FOOTNOTES

[1] Since writing this chapter, my attention has been called to a remarkably clear and frank article contributed by General Tasker H. Bliss, American military member of the Supreme Council, in the September, 1922, “Journal of International Law.” General Bliss quotes copiously from his own notes and correspondence to show that the Allied Premiers had begun to discuss the armistice on October 8, and that the French, British, and Italian military advisers were subject to higher political authority in fixing the terms of the armistice. General Bliss protested on purely military grounds. He believed that whether the Germans consented or not, no armistice should be proposed that did not render the enemy immediately impotent. The Entente Powers, according to General Bliss, allowed the military and naval terms of peace, which could have been communicated to the Germans within a few weeks after the armistice, to be withheld until the final treaty was ready seven months later. The unmilitary character of the armistice and peace negotiations was due to the fact that the Entente Powers were “out for loot,” as the General puts it, and were constantly suspicious of one another. From the beginning there were programs—but no common program!

[2] In his last great speech, on September 27, 1918, speaking of the work of the conference ahead, Mr. Wilson had said: “There must be a full acceptance of the principle that the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest. That is what we mean when we speak of a permanent peace.”

[3] Many observers, like myself, marveled at the change that came over Mr. Wilson between January and May. His vindictiveness, as brought out in the discussions over Polish frontiers, puzzled the British as well as the Americans. He had traveled far from the spirit of his message to Congress of December 4, 1917, in which he had said: “No nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong.... The wrongs ... committed in this war ... cannot and must not be righted by the commission of similar wrongs against Germany and her allies.”

[4] Shortly before the election of 1920, Mr. Wilson, in a public statement, denied having made any such statement. The words had been attributed to Mr. Wilson by Senator Spencer of Missouri, who was running for reëlection on the Republican ticket. The denial was given at St. Louis, thus showing that it was meant to influence the campaign. Because Senator Spencer had quoted from one of my articles in “The Century Magazine,” I was called upon to substantiate the citation. This I was able to do from the minutes of the eighth plenary session, a complete copy of which is in my possession. A curious refutation was attempted in the form of a newspaper despatch from Chicago purporting to give the exact transcription of the notes of Mr. Wilson’s confidential stenographer. But the official minutes did not misquote Mr. Wilson. They had been established very carefully, and had not been filed in French in M. Dutasta’s office at the secretariat of the conference until they had been submitted to the American delegation and approved by it. The words quoted here are what Mr. Wilson wanted to have put on official record as expressing his sentiment at the time. The whole context of Mr. Wilson’s speech, moreover, bears witness to the accuracy of the sentiment expressed in this extract.

[5] The comparatively trifling value of the Saar coal, when one thinks of the violence done to the sentiments of over half a million people, was first brought to my attention by a group of Alsatians, all of them thoroughly loyal to France, but who were opposed to the Saar clauses of the treaty. They told me in December, 1918, that the propaganda for separating the Saar from Germany was ill advised, both from the political and economic points of view. Politically, they were afraid of the reunited provinces being swamped with more Germans, who could easily cross the frontier from the Saar valley. Economically, they declared that the coal was of little value and that the clamor for the Saar mines was simply a prelude to the annexation of the Rhine provinces by France, to which all Alsatians were opposed. What they told me is borne out by an article in “The New York Times,” March 25, 1923, in which a consulting engineer, Mr. Walter Graham, says: “The Saar coal basin is almost useless; for the coal makes a very inferior coke and the mines are deep and gaseous, the veins thin, and the coal impure.”

[6] One hundred years of trial have made Americans feel that the Monroe Doctrine is not to be unthinkably and lightly surrendered. The Senators who questioned the Covenant of the League of Nations were on unassailable ground when they insisted upon a reservation to make clear Article XXI. How poorly this article was drafted is shown by a comparison of the English and French texts, which have quite a different meaning. One cannot be called a translation of the other. The French text reads: “Les engagements internationaux, tels que les traités d’arbitrage, et les ententes régionales, comme le doctrine de Monröe, qui assurent le maintien de la paix, ne sont considérés comme incompatibles avec aucune des dispositions du présente pacte.” The English text says: “Nothing in this Covenant shall be deemed to effect the validity of international engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine, for securing the maintenance of peace.” Which text is right? The defenders of the League are necessarily silent on this point. Of one thing we are sure, that from the American viewpoint, the Monroe Doctrine is neither an “entente régionale” or a “regional understanding.” It is simply a unilateral declaration of purpose, valid only because of our determination and ability to enforce it.

[7] The assertion, so often made, that the United States was offered a share in the exploitation of the Ottoman Empire, and that the opportunity to aid effectively in the solution of the Near Eastern problem was rejected by our refusal to accept President Wilson’s mandate scheme, is without foundation. No such offer was ever made by the Entente Powers. It was not their intention to grant us any mandate like their own in Asiatic Turkey. Within narrow limits that excluded the plains, the mines, the timber, and the oil-fields, the British, French, and Italian premiers would have been glad to see created an Armenian state, financed and protected by the Americans, to which they might deport the Armenians remaining in Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and which would serve as a buffer between their sphere of influence and Soviet Russia. This purpose is revealed in a memorandum of General Franchet d’Espérey to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which he summed up the resources of the regions inhabited by the Armenians. Citing the figures of agricultural and mining engineers, military observers, and railway experts, the general advocated the retention by France of Cilicia and the upper valley of the Euphrates, on the ground that this part of Armenia was a rich country that could be profitably exploited and easily defended, while it was geographically accessible from the Gulf of Alexandretta on the Mediterranean. The bare mountains of Armenia he declared to be without economic value and costly from the points of view of defense or the establishment of communications. He recommended that these regions should therefore be given to the United States!

[8] This statement is sure to be challenged by those who believe that Communism would have its fairest test in a small thickly populated industrial country like Belgium or larger industrial nations such as Germany and England. But we must remember that Communism does not appeal as strongly to Occidental peoples as to Slavs and peoples of Central Asiatic origin. In an Occidental industrial country the Bolshevist theory would have taken the form of State Socialism demanding to be immediately applied, and the suddenness and insistence of the challenge would have led to crushing failure within a few months, followed by a counter-revolution.