During the sitting of the women’s Conference the Treaty of Versailles was published. The outrage upon the conscience of mankind which it revealed, and the stain upon the reputation of the Allies which it was, pledged to build upon fourteen fundamentals, every one of which was violated or ignored, stunned and stung the Conference into misery first and indignant protest afterwards. On the morning after the publication of the Treaty a unanimous declaration was made, proposed by myself, against the Treaty of Versailles. Lest the cynic should smile at the speed with which the Conference arrived at its conclusion on a matter which had occupied the Conference in Paris for seven months, I should like to point out two things. First, we had a clear idea in our minds of the essentials which the peace should contain. President Wilson and the British Prime Minister had helped us there. As for the elaborate clauses and fine details of the Treaty: more than one of the delegates had spent the best part of a day and the whole of a summer night digesting these for the morrow’s debate. As a matter of historic interest I insert the first public declaration against the Treaty by any body of people in the world.
“This International Congress of Women expresses its deep regret that the terms of peace proposed at Versailles should so seriously violate the principles upon which alone a just and lasting peace can be secured and which the democracies of the world had come to accept.
“By guaranteeing the fruits of the secret treaties to the conquerors, the terms of peace tacitly sanction secret diplomacy, deny the principle of self-determination, recognize the right of the victors to the spoils of war, and create all over Europe discords and animosities which can only lead to future wars.
“By the demand for the disarmament of one set of belligerents only the principle of justice is violated, and the rule of force is continued. By the financial and economic proposals a hundred million people of this generation in the heart of Europe are condemned to poverty, disease and despair which must result in the spread of hatred and anarchy within each nation.
“With a deep sense of responsibility this Congress strongly urges the Allied and Associated Governments to accept such amendments of the terms as shall bring the Peace into harmony with the principles first enumerated by President Wilson, upon the faithful carrying out of which the honour of the Allied peoples depends.”
I left the Conference that day in the company of one of the most brilliant of living Germans. He had never been optimistic about the Peace. He was more than half in sympathy with the militarist point of view although a sincere internationalist. It was not any fighting proclivity which had shaped his opinion. He hated violence for the vulgar, futile thing it is. But an inherited capacity for facing realities, and a cultivated habit of looking squarely at facts, led him to severe criticism of those he contemptuously spoke of as idealists. He was an idealist himself after a fashion; but his ideal was not of the complexion of that exemplified in the conference of women. He had no use for democracy. He spoke openly of the stupid, ignorant thing which, he alleged, most people really believe it to be if they were honest with themselves and the rest of the world. He differed from those who acknowledge frankly the weaknesses of democracy, but who, recognizing its inevitability, hope that with education and organization it need not to all eternity be the victim of the cunning and the corrupt. He believed democracy to be the predestined victim of power till the end of time. His ideal was the domination of mankind by a few great empires, commonwealths, call them what you will, British, German, Russian and American. The small nationalities he regarded as a nuisance. He was bitterly hostile to those British delegates who contemplated complacently the break-up of the British Empire. He would have applauded the dissertations of Dean Inge on “the squalid anarchy of democracy,” laughed to scorn the idea of an entirely independent India, Egypt, Ireland, and through all his pain at the destruction of the German Empire, pleaded for the preservation of that of Great Britain.
For the “strong men” of England he had the warmest admiration. To my astonishment, before I knew him properly, he expressed an equal regard for M. Clemenceau. “What!” I exclaimed, “the man who is doing his best to ruin Germany? Or, at least, to benefit France in such a way that only the ruin of Germany can result? You astonish me!”
“But why not?” he replied. “In Clemenceau there is a man who knows what he wants and means to get it; who looks for the attainable and means to attain it. When did you read from Clemenceau a speech full of delightful and impossible pledges and promises? Has Clemenceau disguised the real objects of this war under a cover of fine and deceptive phrases? All he cares about is France. He would stop at nothing to advance the interests of France. One can understand a point of view like that. It is cruel. It hurts Germany. Very well. That is sad for Germany; but, at least, with such a man we know where we are and what to expect. If that is nothing, it is better to expect nothing and get it than to expect much and be disappointed. Clemenceau knows that in strangling Germany he will satisfy the immediate demands of France. That is all he cares about. This is the present. The future is far away, indefinite. New events will shape and govern that. For the present it is France, only France, all the time France; and for the rest? N’importe! It is an intelligible point of view.”
There was a long pause during which I marvelled for the hundredth time at the amazing facility for languages of the cultivated European.