The Treaty of Versailles has then no elements either of permanence or of peace; because it runs counter both to facts and to forces both in the region of national and in that of international relationships.
In the national region it stultifies its own objects most effectively. Now nationalist idealism, though existing in Germany to-day only among the conservative gentry and a small section of upper-class progressives, is not a negligible quantity. For nationalism has control of the whole Coalition Government, the whole Press, with the exception of a few opposition Labour papers, and the whole of the Frei-Corps and the armed police. Owing to our continuation of a state of war after the armistice, the German Government has, by a logical process it would take too long to trace, become purely nationalist, instead of mainly socialist and internationalist. More than that, it has come into collision with Socialism and the German Revolution in its efforts to maintain a régime such as we would recognise. The nationalist forces, that it relies on to maintain parliamentary party government and the supremacy of the propertied class to the exclusion both of Council Government and of a possible supremacy of the proletariat, were, in the first place, the more liberal bureaucracy and the officers, and in the second place the "Frei-Corps." But as pointed out already the Treaty we imposed on Germany forced out of the Government all the better elements of the bureaucratic and bourgeois classes. While the "Frei-Corps" with which the Government now holds all the principal towns under military rule have as moral ideals patriotism, privilege and property, and as material inducements high pay and quadruple rations. They embody not only the survivors of the officer caste, but also the young burghers and students, hitherto the Young Guard of revolution. Their formation was due partly to our delusion that a professional army is necessarily democratic because we have one, and that a short service militia is necessarily militarist because Germany used that method for its recovery a century ago; and partly to a reaction against the revolution in Germany itself. By now they have become the foundation of the present parliamentary régime. But the Treaty requires their reduction from over 400,000 to a quarter of that number, while it utterly discredits the nationalist Government by imposing on it humiliations such as no modern nation has ever yet undergone. Therefore, while our policy requires the maintenance of the present German parliamentarians and their police as the only possible native agents for the realisation of our economic exploitation of Germany, our procedure renders their retention of power materially and morally impossible. As I myself think that the economic policy is as shortsighted as it is wrongheaded, I do not regret that the territorial and military provisions will, unless materially modified, prevent any possibility of realising any part of it. That they will shortly revive racial and religious frontier wars in which we shall probably be involved is a minor matter. Better we should lose more men and millions in expeditions to subject frontier provinces to their racial and religious enemies, than try to subjugate all Germany to our imperial system as we apparently aspire to do in the economic and financial clauses.
In the international region also the Treaty has similarly stultified itself. It depends for its execution on the acceptance by Germany not only of its provisions but of the principles on which it is based. These principles assume that Germany will conform Constitutionally to the European system that we are setting up. That is that Germany will have a parliamentary government in which the upper and middle classes will preponderate. This Germany was quite prepared to do, and regarded its revolution chiefly as the qualification for admission to the Allied system on an equal footing. Parliamentary Government meant to Germany last winter not so much liberty as equality and fraternity—equality in the world's markets and fraternity in a League of Nations. In other words, peace and food. When Germany found that it was to be excluded from the League and outlawed, parliamentary government à l'anglaise was left without a leg to stand on. It lost its right leg because nationalists reverted to militarism and its left leg because internationalists turned towards Sovietism. It can fairly be said that the Weimar Assembly and the National Government that signed the Treaty of Peace represented no German force but merely German weakness. If the Treaty is ever to be enforced it can only be so through the Reichstag, and what it stands for, and yet the Treaty has gone out of its way to weaken the Reichstag.
In respect of such criticisms I am continually being told by my quondam diplomatic colleagues that they quite agree, but that they could get nothing better; and, given the conditions under which they worked at Paris, they think that things might have been much worse. And this seems to be the line also of the American delegation, with the exception of some bolder younger spirits who broke off into open opposition. Of course, given these conditions, they could do no better. But that's just what they ought to have provided against. Every diplomatist knows, or ought to know, that the result of his negotiations will depend on two things; his success in interpreting to and impressing on his foreign surroundings the forces he represents whether they be ironclads or ideals; and his success in selecting such surroundings as will be most effectively impressed. It is mainly because they have not learnt the second part of this lesson that American diplomatists fail. It was a great discovery when we found after years of negotiation at Washington in which either nobody got any forrarder at all or we got altogether the worst of it, that it was only necessary to transfer the venue to The Hague or Paris or London, and American diplomacy collapsed. I am not going into detail, interesting though it might be. But I used to explain it to myself by analysing American diplomacy as an attitude of business instincts and moral ideals which felt itself absurd in the cold, courtly, and cynical atmosphere of diplomacy; so, instead of imposing its own rules and standards, it either became helpless or tried hurriedly to adapt and adjust itself. We have only to read the memoirs of American Ambassadors to see that it takes a Benjamin Franklin to realise that broadcloth and beaver are more effective at Court than gold lace and a feathered hat. For it is this and nothing more that explains how an American failed in the greatest political opportunity offered to mortal man in modern times. And if President Wilson, with all the trumps in his hands, could win so few tricks and left the table politically bankrupt, it may seem perhaps absurd to have expected anything from our liberal representatives, tied and bound abroad by the chains of their secret treaties, tethered and burdened at home by their dependence on a conservative clique and on an imperialist newspaper proprietor.
