Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

From this moment, Mr. Wilson was lost altogether. At first he fought valiantly for his peace program, but he gradually yielded on this point and on that until there was nothing left of his Fourteen Points, which were supposed to be the basis upon which peace was to be built. He justified his concessions to practical international politics by the expression of his firm belief in the corrective power of the League of Nations. Whether Mr. Wilson acted wisely or was justified in his sublime faith in the League Covenant are not questions that enter into this narrative. The aftermath of one of his most criticized yieldings to expediency, that of Shantung, has seemingly vindicated this compromise. But there can be no question that the conference did not use President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points and subsequent discourses, notably that of September 27, 1918,” as the guiding principles of the treaties.

The session of the Council of Four continued week after week, not always harmoniously. Secrecy could not be maintained, for example, in regard to Mr. Lloyd George’s refusal to accept the recommendation of the Commission on Eastern Frontiers of Germany, which recommended that large districts whose population was more than 90 per cent. German be given to Poland. President Wilson was not interested in self-determination for the Germans.[3] But he became a champion of the Jugoslavs, opposed bitterly the Italian solution of the Adriatic question, and finally attempted to appeal to the people of Italy on the Fiume question over the head of their Government. This led to the withdrawal of the Italian delegation.

Great Britain and France were bound to Italy by the treaty of 1915. While Fiume was not included in the rewards promised Italy by that treaty, northern Dalmatia was. The British and French advised the Italians not to press all their claims, but declared that they were ready to stand by their treaty engagements. Similarly, Mr. Wilson found himself isolated when the question of Shantung came up. He made himself the champion of China, but was confronted with the pledges given by the three Entente Powers to Japan. Mr. Wilson later explained he had not known of the existence of these treaties or of the agreements relating to the Ottoman Empire. But they had been published as early as 1917!

Between the middle of January and the end of April there were only five plenary sessions of the conference, three of them devoted to the League of Nations and one to international labor. No important question of peace had been brought before the conference as a whole, and most of the delegates knew only what the newspapers printed concerning the character of the treaty to be handed to the Germans. The delegates of the nations vitally interested knew little or nothing about the terms of the other treaties. The Council of Ten, and then the Big Four, had assumed authority and responsibility. They had made the decisions on all important questions: reparations, punishments, boundary-lines, disarmament, transportation, and various economic matters. Far East and Near East, the Pacific islands and Africa, as well as the various questions of Europe, had passed in review before the three Entente premiers and President Wilson. Details had been worked out by commissions, but these in turn reflected the foreign policies of the Entente powers. Only the League Covenant was given publicity and submitted in its various stages to the delegates as a whole.

The sixth plenary session was a private one, held on May 5, when the draft of the Treaty of Versailles was submitted to those who were supposed to have made it. There were protests on minor points. The major protest came from the Chinese, who declared that they could not sign the treaty if it contained the Shantung provisions, and from Marshal Foch, who announced that he considered the security given to France inadequate from the military point of view. The representatives of the smaller states were not asked, however, to approve the draft treaty. It was simply communicated to them in the same way that it was to be communicated to the Germans.

At three o’clock on the afternoon of May 7, 1919, the terms of the treaty were delivered to the German delegation, which had been summoned for that purpose to Versailles. M. Clemenceau said that any observations would have to be made in writing within fifteen days, and would be answered promptly.

The head of the German delegation, Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, replied with heat and force to M. Clemenceau’s implication that Germany was a prisoner in the dock, solely responsible for the war and its horrors. He declined the invitation to admit the unilateral responsibility of Germany and the sole guilt of Germany for crimes during the war. He reproached the Allies for having taken six months to communicate their peace terms, during which they had maintained the food blockade, which had cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of German non-combatants. He reminded us that a pre-armistice agreement, binding upon both parties to the war, existed, and that a peace which could not be defended as just before the whole world would in the end cause resistance to the terms imposed. “Nobody will be capable of subscribing to it with a good conscience, for it will not be possible of fulfilment. Nobody would be able to take upon himself the guarantee of its execution which ought to lie in the signature.” Cold silence greeted the count’s speech. M. Clemenceau arose, and the meeting ended. But many who were present felt that they had not been witnessing the beginning of an era of peace. The chill presentiment of a more horrible war than the one that had just ended filled us.

On May 8 the press published a brief summary of the draft treaty. As if there was something to be ashamed of, the document in full was not printed, and it was impossible for public opinion to pass judgment upon the practicability and wisdom, if not the justice, of its terms. The folly of this rigorous censorship became apparent when German and neutral newspapers published the full text in instalments. I went to Frankfort ten days after the treaty was communicated to the Germans and bought copies of the complete document in French and English at a hotel newsstand. When I returned to Paris next day, I found that it was considered lese-majesty at the American headquarters for a private individual to have this document in his possession. Why? No answer has ever been given to this question. Nor has it been explained why President Wilson attached importance to keeping from the American press—even from the Senate—a document that was being freely circulated in European countries other than France. During the weeks between the communication of the treaty and its signature, the press published synopses of German observations and Allied replies. But how was public opinion to understand this correspondence and approve the Allied replies when it had not been informed exactly what the document under discussion contained?

The Germans handed in voluminous notes. They contended that the territorial provisions violated President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and declared that it would be a physical impossibility for Germany to fulfil the economic clauses. Their experts wrote out an argument to show that the failure to name a definite sum would jeopardize the authority of the new German Government, would mean economic slavery for the vanquished, and would involve all central Europe in ruin. They pointed out that the tentative sums demanded exceeded the convertible wealth of Germany, and that if the treaty were signed, with such obligations forced upon them, default would be inevitable. They presented a brief on the question of the responsibilty of the war, which they were asked to acknowledge, pleading that such a matter should be left to experts, with all the documents before them from the official archives of the several countries involved. They asserted that it would be impossible to force upon the German people international control of waterways and other means of transportation without reciprocity. They asked that alleged violations of the laws of war should be tried before a neutral tribunal, and asserted that they had a list of Allied war criminals against whom they could submit evidence as damning as the Allies could submit against German officers and soldiers.

At the end of May they made counter-proposals, agreeing to disarmament clauses, to the reduction of their army to one hundred thousand men, and also to the abolition of their navy. They agreed that Dantzig should be a free port, but rejected some of the territorial clauses and the penal stipulations. They refused to confess their sole responsibility for the war. They asked for plebiscites in territories taken from them by the treaty. They agreed to pay for reparations a total sum not exceeding 100,000,000,000 gold marks.