[ [193] The Poles have universities in Cracow, Warsaw, Lvoff (Lemberg), Liublin, and will shortly open one in Posen. One Polish statesman entertains a novel and useful idea which will probably be tested in the University of Posen. Noticing that the greater the progress of technical knowledge the less is the advance made in the knowledge of men, which is perhaps the most pressing need of the new age, this statesman proposes to create a new type of university, where there would be two principal sections, one for the study of natural sciences and mathematics, and the other for the study of men, which would include biology, psychology, ethnography, sociology, philology, history, etc.
VIII
ITALY
Of all the problems submitted to the Conference, those raised by Italy's demands may truly be said to have been among the easiest. Whether placed in the light of the Fourteen Points or of the old system of the rights of the victors, they would fall into their places almost automatically. But the peace criteria were identical with neither of those principles. They consisted of several heterogeneous maxims which were invoked alternately, Mr. Wilson deciding which was applicable to the particular case under discussion. And from his judgment there was no appeal.
It is of the essence of statesmanship to be able to put oneself in the place—one might almost say in the skin—of the foreign peoples and governments with which one is called upon to deal. But the feat is arduous and presupposes a variety of conditions which the President was unable to fulfil. His conception of Europe, for example, was much too simple. It has been aptly likened to that of the American economist who once remarked to the manager of an English railway: "You Britishers are handicapped by having to build your railway lines through cities and towns. We go to work diligently: we first construct the road and create the cities afterward."
And Mr. Wilson happened just then to be in quest of a fulcrum on which to rest his idealistic lever. For he had already been driven by egotistic governments from several of his commanding positions, and people were gibingly asking whether the new political gospel was being preached only as a foil for backslidings. Thus he abandoned the freedom of the seas ... on which he had taken a determined stand before the world. Although he refused the Rhine frontier to France, he had reluctantly given way to M. Clemenceau in the matter of the Saar Valley, assenting to a monstrous arrangement by which the German inhabitants of that region were to be handed over to the French Republic against their expressed will, as a set-off for a sum in gold which Germany would certainly be unable to pay.[194] He doubtless foresaw that he would also yield on the momentous issue of Shantung and the Chino-Japanese secret treaty. In a word, some of his more important abstract tenets professed in words were being brushed aside when it came to acts, and his position was truly unenviable. Naturally, therefore, he seized the first favorable occasion to apply them vigorously and unswervingly. This was supplied by the dispute between Italy and Jugoslavia, two nations which he held, so to say, in the hollow of his hand.
The latter state, still in the making, depended for its frontiers entirely on the fiat of the American President backed by the Premiers of Britain and France. And of this backing Mr. Wilson was assured. Italy, although more powerful militarily than Jugoslavia, was likewise economically dependent upon the good-will of the two English-speaking communities, who were assured in advance of the support of the French Republic. If, therefore, she could not be reasoned or cajoled into obeying the injunctions of the Supreme Council, she could easily be made malleable by other means. In her case, therefore, Mr. Wilson's ethical notions might be fearlessly applied. That this was the idea which underlay the President's policy is the obvious inference from the calm, unyielding way in which he treated the Italian delegation. In this connection it should be borne in mind that there is no more important distinction between all former peace settlements and that of the Paris Conference than the unavowed but indubitable fact that the latter rests upon the hegemony of the English-speaking communities of the world, whereas the former were based upon the balance of power. So immense a change could not be effected without discreetly throwing out as useless ballast some of the highly prized dogmas of the accepted political creeds, even at the cost of impairing the solidarity of the Latin races. This was effected incidentally. As a matter of fact, the French are not, properly speaking, a Latin race, nor has their solidarity with Italy or Spain ever been a moving political force in recent times. Italy's refusal to fight side by side with her Teuton allies against France and her backers may conceivably be the result of racial affinities, but it has hardly ever been ascribed to that sentimental source. Sentiment in politics is a myth. In any case, M. Clemenceau discerned no pressing reason for making painful efforts to perpetuate the Latin union, while solicitude for national interests hindered him from making costly concessions to it.
Naturally the cardinal innovation of which this was a corollary was never invoked as the ground for any of the exceptional measures adopted by the Conference. And yet it was the motive for several, for although no allusion was made to the hegemony of Anglo-Saxondom, it was ever operative in the subconsciousness of the two plenipotentiaries. And in view of the omnipotence of these two nations, they temporarily sacrificed consistency to tactics, probably without conscientious qualms, and certainly without political misgivings. That would seem to be a partial explanation of the lengths to which the Conference went in the direction of concessions to the Great Powers' imperialist demands. France asked to be recognized and treated as the personification of that civilization for which the Allied peoples had fought. And for many reasons, which it would be superfluous to discuss here, a large part of her claim was allowed. This concession was attacked by many as connoting a departure from principle, but the deviation was more apparent than real, for under all the wrappings of idealistic catchwords lay the primeval doctrine of force. The only substantial difference between the old system and the new was to be found in the wielders of the force and the ends to which they intended to apply it. Force remains the granite foundation of the new ordering, as it had been of the old. But its employment, it was believed, would be different in the future from what it had been in the past. Concentrated in the hands of the English-speaking peoples, it would become so formidable a weapon that it need never be actually wielded. Possession of overwhelmingly superior strength would suffice to enforce obedience to the decrees of its possessors, which always will, it is assumed, be inspired by equity. An actual trial of strength would be obviated, therefore, at least so long as the relative military and economic conditions of the world states underwent no sensible change. To this extent the war specter would be exorcised and trying abuses abolished.
That those views were expressly formulated and thrown into the clauses of a secret program is unlikely. But it seems to be a fact that the general outlines of such a policy were conceived and tacitly adhered to. These outlines governed the action of the two world-arbiters, not only in the dictatorial decrees issued in the name of political idealism and its Fourteen Points, which were so bitterly resented as oppressive by Italy, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, and Greece, but likewise in those other concessions which scandalized the political puritans and gladdened the hearts of the French, the Japanese, the Jugoslavs, and the Jews. The dictatorial decrees were inspired by the delegates' fundamental aims, the concessions by their tactical needs—the former, therefore, were meant to be permanent, the latter transient.