Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

Before the conference met at Paris, the powers of the victorious alliance entered into diplomatic relations with the Baltic Sea republics. They received accredited military missions, and their Governments had no intimation that they would be treated differently from Poland. In fact, they were assured that formal recognition of their independence and seats at the Peace Conference were withheld only because it was necessary not to discourage or discredit the anti-Bolshevist generals to whom the Entente was giving military aid to crush Lenin.[9] As they felt that their existence depended upon the overthrow of the Moscow Soviet, or at least upon keeping Soviet propaganda away from their own countries, the Baltic Sea republics were content with informal pledges. They realized the delicacy of the situation and kept themselves in the background at Paris. On the other hand, their coöperation alone made practicable the military plans of the Entente against the Bolshevists. They allowed their territory to be used as a base of operations against Petrograd and Moscow; they received military supplies from the Entente Powers; and they were guided by the advice of the military missions in the projected campaigns against Petrograd and Moscow.

The Baltic Sea republics needed food and supplies and money. Ravaged and plundered during five years by Russians and Germans alike, they were beggars who could not choose their friends. Loyalty and decency did not seem to abide in Entente diplomacy any more than in that of the Germans. But the Baltic states could not break with us. As long as there was hope of killing Sovietism, they were ready to work with us. The complete disasters that attended the anti-Bolshevist movements opened the eyes of the Baltic Sea republics. Yudenitch, the Archangel republic, Kolchak, and Denikin had been induced by Entente military missions to attack Lenin. But each in succession had been left in the lurch to shift for himself when the fortunes of war changed. We were merely rooters on the sidelines. The withdrawal from Archangel was the strongest possible argument against an invasion of Russia. The plan of using the Baltic states for pulling Entente chestnuts out of the fire had to be abandoned. The military missions limited their political efforts to preventing the Baltic republics from signing peace.

The Kolchak debacle and the abandonment of the Archangel front by the Entente armies compelled Esthonia to treat with the Bolshevists. A glance at the map will convince any fair-minded man that the Esthonians had no other choice. It was peace or extinction. The Entente missions strenuously objected to the negotiations, but they failed to advance the only argument that would have counted, a definite pledge of military aid to the amount of two hundred thousand Entente troops to be kept in the country as long as the Esthonian Government had reason to fear a Bolshevist invasion.

The Peace of Dorpat, signed on January 21, 1920, was not evidence of Esthonian perfidy or pro-Bolshevist leanings. It was evidence of the complete military impotence of the Entente and the United States and of the failure of our blockade to destroy Sovietism in Russia. If the Esthonians, face to face with the Red armies, had refused to make peace with Lenin, relying on the “moral support” of the League of Nations, what does our common sense tell us would have happened to Esthonia? Esthonia was bitterly reproached for having signed the Peace of Dorpat by the very journals and men who, seven months later, gave Poland, in a similar plight, urgent counsels to do what they had denounced Esthonia for doing.

There is no word of condemnation for Poland because she signed the Peace of Riga in October, 1920. In fact, she was officially advised to make peace with Lenin. But abandoning the fight and establishing official relations with Moscow were used against the Baltic Sea republics as reasons for considering them pro-Bolshevist and for withholding recognition of their independence. Latvia and Lithuania had to follow the lead of Esthonia and Finland, and anticipated the Russo-Polish treaty by a few months. The treaties have now been published. They contain no provisions more advantageous to the Bolshevists than those of the Russo-Polish Treaty of Riga.

The British worked as strenuously as their allies to prevent Lenin from getting the Esthonians to make peace; but, once the treaty was signed, they accepted the situation and sought to make the best of it. Not being under the spell of the quixotism that seems to inspire our State Department in its foreign policy, and having no valid reason, as the French had, to maintain the integrity of Russia and refuse to deal with Bolshevism until money owed by the old régime was paid or acknowledged as a legitimate obligation, the British recognized the independence of the Baltic Sea republics and entered into diplomatic relations with them.

Italy, impatient for some solution, no matter what, of the Russian imbroglio, followed Great Britain’s lead. France did not dare to stand out against de facto recognition. To abstain from diplomatic intercourse with the Baltic Sea republics would have been to renounce the economic exploitation of these countries in favor of the British. So the Baltic representatives were received at the Quai d’Orsay, and French diplomats were then able to work at Libau and Riga and Reval to prevent a British trade and banking monopoly in Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia, and to throw a monkey-wrench into the works of the British naval machine which aimed at the supremacy of the Baltic Sea.

All this did not come about in a minute. The changed attitude toward the new political status quo in the eastern Baltic and toward the question of trading with Russia is due to the remorseless working of economic laws which prove in the long run more powerful than the combinazione of statesmen. Politics naturally yields to economics, for trade is the raison d’être of the foreign policy of nations. Prejudices die hard. The influences working against the stability of the Baltic Sea republics at London and Paris are still strong. French opposition among anti-Bolshevists, Russian bondholders, and amis de la Pologne is still active. A reactionary group in Great Britain is ready to sacrifice the Lithuanians, Latvians, and Esthonians to whatever Russian Government may be able to stamp out Bolshevism and displace Lenin and his associates. The Russians who pulled the strings for the Entente in the various anti-Bolshevist fiascos still watch the development of the Baltic situation and refuse to admit any diminution of “integral Russia.” Polish propaganda ridicules the right of the Baltic races to separate existence.

Under these conditions, the observer of European international politics who believes in a square deal for everybody deplored the Colby note of August 10, 1920. None questioned the good faith of Mr. Colby and his associates in their anxiety to convince the Russian people of our detachment and good will and to try to reconcile implacable opposition to Bolshevism with affection for Russia. The State Department undoubtedly meant well and thought it was making a masterly move; but one does not need to go further than the “Encyclopædia Britannica” to convince oneself, by glancing over the admirable summaries of historical facts from the best sources, of Mr. Colby’s unfairness and inconsistency in announcing in the same document that the policy of the United States was to preserve at all costs “Russian integrity” and at the same time to maintain Poland’s territorial integrity by “the employment of all available means.”

After studying the formation of the two political organisms of 1914, Austria-Hungary and Russia, Mr. Wilson’s note of September 7, 1918, to the Austro-Hungarian Government and our subsequent American policy appear a curious—and typically Anglo-Saxon—mixture of idealism and expediency. Did not the Romanoffs as much as the Hapsburgs build their empires upon the ruins of small races of alien blood and institutions and religion? If the moral sense of the world demands the liberation and restoration to nationhood of races in slavery to Austrians and Hungarians, how could Mr. Colby declare that the policy of our Government stands for the return to slavery of nations whose life was extinguished by the Russians? We asked the blessing of God upon our arms to assure us the victory because we were fighting for humanity. In our prayers we put no limit on our philanthropy.