted his specific Fourteen Points as the basis of the negotiations. This immensely simplified the task of the Conference in certain directions, and gave a firm ground for discussion wherever these applied; but much was required in the way of interpretation, extension, supplementing, and application before the two pages of the Fourteen Points could grow into the two hundred pages of the treaty with Germany and the correspondingly long texts of the other treaties. The Fourteen Points did not cover the whole field, and even where they were clearly and directly applicable, much knowledge and much negotiation were required to put them into effect.
The Congress of Vienna had its Statistical Commission, one of the most successful parts of the Congress, which collected the statistical data for parcelling out peoples among the various princes. It was limited, however, to statistics of population, the counting of heads being the only basis there admitted in the balancing of territorial adjustments. The Paris Conference needed a far larger and more varied body of knowledge, not only because it covered every part of the world, but because its declared principles necessitated information of every sort respecting the history, traditions, aspirations, ethnology, government, resources, and economic conditions of the peoples with which it was to deal.
Information the Conference had in huge quantities, literally by the ton. It came in every day in scores of foreign newspapers, in masses of pamphlets, in piles of diplomatic reports and despatches. Every special interest was on hand, eager to present its case orally to the Conference or its commissions, to enlighten personally the commissioners or their subordinates, to hand in endless volumes of more or less trustworthy ethnographical maps and statistics, of pictures and description, of propagandist matter of every conceivable sort. A steady head, a critical judgment, and a considerable background of fact were required to keep one’s vision clear amidst this mass of confusing and conflicting material.