The Inside Story of the Peace Conference

by Emile Joseph Dillon

Rumania, therefore, in requisitioning Hungarian property was formally in the wrong. On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that she, like other nations, was exasperated by the high-handed action of the Great Powers, who proceeded as though her good-will and loyalty were of no consequence to the pacification of eastern Europe.

After due deliberation the Supreme Council agreed upon the wording of a conciliatory message, not to the Rumanians, but to the Magyars, to be despatched to Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli. The gist of it was the old refrain, "to carry out the terms of the armistice[164] and respect the frontiers traced by the Supreme Council[165] and we will protect you from the Rumanians, who have no authority from us. We are sending forthwith an Inter-Allied military commission[166] to superintend the disarmament and see that the Rumanian troops withdraw."

It cannot be denied that the Rumanian conditions were drastic. But it should be remembered that the provocation amounted almost to justification. And as for the crime of disobedience, it will not be gainsaid that a large part of the responsibility fell on the shoulders of the lawgivers in Paris, whose decrees, coming oracularly from Olympian heights without reference to local or other concrete circumstances, inflicted heavy losses in blood and substance on the ill-starred people of Rumania. And to make matters worse, Rumania's official representatives at the Conference had been not merely ignored, but reprimanded like naughty school-children by a harsh dominie and occasionally humiliated by men whose only excuse was nervous tenseness in consequence of overwork combined with morbid impatience at being contradicted in matters which they did not understand. Other states had contemplated open rebellion against the big ferrule of the "bosses," and more than once the resolution was taken to go on strike unless certain concessions were accorded them. Alone the Rumanians executed their resolve.

Naturally the destiny-weavers of peoples and nations in Paris were dismayed at the prospect and apprehensive lest the Rumanians should end the war in their own way. They despatched three notes in quick succession to the Bucharest government, one of which reads like a peevish indictment hastily drafted before the evidence had been sifted or even carefully read. It raked up many of the old accusations that had been leveled against the Rumanians, tacked them on to the crime of insubordination, and without waiting for an answer—assuming, in fact, that there could be no satisfactory answer—summoned them to prove publicly by their acts that they accepted and were ready to execute in good faith the policy decided upon by the Conference.[167]

That note seemed unnecessarily offensive and acted on the Rumanians as a powerful irritant,[168] besides exposing the active members of the Supreme Council to scathing criticism. The Rumanians asked their Entente friends in private to outline the policy which they were accused of countering, and were told in reply that it was beyond the power of the most ingenious hair-splitting casuist to define or describe. "As for us," wrote one of the stanchest supporters of the Entente in French journalism, "who have followed with attention the labors and the utterances, written and oral, of the Four, the Five, the Ten, of the Supreme and Superior Councils, we have not yet succeeded in discovering what was the 'policy decided by the Conference.' We have indeed heard or read countless discourses pronounced by the choir-masters. They abound in noble thought, in eloquent expositions, in protests, and in promises. But of aught that could be termed a policy we have not found a trace."[169] This verdict will be indorsed by the historian.

The Rumanians seemed in no hurry to reply to the Council's three notes. They were said to be too busy dealing out what they considered rough and ready justice to their enemies, and were impatient of the intervention of their "friends." They seized rolling-stock, cattle, agricultural implements, and other property of the kind that had been stolen from their own people and sent the booty home without much ado. Work of this kind was certain to be accompanied by excesses and the Conference received numerous protests from the aggrieved inhabitants. But on the whole Rumania, at any rate during the first few weeks of the occupation, had the substantial sympathy of the largest and most influential section of the world's press. People declared that they were glad to see the haze of self-righteousness and cant at last dispelled by a whiff of wholesome egotism. From the outspoken comments of the most widely circulating journals in France and Britain the dictators in Paris, who were indignant that the counsels of the strong should carry so little weight in eastern Europe, could acquaint themselves with the impression which their efforts at cosmic legislation were producing among the saner elements of mankind.

In almost every language one could read words of encouragement to the recalcitrant Rumanians for having boldly burst the irksome bonds in which the peoples of the world were being pinioned. "It is our view," wrote one firm adherent of the Entente, "that having proved incapable of protecting the Rumanians in their hour of danger, our alliance cannot to-day challenge the safeguards which they have won for themselves."[170]

"If liberty had her old influence," one read in another popular journal,[171] "the Great Powers would not be bringing pressure to bear on Rumania with the object of saving Hungary from richly deserved punishment." "Instead of nagging the Rumanians," wrote an eminent French publicist, "they would do much better to keep the Turks in hand. If the Turks in despair, in order to win American sympathies, proclaim themselves socialists, syndicalists, or laborists, will President Wilson permit them to renovate Armenia and other places after the manner of Jinghiz Khan?"[172]

But what may have weighed with the Supreme Council far more than the disapproval of publicists were its own impotence, the undignified figure it was cutting, and the injury that was being done to the future League of Nations by the impunity with which one of the lesser states could thus set at naught the decisions of its creators and treat them with almost the same disrespect which they themselves had displayed toward the Rumanian delegates in Paris. They saw that once their energetic representations were ignored by the Bucharest government they were at the end of their means of influencing it. To compel obedience by force was for the time being out of the question. In these circumstances the only issue left them was to make a virtue of necessity and veer round to the Rumanian point of view as unobtrusively as might be, so as to tide over the transient crisis. And that was the course which they finally struck out.

Matters soon came to the culminating point. The members of the Allied Military Mission had received full powers to force the commanders of the troops of occupation to obey the decisions of the Conference, and when they were confronted with M. Diamandi, the ex-Minister to Petrograd, they issued their orders in the name of the Supreme Council. "We take orders here only from our own government, which is in Bucharest," was the answer they received. The Rumanians have a proverb which runs: "Even a donkey will not fall twice into the same quicksand," and they may have quoted it to General Gorton when refusing to follow the Allies after their previous painful experience. Then the mission telegraphed to Paris for further instructions.[173] In the meanwhile the Rumanian government had sent its answer to the three notes of the Council. And its tenor was firm and unyielding. Undeterred by menaces, M. Bratiano maintained that he had done the right thing in sending troops to Budapest, imposing terms on Hungary and re-establishing order. As a matter of fact he had rendered a sterling service to all Europe, including France and Britain. For if Kuhn and his confederates had contrived to overrun Rumania, the Great Powers would have been morally bound to hasten to the assistance of their defeated ally. The press was permitted to announce that the Council of Five was preparing to accept the Rumanian position. The members of the Allied Military Mission were informed that they were not empowered to give orders to the Rumanians, but only to consult and negotiate with them, whereby all their tact and consideration were earnestly solicited.