Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

Disastrous and humiliating as the experiences of the eight months after Germany laid down her arms had proved, the defeat had brought distinct advantages, through the revolution, to the German people. There is no cloud without its silver lining. The deposition of the Hohenzollerns had been followed by that of the other kings, princes, grand dukes, and princelings of the German Empire. It was a great step forward in the unification of Germany, begun by Napoleon in 1803, and continued by the Prussians between 1849 and 1866. It took a violent cataclysm to get rid of artificial divisions that had hindered the development of German national life.

Given the antipathy of the stolid, law-abiding German for engaging in Bolshevist adventures, even for the sake of avoiding the humiliation and disadvantages of a Carthaginian peace, the situation would not have been hopeless had the victors adopted a different attitude toward Germany. The Government might have been strengthened by sympathy and understanding of its great and varied problems. The people might have been assured that if they bent their shoulder to the wheel and paid for the damages they had wrought, they would be given a chance of rehabilitation. The hatchet might have been buried, and a chastened Germany welcomed back into the family of nations.

This was the policy advocated by Premier Nitti of Italy; by Lord d’Abernon, British ambassador to Berlin; and by a host of Allied officials, familiar with conditions in Germany, whom I have met on the Rhine, in Berlin, Munich, and elsewhere, since the treaty was signed. The policy is aptly expressed by Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, who said to the Commercial Club of Cincinnati on April 21, 1917:

Never chant a hymn of hate against those who, for the time being, are worshiping a false god. A hymn of hate is just as displeasing in English as it is in German. We are concerned here in a conflict too solemn and too frightful to leave place for hatred; for if the issue is such as we wish it to be, we shall lift yet another nation up to the sublime plane of our own principles, a nation that is to-day powerfully armed against us.

Instead of helping the German Republic to a new life, the policy of punishment and fear was adopted, a policy outlined by Professor Andler of the Sorbonne on March 4, 1917. Said M. Andler:

Politics may have the right to continue the work of war against a preying nation, even into the time of peace.... Germany must know that this continuation of war into peace is possible if she refuses to give the reparations and pledges which the law demands. There are economic methods of breaking the arrogance of the German agrarians. There are economic methods of breaking even the new prosperity of the German peasants. There is a way of checking for ever the forward impulse of German industry and of curbing the great industrial capitalism, in coalition with the junkers and, at the same time, the German working-people who have demanded their share in the casting of the net attempted by big industries. There are certain forms of the industrial and agricultural boycott, under which the German people, surrounded by hostility equivalent to the worst kind of blockade, would no longer be able to continue the proud prosperity of its life before the war. The rich classes would be ruined; the people could no longer bring up their superfluity of children, formerly so easily absorbed by a flourishing industry; the peasants and laborers of the decimated population would be reduced to emigration. But they would go, these German immigrants, to countries forewarned, countries that would no longer permit any organized espionage, nor any sly infiltration into their affairs, nor any masquerade of false naturalization under the Delbrück Law. Then, perhaps, enlightened at last by the disapproval which would cause to weigh heavily on them the political system against which they had never known how to revolt and which they had tolerated in order to benefit by its military successes, they would again become the modest Germans of 1848.

The controlling idea of French policy toward Germany was simply this, that a strong, united, prosperous Germany would never be a changed Germany. The proof demanded of a change of heart on the part of the German people would be their willingness to become again “the modest Germans of 1848.” The political unity of Germany must at all costs be destroyed. This was a sine qua non of security for France, as we have explained elsewhere, and the execution of the treaty had as its principal object to prevent the economic rehabilitation and the political unity of the German peoples in Europe. In reviewing events in Germany since 1918 we must keep this fact in mind. No Government, whatever it accomplished, would be considered as showing works meet for repentance. The Reparations Commission, backed by a strong army, could ask whatever it wanted to ask—no limits were set either of time or amount—and thus prevent the economic and political rehabilitation of Germany.

Herr Bauer, who succeeded Herr Scheidemann just before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, formed a cabinet that lasted month after month only because the German people were morally and politically dazed. The extreme Left, demanding Bolshevism, and the extreme Right, demanding a repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles, offered hopeless anarchy. Consequently the Center parties combined against a common danger. The Government could have been stabilized and could have established its authority only by securing support from the conquerors of Germany. Hope of a reasonable settlement of the reparations issue held together the Bauer Government and enabled it to put down the reactionary Kapp coup d’état in Berlin in March, 1920. But it was immediately followed by a Spartacist insurrection in the Ruhr and elsewhere, with which Herr Bauer could not cope. For the Ruhr was in the neutral zone, and the French refused to permit Germany to use force there.

The new cabinet, headed by Herr Müller, could not get permission from the Allies, owing to the intransigeance of the French, to put down the Communist uprising, which threatened to make all Germany Bolshevist. In desperation, the Germans went into the Ruhr without waiting for permission and succeeded in a few days in subduing the Communists. Invoking an infraction of the treaty, and acting independently of their allies, the French seized Frankfort. Some of the occupying troops were blacks, and a machine-gun was turned on a crowd in the streets of Frankfort.

It is impossible to overestimate the effect in Germany of these events. Public opinion was convinced that France was seeking, not reparations, but the destruction of Germany. How else explain her unwillingness to allow the German Government to put down the Ruhr insurrection, whose success would have rendered any payments on the reparations account impossible? How else explain the refusal of France, a fortnight later, to accept the suggestion of Premiers Lloyd George and Nitti that the German Government be invited to confer with the Allied Governments on reparations and disarmament at San Remo? We have seen elsewhere how the British and Italians at San Remo agreed to stiffen their attitude toward Germany in return for concessions to Great Britain in the Near East and to Italy in the Adriatic.