Generally speaking, in every claim the French representatives started from an extreme position, and that was not only a state of mind, it was a tactical measure. Later on, if they gave up any part of their claim, they had the air of yielding, of accepting a compromise. When their claims were of such an extreme nature that the anxiety they caused, the opposition they raised, was evident, Clemenceau put on an air of moderation and gave way at once. Sometimes, too, he showed moderation himself, when it suited his purpose, but in reality he only gave way when he saw that it was impossible to get what he wanted.
In points where English and American interests were not involved, given the difficult position in which Lloyd George was placed and Wilson's utter ignorance of all European questions, with Italy keeping almost entirely apart, the French point of view always came out on top, if slightly modified. But the original claim was always so extreme that the modification left standing the most radically severe measure against the conquered countries.
Many decisions affecting France were not sufficiently criticized on account of the relations in which the English and Americans stood to France; objections would have looked like ill-will, pleading the enemy's cause.
Previously, in nearly every case when peace was being made, the representatives of the conquered countries had been called to state their case, opportunity was given for discussion. The Russo-Japanese peace is an example. Undoubtedly the aggression of Russia had been unscrupulous and premeditated, but both parties participated in drawing up the peace treaty. At Paris, possibly for the first time in history, the destiny of the most cultured people in Europe was decided—or rather it was thought that it was being decided—without even listening to what they had to say and without hearing from their representatives if the conditions imposed could or could not possibly be carried out. Later on an exception, if only a purely formal one, was made in the case of Hungary, whose delegates were heard; but it will remain for ever a terrible precedent in modern history that, against all pledges, all precedents and all traditions, the representatives of Germany were never even heard; nothing was left to them but to sign a treaty at a moment when famine and exhaustion and threat of revolution made it impossible not to sign it.
If Germany had not signed she would have suffered less loss. But at that time conditions at home with latent revolution threatening the whole Empire, made it imperative to accept any solution, and all the more as the Germans considered that they were not bound by their signature, the decisions having been imposed by violence without any hearing being given to the conquered party, and the most serious decisions being taken without any real examination of the facts. In the old law of the Church it was laid down that everyone must have a hearing, even the devil: Etiam diabulus audiatur (Even the devil has the right to be heard). But the new democracy, which proposed to install the society of the nations, did not even obey the precepts which the dark Middle Ages held sacred on behalf of the accused.
Conditions in Germany were terribly difficult, and an army of two hundred thousand men was considered by the military experts the minimum necessary. The military commission presided over by Marshal Foch left Germany an army of two hundred thousand men, recruited by conscription, a Staff in proportion, service of one year, fifteen divisions, 180 heavy guns, 600 field-guns. That is less than what little States without any resources have now, three years after the close of the War. But France at once imposed the reduction of the German army to 100,000 men, no conscription but a twelve years' service of paid soldiers, artillery reduced practically to nothing, no heavy guns at all, very few field-guns. No opportunity was given for discussion, nor was there any. Clemenceau put the problem in such a way that discussion was out of the question: C'est la France qui, demain comme hier, sera face à l'Allemagne. Lloyd George and Colonel House confined themselves to saying that on this point France formally expressed their views, Great Britain and the United States had no right to oppose. Lloyd George was convinced that the measures were too extreme and had tried on May 23, 1919, to modify them; but France insisted on imposing on Germany this situation of tremendous difficulty.
I have referred to the military conditions imposed on Germany: destruction of all war material, fortresses and armament factories; prohibition of any trade in arms; destruction of the fleet; occupation of the west bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads for fifteen years; allied control, with wide powers, over the execution of the military and naval clauses of the treaty, with consequent subjection of all public administrations and private companies to the will of a foreigner, or rather of an enemy kept at the expense of Germany itself and at no small expense, etc. In some of the inter-allied conferences I have had to take note of what these commissions of control really are, and their absurd extravagance, based on the argument that the enemy must pay for everything.
The purport of France's action in the Conference was not to ensure safe military guarantees against Germany but to destroy her, at any rate to cut her up. And indeed, when she had got all she wanted and Germany was helpless, she continued the same policy, even intensifying it. Every bit of territory possible must be taken, German unity must be broken, and not only military but industrial Germany must be laid low under a series of controls and an impossible number of obligations.
All know how, in Article 428 of the treaty, it is laid down, as a guarantee of the execution of the treaty terms on the part of Germany, or rather as a more extended military guarantee for France, that German territory on the west bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads are to be occupied by allied and associated troops for fifteen years, methods and regulations for such occupation following in Articles 429 and 432.
This occupation not only gives deep offence to Germany (France has always looked back with implacable bitterness on the few months' military occupation by her Prussian conquerors in the war of 1870), but it paralyses all her activity and is generally judged to be completely useless.