Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

Rumania based her territorial claims upon a definite agreement with the Entente Powers, embodied in a secret treaty, which was the price paid for her intervention. Greece relied upon Premier Venizelos’ skilful manœuvering in the mazes of Entente Near Eastern diplomacy. The Poles put their cause in the hands of France from the beginning, and, having been saved by France at the time of the Bolshevist invasion in 1920, became more convinced than ever that their salvation lay in listening to the Quai d’Orsay. The Jugoslav problem was singularly complicated by the unwillingness of the Pan-Serbs, under Premier Pashitch, to make up their minds in 1918 whether they wanted a Greater Serbia or a new state, Jugoslavia, in which old Serbia would lose her identity. The Czechoslovaks were not compelled and did not feel the inclination to seek the favor of any one great power or to play one power against another. Only in the dispute with the Poles over Teschen was there a momentary embarrassment. In all other questions the Czechoslovaks were lucky in not having their interest conflict with the ambitions of the great powers. They made only one serious blunder at Paris, which is reacting unfavorably against them to-day in Slovakia. That was when they agreed to include in their new state the island and mainland along the Danube east of Pressburg (Bratislava). This was awarded to them for strategic reasons, but they now see that the burden of half a million Hungarians subjects was too big a price to pay for it.

The success of Czechoslovakia in her foreign policy has been largely due to the ability and continuity in office of Dr. Benes, a Prague university professor, and a refugee in Paris during the war, who worked for years, in the face of every discouragement, to enlist the sympathy of the Entente Powers in the Czech cause. When the hour of liberation came, the Czechs had the good sense to keep Benes in Paris as delegate at the Peace Conference, and to make him minister of foreign affairs. Dr. Benes established the following basic principles of Czechoslovak foreign policy: (1) help to Austria and an economic understanding with Austria; (2) prevention of an attempt on the part of Hungary to upset the Treaty of Trianon by an alliance with Rumania and Jugoslavia, the two other beneficiaries of that treaty; (3) steadfast refusal to become the catspaw of any other power or group of powers in dealings with Russia; (4) realization of the patent fact that security against Germany in the future could not be obtained by any particular alliance but only by the functioning of an all-inclusive society of nations.

The Czechoslovak Government has differentiated clearly between Austria and Hungary as potential enemies. It has assumed that Italy can be relied upon never to allow an independent Austria to become a military menace, and that France is vitally interested in preventing the union of Austria with Germany. An Austria impotent militarily but still able to exist independently is what Czechoslovak interests demand, and it is comforting to realize that two great powers are natural allies in the attainment of these two objects. Because Italy mounts guard against a recurrence of Austrian militarism, Czechoslovakia can afford to see Austria flourish economically. In fact, the prosperity of Austria is an aim of Czechoslovak foreign policy, in which France can be counted upon to help, because the union of Austria with Germany would be a calamity to France and Czechoslovakia alike.

Dr. Benes maintains that the sweeping changes of the Treaty of St.-Germain were necessary to make possible an absolutely free hand for former subject peoples in dealing with former masters. It is as essential to separate Hungary from Austria along the Danube as it is for the Czechoslovaks to have an outlet to that river. But Czechoslovakia would be foolish to abuse her freedom of action by rendering the economic life of Austria intolerable. On the contrary, the economic and political interests of Czechoslovakia dictate making every effort to help Austria rehabilitate herself. Through Austria passes Czechoslovakia’s outlet to the Mediterranean. The two states are neighbors and must logically trade with each other. Most important of all, unless life is made tolerable for Austria she will be forced into union with Germany. And this would menace the very existence of Czechoslovakia!

