Peaceless Europe

by Francesco Saverio Nitti

Clemenceau's reply, issued a few days later, contains the French point of view, and has an ironical note when it touches on the weak points in Lloyd George's argument. The War, says the French note, was not a European war; Germany's eyes were fixed on world power, and she saw that her future was on the sea. There is no necessity to show consideration regarding territorial conditions in Europe. By taking away her commercial fleet, her colonies and her foreign markets more harm is done to Germany than by taking European territory. To pacify her (if there is any occasion for doing so) she must be offered commercial satisfaction. At this point the note, in considering questions of justice and of mere utility, becomes distinctly ironical.

Having decided to bring to life new States, especially Poland and Czeko-Slovakia, why not give them safe frontiers even if some Germans or Magyars have to be sacrificed?

One of Clemenceau's fixed ideas is that criterions of justice must not be applied to Germans. The note says explicitly that, given the German mentality, it is by no means sure that the conception of justice of Germany will be the same as that of the Allies.

On another occasion, after the signing of the treaty, when Lloyd George pointed out the wisdom of not claiming from Germany the absurdity of handing over thousands of officers accused of cruelty for judgment by their late enemies, and recognized frankly the impossibility of carrying out such a stipulation in England, Clemenceau replied simply that the Germans are not like the English.

The delicate point in Clemenceau's note is the contradiction in which he tries to involve the British Prime Minister between the clauses of the treaty concerning Germany outside Europe, in which no moderation had been shown, and those regarding Germany in Europe, in which he himself did not consider moderation either necessary or opportune.

There was an evident divergence of views, clearing the way for a calm review of the conditions to be imposed, and here two countries could have exercised decisive action: the United States and Italy.

But the United States was represented by Wilson, who was already in a difficult situation. By successive concessions, the gravity of which he had not realized, he found himself confronted by drafts of treaties which in the end were contradictions of all his proposals, the absolute antithesis of the pledges he had given. It is quite possible that he had not seen where he was going, but his frequent irritation was the sign of his distress. Still, in the ship-wreck of his whole programme, he had succeeded in saving one thing, the Statute of the League of Nations which was to be prefaced to all the treaties. He wanted to go back to America and meet the Senate with at least something to show as a record of the great undertaking, and he hoped and believed in good faith that the Covenant of the League of Nations would sooner or later have brought about agreement and modified the worst of the mistakes made. His conception of things was academic, and he had not realized that there was need to constitute the nations before laying down rules for the League; he trusted that bringing them together with mutual pledges would further most efficiently the cause of peace among the peoples. On the other hand, there was diffidence, shared by both, between Wilson and Lloyd George, and there was little likelihood of the British Prime Minister's move checking the course the Conference had taken.

Italy might have done a great work if its representatives had had a clear policy. But, as M. Tardieu says, they had no share in the effective doings of the Conference, and their activity was almost entirely absorbed in the question of Fiume. The Conference was a three-sided conversation between Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George, and the latter had hostility and diffidence on each side of him, with Italy—as earlier stated—for the most part absent. Also, it was just then that the divergence between Wilson and the Italian representatives reached its acute stage. The essential parts of the treaty were decided in April and the beginning of May, on April 22 the question of the right bank of the Rhine, on the 23rd or 24th the agreement about reparations. Italy was absent, and when the Italian delegates returned to Paris without being asked on May 6, the text of the treaty was complete, in print. In actual fact, only one person did really effective work and directed the trend of the Conference, and that person was Clemenceau.

The fact that the Conference met in Paris, that everything that was done by the various delegations was known, even foreseen so that it could be opposed, discredited, even destroyed by the Press beforehand—a thing which annoyed Lloyd George so much that at one time he thought seriously of leaving the Conference—all this gave an enormous advantage to the French delegation and especially to Clemenceau who directed the Conference's work.

All his life Clemenceau has been a tremendous destroyer. For years and years he has done nothing but overthrow Governments with a sort of obstinate ferocity. He was an old man when he was called to lead the country, but he brought with him all his fighting spirit. No one detests the Church and detests Socialism more than he; both of these moral forces are equally repulsive to his individualistic spirit. I do not think there is any man among the politicians I have known who is more individualistic than Clemenceau, who remains to-day the man of the old democracy. In time of war no one was better fitted than he to lead a fighting Ministry, fighting at home, fighting abroad, with the same feeling, the same passion. When there was one thing only necessary in order to beat the enemy, never to falter in hatred, never to doubt the sureness of victory, no one came near him, no one could be more determined, no one more bitter. But when War was over, when it was peace that had to be ensured, no one could be less fitted for the work. He saw nothing beyond his hatred for Germany, the necessity for destroying the enemy, sweeping away every bit of his activity, bringing him into subjection. On account of his age he could not visualize the problems of the future; he could only see one thing necessary, and that was immediate, to destroy the enemy and either destroy or confiscate all his means of development. He was not nationalist or imperialist like his collaborators, but before all and above all one idea lived in him, hatred for Germany; she must be rendered barren, disembowelled, annihilated.