Where Are We Going?

by David Lloyd George

V THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES AND ITS CRITICS

I have had recently special opportunities for appreciating the extent to which the Treaty of Versailles has not been read by those who have formed very definite opinions concerning its qualities. There is no justification for a failure to peruse this great international instrument. It is the most important document of modern times. It has reshaped for better or for worse much of the geography of Europe. It has resurrected dead and buried nationalities. It constitutes the deed of manumission of tens of millions of Europeans who, up to the year of victory, 1918, were the bondsmen of other races. It affects profoundly the economics, the finance, the industrial and trade conditions of the world; it contains clauses upon the efficacy of which may depend the very existence of our civilisation. Nevertheless there are few who can tell you what is in the Treaty of Versailles. You might have thought that although men differed widely as to its merits, there would have been no difficulty in securing some measure of agreement as to its actual contents. Every endeavour was made to give full publicity to the draft when it was first presented to the Germans, and to the final document when signed. Even before the form of the draft was ever settled, the actual decisions were reported from day to day. Never was a treaty so reported and so discussed in every article and every particle of its constitution, and to-day you can procure an official copy of it from any bookseller for the moderate price of 2s. 6d. In spite of that no two men who happen to profess diverse opinions as to its justice or injustice can agree as to its contents.

A visitor to England in the year 1713 probably experienced the same perplexity in seeking information from a Whig and a Tory respectively as to the Treaty of Utrecht. So this treaty has become one of those fiercely debated subjects, as to which the contestants deliberately refuse to regard any testimony, or recognise the existence of any fact, which is in the least inconsistent with their particular point of view. It has come to pass that the real Treaty of Versailles has already disappeared, and several imaginary versions have emerged. It is around these that the conflict rages.

In France there exist at least two or three schools of thought concerning the Versailles Treaty. There is one powerful section which has always regarded it as a treasonable pact, in which M. Clemenceau gave away solid French rights and interests in a moment of weakness under pressure from President Wilson and myself. That is the Poincaré-Barthou-Pertinax school. That is why they are now, whilst in form engaged in enforcing the treaty, in fact carrying out a gigantic operation for amending it without consulting the other signatories. This has come out very clearly in the remarkable report from a French official in the Rhineland which was disclosed in the London Observer. It is obvious from this paper that whilst the French government have worked their public into a frenzied state of indignation over the failure of Germany to carry out the Treaty of Versailles, they were the whole time deliberately organising a plot to overthrow that treaty themselves. Their representative on the Rhine was spending French money with the consent of the French government to promote a conspiracy for setting up an independent republic on the Rhine under the protection of France. It was a deliberate attempt by those who disapproved of the moderation of the Treaty of Versailles to rewrite its clauses in the terms of the militarist demands put forward by Marshal Foch at the Peace conference. Marshal Foch, the soul of honour, wanted to see this done openly and straightforwardly. What he would have done like the gentleman he is, these conspirators would have accomplished by deceit—by deceiving their Allies and by being faithless to the treaty to which their country had appended its signature. That is one French school of thought on the Treaty of Versailles. It is the one which has brought Europe to its present state of confusion and despair.

There is the second school which reads into the treaty powers and provisions which it does not contain, and never contemplated containing. These critics maintain stoutly that M. Briand, and all other French prime ministers, with the exception of M. Poincaré, betrayed their trust by failing to enforce these imaginary stipulations. They still honestly believe that M. Poincaré is the first French minister to have made a genuine attempt to enforce French rights under the treaty.

In the background there is a third school which knows exactly what the treaty means, but dares not say so in the present state of French opinion. Perhaps they think it is better to bide their time. That time will come, and when it does arrive, let us hope it will not be too late to save Europe from the welter.

In America there are also two or three divergent trends of opinion about this treaty. One regards it as an insidious attempt to trap America into the European cockpit, so as to pluck its feathers to line French and English bolsters. If anything could justify so insular an estimate it would be the entirely selfish interpretation which is put upon the treaty by one or two of the Allied governments. The other American party, I understand, defends it with vigour as a great human instrument second only in importance to the Declaration of Independence. There may be a third which thinks that on the whole it is not a bad settlement, and that the pity is a little more tact was not displayed in passing it through the various stages of approval and ratification. This party is not as vocal as the others.

In England we find at least three schools. There are the critics who denounce it as a brutal outrage upon international justice. It is to them a device for extorting incalculable sums out of an impoverished Germany as reparation for damages artificially worked up. Then there is the other extreme—the "die-hard" section—more influential since it became less numerous, who think the treaty let Germany off much too lightly. In fact they are in complete agreement with the French Chauvinists as to the reprehensible moderation of its terms. In Britain also there is a third party which regards its provisions as constituting the best settlement, when you take into account the conflicting aims, interests, and traditions of the parties who had to negotiate and come to an agreement.