The Czechoslovak attitude toward Hungary is quite different from that toward Austria. No great powers are particularly interested in holding Hungary down, and Italy is suspected of encouraging Hungary to check her nightmare of Slavic predominance on the Adriatic. East of the White Carpathians the Slovaks and the Ruthenians are not accustomed to the separation from Hungary and not altogether reconciled to it. The Czechs are not culturally inferior to the Germans; the Slovaks are culturally inferior to the Hungarians; while Ruthenian loyalty to the new state cannot be blindly counted upon. A defensive alliance with Rumania and Jugoslavia to prevent the resurrection of Hungarian military power was a logical move. A convention was signed with Jugoslavia on August 13, 1920, and when its value was demonstrated by the part it played to prevent the restoration of Emperor Charles to the throne of Hungary, Rumania joined the “Little Entente” on April 23, 1921.

Rumania, despite her exposed position, had to enter into the Entente counter-revolutionary conspiracies against Russia because she depended upon Entente indorsement to legalize and defend her annexation of Bessarabia. Greece had gone into the ill fated French military venture in South Russia because France insisted upon this as the price of supporting Greek claims to Thrace. Poland allowed herself to be used from the beginning against the Bolshevists because she was infeudated to French policy and could look for large territorial gains as a price of coöperation. But Czechoslovakia, although her spectacular Legion had done much to help the Allied Powers against the Bolshevists in eastern Russia and Siberia, refused flatly to keep up hostilities against the Moscow Soviet, once independence was assured. The new state turned a deaf ear to all persuasion. The Prague Government went to the length of following the example of Germany by proclaiming and forcing strict neutrality when Poland and Soviet Russia were at war. A howl went up in France in the summer of 1920 when the Czechs took the same stand as the British High Commissioner at Danzig, and forbade the transit of war material destined to Poland.

The Czechoslovak Government is frankly anti-Communist and has no sympathy with the Moscow doctrines. But the Czechoslovaks are not enemies of the Russians, like the Poles and the Rumanians, and they consider Bolshevism a temporary misfortune and not a crime for which the Russians are to be punished and despoiled of territories. Before the Genoa Conference Dr. Benes notified the Entente Powers and the United States that Czechoslovakia intended to make an agreement with Soviet Russia. This was done, notwithstanding French and American disapproval.

At the time Dr. Benes explained Czechoslovakia’s attitude to me as follows: “The United States can afford to take the attitude of complete non-intercourse with Moscow. But we cannot. We have our security to think of, and we want to be prepared for the trade opportunities that will open up in the future as Russia becomes stable again. Russia is one of our most promising markets. We must have a delegation at Moscow, to know what is going on in Russia, and to be ready for trade when it offers itself. Our struggle for existence, economically and politically, is such that we must think of the future and take Russia into our calculations.”

No country deplores more the weakness of the League of Nations and is more alarmed over what we might term international anarchy than Czechoslovakia. With her composite population and her peculiar geographic position, with impossible frontiers from the strategic point of view, she is eager for some permanent assurance of international political stability. There are only about six million Czechs. Even with the Slovaks, they number scarcely eight millions. Czechoslovakia could not exist if the Germans of Bohemia went to Germany and the Hungarians of Slovakia to Hungary. It is natural, then, that security of frontiers, based upon international agreement rather than upon force or precarious alliances, is the goal of the Czechoslovak diplomacy. This explains the move of Dr. Benes at the Genoa Conference in the summer of 1922, when he tried to get the powers to accept the most elementary of all principles, that of a universal and binding compact of non-aggression. The Czechoslovaks, not being able to defend their state, and fearing to have the defense of the treaties to which they owe their existence depend upon armies and alliances, have proposed universal and reciprocal declaration of the sanctity of frontiers, and want the League of Nations to become an automatic proscriber of any nation disturbing the status quo of the Paris peace settlement.

When we estimate the chances of long life for so curiously formed a state as Czechoslovakia, we have no other grounds for assuming its durability than the adoption of a program like that advocated by Dr. Benes at Genoa. If the Germans all get together none can prevent them from snuffing the life out of Czechoslovakia, especially if they are able to form once more an alliance with Hungary. Italy alone could put obstacles in the path of such a program, provided there is no world organization to maintain the frontiers of the Paris treaties.