Mr. Balfour asserted optimistically[290] that the work of concluding peace with Germany was a very simple matter. None the less it took the Conference over five months to arrange it. So desperately slow was the progress of the Supreme Council that on the 213th day of the Peace Conference,[291] two months after the Germans had signed the conditions, not one additional treaty had been concluded, nay, none was even ready for signature. The Italian plenipotentiary, Signor Tittoni, thereupon addressed his colleagues frankly on the subject and asked them whether they were not neglecting their primary duty, which was to conclude treaties with the various enemies who had ceased to fight in November of the previous year and were already waiting for over nine months to resume normal life, and whether the delegates were justified in seeking to discharge the functions of a supreme board for the government of all Europe. He pointed out that nobody could hope to profit by the state of disorder and paralysis for which this procrastination was answerable, the economic effects making themselves felt sooner or later in every country. He added that the cost of the war had been calculated for every month, every week, every day, and that the total impressed every one profoundly; but that nobody had thought it worth his while to count up the atrocious cost of this incredibly slow peace and of the waste of wealth caused every week and month that it dragged on. Italy, he lamented, felt this loss more keenly than her partners because her peace had not yet been concluded. He felt moved, therefore, he said, to tell them that the business of governing Europe to which the Conference had been attending all those months was not precisely the work for which it was convoked.[292]
This sharp and timely admonition was the preamble of a motion. The Conference was just then about to separate for a "well-earned holiday," during which its members might renew their spent energies and return in October to resume their labors, the peoples in the meanwhile bearing the cost in blood and substance. The Italian delegate objected to any such break and adjured them to remain at their posts. Why, he asked, should ill-starred Italy, which had already sustained so many and such painful losses, be condemned to sacrifice further enormous sums in order that the delegates who had been frittering away their time tackling irrelevant issues, and endeavoring to rule all Europe, might have a rest? Why should they interrupt the sessions before making peace with Austria, with Hungary, with Bulgaria, with Turkey, and enabling Italy to return to normal life? Why should time and opportunity be given to the Turks and Kurds for the massacre of Armenian men, women, and children? This candid reminder is said to have had a sobering effect on the versatile delegates yearning for a holiday. The situation that evoked it will arouse the passing wonder of level-headed men.
It is worth recording that such was the atmosphere of suspicion among the delegates that the motives for this holiday were believed by some to be less the need of repose than an unavowable desire to give time to the Hapsburgs to recover the Crown of St. Stephen as the first step toward seizing that of Austria.[293] The Austrians desired exemption from the obligation to make reparations and pay crushing taxes, and one of the delegates, with a leaning for that country, was not averse to the idea. As the states that arose on the ruins of the Hapsburg monarchy were not considered enemies by the Conference, it was suggested that Austria herself should enjoy the same distinction. But the Italian plenipotentiaries objected and Signor Tittoni asked, "Will it perhaps be asserted that there was no enemy against whom we Italians fought for three years and a half, losing half a million slain and incurring a debt of eighty thousand millions?"
A French journal, touching on this Austrian problem, wrote:[294] "Austria-Hungary has been killed and now France is striving to raise it to life again. But Italy is furiously opposed to everything that might lead to an understanding among the new states formed out of the old possessions of the Hapsburgs. That, in fact, is why our transalpine allies were so favorable to the union of Austria with Germany. France on her side, whose one overruling thought is to reduce her vanquished enemy to the most complete impotence, France who is afraid of being afraid, will not tolerate an Austria joined to the German Federation." Here the principle of self-determination went for nothing.
Before the Conference had sat for a month it was angrily assailed by the peoples who had hoped so much from its love of justice—Egyptians, Koreans, Irishmen from Ireland and from America, Albanians, Frenchmen from Mauritius and Syria, Moslems from Aderbeidjan, Persians, Tartars, Kirghizes, and a host of others, who have been aptly likened to the halt and maimed among the nations waiting round the diplomatic Pool of Siloam for the miracle of the moving of the waters that never came.[295]
These peoples had heard that a great and potent world-reformer had arisen whose mission it was to redress secular grievances and confer liberty upon oppressed nations, tribes, and tongues, and they sent their envoys to plead before him. And these wandered about the streets of Paris seeking the intercession of delegates, Ministers, and journalists who might obtain for them admission to the presence of the new Messiah or his apostles. But all doors were closed to them. One of the petitioners whose language was vernacular English, as he was about to shake the dust of Paris from his boots, quoting Sydney Smith, remarked: "They, too, are Pharisees. They would do the Good Samaritan, but without the oil and twopence. How has it come to pass that the Jews without an official delegate commanded the support—the militant support—of the Supreme Council, which did not hesitate to tyrannize eastern Europe for their sake?"
Involuntarily the student of politics called to mind the report written to Baron Hager[296] by one of his secret agents during the Congress of Vienna: "Public opinion continues to be unfavorable to the Congress. On all sides one hears it said that there is no harmony, that they are no longer solicitous about the re-establishment of order and justice, but are bent only on forcing one another's hands, each one grabbing as much as he can.... It is said that the Congress will end because it must, but that it will leave things more entangled than it found them.... The peoples, who in consequence of the success, the sincerity, and the noble-mindedness of this superb coalition had conceived such esteem for their leaders and such attachment to them, and now perceive how they have forgotten what they solemnly promised—justice, order, peace founded on the equilibrium and legitimacy of their possessions—will end by losing their affection and withdrawing their confidence in their principles and their promises."
Those words, written a hundred and five years ago, might have been penned any day since the month of February, 1919.
The leading motive of the policy pursued by the Supreme Council and embodied in the Treaty was aptly described at the time as the systematic protection of France against Germany. Hence the creation of the powerful barrier states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Greater Rumania, and Greater Greece. French nationalists pleaded for further precautions more comprehensive still. Their contention was that France's economic, strategic, financial, and territorial welfare being the cornerstone of the future European edifice, every measure proposed at the Conference, whether national or general, should be considered and shaped in accordance with that, and consequently that no possibility should be accorded to Germany of rising again to a commanding position because, if she once recovered her ascendancy in any domain whatsoever, Europe would inevitably be thrust anew into the horrors of war. Territorially, therefore, the dismemberment of Germany was obligatory; the annexation of the Saar Valley, together with its six hundred thousand Teuton inhabitants, was necessary to France, and either the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine or its transformation into a detached state to be occupied and administered by the French until Germany pays the last farthing of the indemnity. Further, Austria must be deprived of the right of determining her own mode of existence and constrained to abandon the idea of becoming one of the federated states of the German Republic, and, if possible, northern Germany should be kept entirely separate from southern. The Allies should divide the Teutons in order to sway them. All Germany's other frontiers should be delimitated in a like spirit. And at the same time the work of knitting together the peoples and nations of Europe and forming them into a friendly sodality was to go forward without interruption.
"How to promote our interests in the Rhineland," wrote M. Maurice Barrès,[297] "is a life-and-death question for us. We are going to carry to the Rhine our military and, I hope, our economic frontier. The rest will follow in its own good time. The future will not fail to secure for us the acquiescence of the population of the Rhineland, who will live freely under the protection of our arms, their faces turned toward Paris."