At the peace conference, when it was Germany’s turn to be heard, it was decided that the interests of all concerned were best served by precluding any discussion, and the German delegates, with revolution and starvation in their back, and with arms wrested from their hands by a promise, were left no alternative but to affix their signatures to the most violent peace treaty ever consummated. The commission, headed by Brockdorf-Rantzau and Scheidemann, resigned rather than sign, and a new delegation was named, which signed the treaty without being given an opportunity to discuss it. In the streets the German delegates were stoned.
Thus was realized the golden promise held out in the speech Mr. Wilson made on the very day that Congress met to declare war:
“We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering the war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old unhappy days when people were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interests of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools.”
When Germany, in 1871, had France prostrate at her feet, the French people were represented at the peace conference by their statesmen, just as France was represented at the Peace of Vienna after the fall of Napoleon in 1815. Mr. Wilson had said peace must not be determined as it was in the Congress of Vienna. Sir Foster Frazer furnishes the answer. In 1871 the terms of peace were arranged by Bismarck on one side and a full delegation of French statesmen on the other. Bismarck relented so far as to release back to France the great fortress of Belfort, claiming only the recession of Alsace-Lorraine and a war indemnity of five billion francs. So far from seeking to crush France, everything possible on the German side was done to enable her to recover from the war, and no sooner had Paris surrendered, than trainloads of foodstuffs were rushed into the city by the Germans to feed the starving population.
The European allies had first starved Germany, with a loss of 1,000,000 souls by famine, then severed portions of her territory whose possession antedated the American Revolution, on the ground of Mr. Wilson’s point in behalf of the self-determination of small nations, and on top of all left the country in helpless vassalage to her enemies, under a war indemnity that staggers humanity. Erzberger cried out in despair:
“I appeal to the conscience of America by reminding her of the American famine conditions in the years 1862-65. At that time it was Germany who sprang to America’s aid, and steadied her, sending her not only money, but clothes, shoes and machinery as well, thus making it possible for the United States to recuperate economically.
“Today, after half a century, the situation is reversed. Germany needs American wheat, fats, meats, gasoline, cotton and copper.
“Germany’s credit is low. If America today stood by Germany as Germany stood by America fifty years ago, she could furnish us foodstuffs and raw materials against German credits and thus help us to work ourselves out of debt—and, besides, make money in doing so.
“The German people cannot live on the promises they are getting.”