Yet, those of our rulers who wanted a real peace treaty not a mere truce for dividing the spoils, ought to have known, what the Americans did not, that no peace could be got through a diplomatic conference at Paris. They should, in the first place, have secured a real representation of the popular forces of the British Empire, and in the second place, a forum where those forces could take effect. Public opinion had already provided the foundation of such a forum in the demand for a League of Nations. The proper procedure, obviously, was to stop hostilities, subject to guarantees, and to set up a League of Nations that should make peace. It would have taken little longer to get together than did the diplomatic delegations, and would certainly have taken no longer in reaching a result. Both its constitution and its conclusions would probably have been resisted to the verge of rupture by the French and Italian Governments; but would, with the moral sanction of the League and with the urgent pressure of the military situation, have been easily enforced by the British and Americans. MM. Clemenceau and Tardieu could override Messrs. Lloyd George and Philip Kerr easily enough, for, after all, the former do stand for forces, the latter are merely phenomena. They could even override Messrs. Wilson and Lansing, for though these did represent real forces, they could not reproduce them in Paris. But mixed French and Italian delegations of all parties would have offered points of contact to British and American Liberals and even to German and Russian Socialists. The cleavages between the various national interests would have been bridged and an internationalist cement introduced to counteract the imperialist cleavages. Of course, such a body would not have elaborated the details of peace in a plenary debate. It would have proceeded as national Constituent Assemblies always have done after civil war. It would have debated and approved general principles for its own permanent constitution and the resettlement of Europe, and referred them for elaboration to committees controlling the diplomatic experts.
It will be objected that such a new and untried institution could never have succeeded where the fine flower of diplomacy failed, or would have been merely a stalking horse for diplomatic intrigue and imperialistic interests. But an institution is strong in proportion to the public powers it has acquired and the public acquiescence in them: not in proportion to its degree of constitutional development, or the perfection of its machinery. A British parish council, with its carefully defined powers, can do little and does nothing. A German revolutionary communal council could do anything and does a good deal. The League of Nations would have given the Americans a means of expressing their moral and neutral policies and of exercising the pressure that President Wilson would not or could not apply. Even if the League had not succeeded in imposing respect for his "fourteen points" on the diplomats, and it might have done so, it would at least have regulated procedure. We should not have had vital decisions reached in a few minutes' talk one afternoon, and reversed for some unknown reason the next, without reference to expert conclusions or regard for principle and precedent. Also this procedure would have made it possible to deal with our main obstacles to a permanent peace, the secret treaties. We could not escape from these national diplomatic obligations in a diplomatic conference of national delegates. But we could have got a dispensation from them had they been referred to a supreme international and super-diplomatic authority. No doubt this procedure would have affected such questions as the international status of Germany and Ireland or India. Germany would have been admitted to the League in time to take part in arranging its own penalties and we should thereby have got the best guarantee possible for the permanence of the peace in respect to Germany. The Peace Treaty would thus have become a compact instead of a Coercion Act. As to Ireland, it is outside my scope: but as our national authority avowedly finds reconciliation of the two Irish factions insoluble, there would seem to be no great harm in trying what an international authority could do.
On such lines as this, a League of Nations might have been established. As things are the League is, of course, no more than an alliance to enforce the imperialist and nationalist decisions of Paris on conquered races, and to combat revolution. It is a combination of a Balkan League and a Holy Alliance. The effect of this prostitution of a public ideal to the profiteering of the Paris conclave has made the peace as disastrous morally to Europe as was the war materially. The Treaties have, for a time, Bolshevised Eastern Europe, Balkanised Central Europe and Bottomleyised Western Europe.
But here we are concerned with the effect on Germany. And if it be objected that it does not matter what Germany thinks of it, I reply that the test of the League's utility will be the confidence that it can inspire in the former enemy States. Unless Germans, Bulgars, and even Bolsheviks, see in it something more than a League against themselves, they will not accept its authority and we are back on a basis of a balance of power.
Our relations with Germany in this respect are especially important. We went into the war for international ideals—the defence of France and the abolition of militarism; and, having fought it to a conclusion, we allowed our rulers to substitute for that internationalism the worst form of imperialism. Germany went into the war for imperialist ideals, or, at best, for nationalist ideals; but after defeat replaced those ideals by an internationalism involving the acceptance of international control by a League of Nations. That internationalist point of view is still held by the German people, though no one would think it from the character of their present Government, and the tone of their Press.
The internationalist point of view of the German people has so far failed to find expression for two reasons: one was the pressure of Allied imperialism, the other the partial failure of the German Revolution through the innate political incapacity of the people. The armistice, while nominally suspending hostilities, really continued the war on national lines. This treaty, while nominally restoring peace, really continues the war on imperial lines. Under these conditions German internationalism could scarcely survive except among the working class, where it was too deeply rooted in the realities of life for any poison gas from Paris to kill it. But, except among the workmen and their idealist leaders, the Independent Socialists, the feeling that the world in general, and Germany in particular, was at the mercy of the imperialist and nationalist elements among the victors caused the abandonment of the new protestantism—internationalism, and reversion to the old orthodoxy—nationalism. This recantation was indeed in response to intimations from Paris that Germany was expected to renounce the devil Bolshevism and all its works. That the realisation of the German Revolution, whether it is the work of a devil or no, is the one and only protection for Germany against Bolshevism is, of course, beyond the political penetration of Paris.