Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

On July 4, 1918, when President Wilson received the representatives of subject races at Mount Vernon, he made a solemn pledge in the name of the American people to all subject races. A Lithuanian stood with the others before Washington’s tomb. Neither in that speech nor in any other did Wilson say, “You understand, of course, that the victorious Allies mean to free and restore only the subject races whose freedom and restoration will be at the expense of our enemies and to their confusion.” Had he said this, it would have been a manly confession—to avoid false hopes and false pretenses—of what was afterward evident at the Peace Conference, that the yearning for humanity was a sham and the proclamation of the doctrine of self-determination a falsehood. The moral issue was simply buncombe to make people feel good and to arouse them against the Germans. Because races were conquered by the Romanoffs, have they less right to freedom than if they were conquered by the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns?

When we read carefully the Colby note, which was meant to justify the refusal of the State Department to follow the example of our associates in recognizing and dealing with and helping the Baltic Sea republics, we challenge its logic as well as its misrepresentation of the American idealism expressed by President Wilson during the war. Poland and Finland were portions of “integral Russia”; so was Russian Armenia; so was Bessarabia. Without consulting Russia, we recognized the independence of Poland, Finland, and Armenia, and agreed to the inclusion of Bessarabia in Rumania.

The State Department expert will respond that Poland and Finland had a special status under the Treaty of Vienna. Why go back in regard to Russia only to the Treaty of Vienna? In making the Treaties of Versailles and St.-Germain we canceled the Treaty of Vienna. We ignored this treaty and all other treaties in dealing with subject races of Austria-Hungary and Germany. The attempt to justify partiality of treatment between Poland and the Baltic Sea republics on the ground of the Treaty of Vienna fails even if we did accept the Treaty of Vienna as the law and the prophets. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania enjoyed an individual status in the Russian Empire by virtue of arrangements made before the Napoleonic period and not infringed upon until 1830. The charter of Lithuania was not finally abrogated until 1848, and the title of Grand Duke of Lithuania was assumed by the Russian Czar on a parity with that of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland at coronations. This acknowledgment of the separate identity of Lithuania in the empire was never given up. The late Nicholas was crowned Grand Duke of Lithuania.

From a historical point of view the American State Department had no ground to stand upon in regarding Lithuania as a Russian province and at the same time holding that Poland is an independent kingdom. The relations of the two countries toward the Russian Empire are strikingly alike. Both lost their independence through the partitions of the eighteenth century, after having been for centuries great and flourishing empires. Both suffered horribly from czardom during the nineteenth century. Both were battle-grounds during the late war.

Commander Gade, an American reserve naval officer who represented us in the Baltic provinces, justified the non-recognition policy on practical economic grounds. He maintained that these countries could not exist independently, and ought not be to encouraged in their aspirations for nationhood, because Russia needs them as an economic outlet to the sea, while much of their prosperity must come from transit trade. Commander Gade advanced this point of view earnestly and plausibly. It appealed to American common sense, which believed that in union there is strength.

But we forget the Treaties of Versailles and St.-Germain. One may have his own opinion about the advisability of the policy of émiettement (breaking in pieces) of political organisms that represented the economic evolution of past centuries. We are committed, however, to just that policy. It is too late to question it. I have never been an unreasoning and sentimental pleader for the doctrine of self-determination, but I have maintained, as a student of nationalist movements, that the effort to limit the application of self-determination to races whose liberation helps the fancied interests of a few great powers is disastrous and makes impossible the establishment of peace.

Political expediency is never more than a temporary makeshift. Old problems are solved only by creating new ones. It stands to reason that we cannot in one breath lop off frontier provinces from Germany on the ground of the alien character of their inhabitants and destroy the Hapsburg Empire on the ground of the right of its various elements to an independent existence, and in the next breath tell other, and neighboring, subject races that they have no future outside of the Romanoff Empire. Lithuania has a better economic raison d’être than Poland and Czechoslovakia. Lithuania and the other Baltic Sea republics have precedents that refute the argumentation of Gade and our State Department, not only in regard to their right and ability to exist independently of Russia, but also independently of one another.

If the reader will take the map of Europe, look at the location of the German Empire, follow its river-courses in relation to Belgium and Holland, and then compare the similar situation of Russia in relation to Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia, he will readily see how the Gade position, which our State Department foolishly adopted, resembled the position of German economists toward Belgium. The fact of standing between a great empire and the sea is no reason to deny the right of a people to nationhood. The Dutch and a part of the Belgians are very much closer to the Germans racially than the Lithuanians and Latvians are to the Russians and Poles. Had we not definitely scotched the access-to-the-sea argument for a big fellow’s crushing the life out of a little fellow? It is disconcerting to see it crop up in our own country in official circles. The other two parts of the Gade economic argument are also refuted by Belgium and Holland. These countries have existed economically, flourished, and been able to defend themselves against Germany, England, and France. And they have existed now for nearly a hundred years as separate entities. Why should not Baltic Sea states get along as North Sea states? The Baltic Sea already has little states less extensive in territory and some of them less populous than the new Baltic Sea republics.

But Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia, by asking for the recognition of their independence, did not close the door upon the possibility of a Russian federation among themselves. In this time of upset and confusion they asked simply for a free hand to look out for their own interests. As Russian provinces, with no separate international status, they could resist neither Bolshevists nor Russian reactionaries. They would be in the plight of the rest of Russia now, and to-morrow, when the reaction comes, they would have to submit to a return to the old intolerable conditions, with alien landowners and alien office-holders grinding the life out of them.

The Baltic Sea republics may develop into vigorous independent States, or they may return to membership in the political organism of a new and regenerated Russia; but in the meantime they have to live, and when the moment for the reconstitution of integral Russia comes these subject races will know by experience whether independence is possible or preferable from an economic point of view, and will be able to lay down political and social stipulations if they feel that it is wisest to go back to Russia.