M. Bratiano answered that the war had been fought to establish the equality of states, irrespective of size, and that the Big Four had disregarded this principle and had established different classes of states, with varying degrees of sovereignty. This Rumania could not admit. Messrs. Paderewski for Poland, Kramar for Czechoslovakia, and Trumbich for Jugoslavia vigorously supported the thesis of M. Bratiano.
To the surprise and astonishment of every one, it was the American President who came to the rescue of Old World diplomacy. Feeling that his authority and judgment had been attacked, and not seeing the “nigger in the wood-pile” (the desire for exclusive economic privileges which had inspired his colleagues, not defense of minorities), Mr. Wilson pointed out that it is force which is the final guarantee of public peace. Mr. Wilson assumed that the United States and the Entente Powers—not the League of Nations—were to stand together indefinitely to guarantee the maintenance of the treaties that formed the Paris settlement. According to the official minutes of this session, which were passed upon and approved by the American delegation, Mr. Wilson said:
If the world finds itself again troubled, if the conditions that we all regard as fundamental are put in question, the guarantee which is given you means that the United States will bring to this side of the ocean their army and their fleet. Is it surprising that in these conditions they desire to act in such a way that the regulation of the different problems appear to them entirely satisfactory?[4]
M. Bratiano told Mr. Wilson that he had missed the point, and repeated his declaration, in which the other interested states concurred, that the equality of all states, small and large, had been the corner-stone of Mr. Wilson’s own principles and of the sword drawn in defense of Serbia and Belgium. He pointed out that if the League of Nations were entrusted with the task of protecting minorities in all countries, the states interested in the Austrian treaty would be glad to submit to a control that played no favorites. Then M. Bratiano asked Mr. Wilson point-blank why Italy was not included in giving definite minority pledges along with the other states who were to be successors of the Hapsburg Empire. Are there degrees of sovereignty according to size? Have large nations rights and privileges small nations do not possess? If this was the idea of the Americans as well as of the other major Allies, the statements they had made during the war were false. They were not defending Serbia and Belgium; they were fighting for their own interests, using the cause of these two small nations as a smoke-screen for selfishness. But I am afraid that in the last two sentences I have strayed from the minutes of the eighth plenary session! I have put down what M. Bratiano told me he wanted to say in his answer to the President.
The last to speak at this memorable session, M. Venizelos, suggested that the legitimate anxieties of the states immediately affected by the treaty with Austria ought to be considered, before the treaty was presented to the Austrian delegation, in a special joint meeting of the Big Four and the representatives of these states.
This was not done. The draft of the treaty was given to the Austrians at St.-Germain on June 2. After lengthy exchange of notes some concessions were made in the economic clauses, and an amended treaty was handed to the Austrians on July 20. Negotiations were protracted, not on account of the Austrians, who were powerless, but because the interests of Italy had to be acknowledged, and because the small states had to be appeased and bullied. The Treaty of St.-Germain was signed on September 10. By that time, however, all interest in it had died down, and, as far as its economic clauses were concerned, it was universally recognized to be more absurd and impossible of fulfilment than the Treaty of Versailles.
The Bulgarians were handed their treaty on September 19, and they signed it at Neuilly on November 27. The Hungarian and Turkish treaties had been drawn up at the same time as the others. But there was no stable government in Hungary to sign the treaty, and the Entente Powers were at loggerheads over the Turkish treaty. Before the treaties of Trianon and Sèvres were presented to the Hungarians and Turks, the Paris Peace Conference had gone out of existence, and was succeeded by the three Entente premiers, who held a series of continuation conferences frequently from January, 1920, to January, 1923.
It may be felt that I have written an unsympathetic account of the Paris Conference. But how can one write otherwise concerning an inglorious failure? It would be possible to explain plausibly, convincingly, why it failed. But the chronicler of contemporary history must pass on to an examination of the treaties, and then to judge them by the only criterion he has the right to use: What has happened to the world because of them? Did they bring us peace? Have they proved to be practicable? Were they the beginning of a new order? Has the League of Nations filled the rôle expected of it by those who said that its birth alone justified the Paris peace settlement and would prove its corrective?