Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

The peace discussions at Paris continued, as we have seen, throughout the year 1919. The Paris Conference had begun with an imposing array of statesmen from all over the world. Heads of governments and ministers of foreign affairs were the principal delegates of their respective countries. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles the big fry went home. It was manifest that they could not stay away from their duties indefinitely, even if there were some of the most important matters affecting the peace settlement still undecided. But when December came and the Christmas holidays approached, it was also manifest that the questions still under discussion were too complicated and too vital to the political fortunes of the Entente Cabinets for a conference of subordinates to pass upon. Agreement, it was recognized, could be reached only by the same method that had prevailed in drafting the German and Austrian treaties, i. e., direct and secret bargaining among the heads of governments.

The Peace Conference lost its importance when the “Big Four” departed at the end of June. It petered out—there is no other way of expressing it—at the end of November, leaving unsolved the problem of the relations of the victors to Russia. The unfinished business on the conference agenda has been bothering the world ever since. The principal questions upon which the conference had failed to pass were: (1) settlement of the total sum Germany was to pay for reparations; (2) measures to apply if Germany proved unable or unwilling to do the bidding of the Reparations Commission; (3) apportioning among the victors the cash and the deliveries in kind received from Germany; (4) what should constitute German disarmament and how this was to be brought about; (5) how Upper Silesia could be detached by a plebiscite from Germany; (6) the future of Memel; (7) the status of Eastern Galicia, Bessarabia, Albania, and Montenegro; (8) how the eastern frontiers of Poland were to be determined; (9) the relations of the League of Nations toward mandated territories; and (10) the terms of the treaty with Turkey, which involved the claims of Greece and the northern frontiers of the French and British mandates. Later the question of interallied debts was raised by France and Italy, who insisted that the indebtedness of the victors to one another was inseparably linked with the indebtedness of Germany to the victors.

Had the victors possessed common interests in Europe and the Near East, most of these questions could have been left to experts, whose compromises would have been accepted as reasonable by the common sense of the governments and peoples concerned. Foreign policies of the Entente Powers, however, were hopelessly divergent, and governments had to take into consideration not only the defense of national interests abroad but also the retention of power when hostile parties at home were ready to seize upon any pretext to oust them. At the best, when governments have simply domestic issues to face, keeping the confidence of parliaments is a difficult task. In passing judgment upon the statesmen of the Entente Powers and the United States, whose efforts at constructive peace-making failed so signally, we must remember that they were not free agents, but that they had to be thinking constantly of currents of public opinion that threatened to sweep them at any moment from their high positions.

The necessity of continuation conferences arose from the lack of common interest in enforcing, and therefore of power to enforce, the terms of the peace settlement which all seemingly accepted in the first flush of victory. Statesmen and peoples alike soon discovered that the treaties contained provisions which, if literally interpreted, did not satisfy their real or fancied interests, nor the ambitions the attainment of which they believed the victory should have made possible. The League of Nations came into existence at the beginning of 1920. The United States refused to join it. The Entente Powers, for the reasons given above, did not feel that they could use it except as a convenient and amenable agency to further their own policies. Until the world-wide status quo was definitely settled by the harmonizing of British, French, and Italian interests, it was deemed better to continue to use the Supreme Council, a conference of ambassadors, and, best of all, meetings of Entente premiers. Continuation conferences, therefore, in which both the first and last words were spoken by the premiers of the three big powers, have been attempting for nearly four years to grapple with the unfinished business of the Paris Conference.

These conferences have been large and small, formal and informal, some lasting months and others merely week-ends, but all have been dominated—even those called for other purposes and dealing ostensibly with other questions—by what has come to be known as the reparations issue. The reparations issue, in turn, has never been discussed on its merits, as a problem of economics. Security for France, through the permanent crippling of Germany, has lurked in the background of every discussion in these international gatherings.

The first of these conferences, held in London and Paris in January and February, 1920, were too near the exchange of the ratifications of the Treaty of Versailles for reparations to be at the front. Italy secured from France and Great Britain consent to make Fiume a free state, in exchange for a modification of Italian “rights” in Dalmatia, as provided for by the 1915 treaty, and the recognition of her paramount interests in Albania. The United States protested against the decision of the Paris meeting to change Albanian frontiers in favor of Serbia and Greece. The Albanian question, as we have seen in another chapter, was finally solved by the ability of the Albanians to defend their independence against Serbians and Italians. The Adriatic question was left to direct negotiations between Rome and Belgrade.

The first continuation conference to attract public attention was that of San Remo, whose important decisions in regard to the treaty with Turkey have been commented upon in earlier chapters. It is not generally realized that on the agenda of San Remo the Ottoman Empire occupied third place. The first subject was the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, which was beginning to cause serious difficulties, and the second subject Russian affairs, which had been going very badly, indeed, for the Entente Powers owing to the collapse of counter-revolutionary movements.

San Remo marked the first difference of opinion between Great Britain and France on the reparations question. Lloyd George, seconded by Nitti, laid down the thesis to which the British and the Italians (until Mussolini) adhered with more or less consistency in succeeding conferences. The French began to realize that British and Italian interests were going to conflict with their purpose to use reparations claims to prevent the economic rehabilitation of central Europe. France was able to induce the other two powers to agree in principle upon coercive measures against Germany in return for yielding to Lloyd George’s proposals for the Near East and Nitti’s contention that trade relations would have to be resumed with Russia, even though the Soviet did remain in control. At San Remo, also, a secret oil arrangement was concluded between France and Great Britain, against which the United States later protested, and also a new delimitation of spheres of influence in the Near East.

On two points, however, the French yielded to the Anglo-Italian view as to method in enforcing the Treaty of Versailles. France agreed to take no punitive steps without consulting her allies, and—very reluctantly—to have German delegates invited to confer with representatives of the Entente on deliveries in kind and other means of making reparations payments. For this purpose it was arranged that the Entente Powers should meet at Hythe on May 15 to discuss the schedule of German payments and should then summon the Germans to come to Spa with definite, concrete proposals for fulfilling their obligations under the treaty.

Between Hythe and Spa two additional conferences were necessary, at Boulogne-sur-Mer and Brussels, to fix the amount of the indemnity and decide how it should be apportioned. Raymond Poincaré, president of the Reparations Commission, resigned in protest against what he called an infraction of the treaty, which had stipulated that the amount of reparations should be determined by the commission, after they had examined the extent of Germany’s resources. One of the most important functions of the commission, declared M. Poincaré in a public statement, was being usurped by the Entente premiers. All the world knew, however, that the pro rata distribution schedule was dependent upon the total sum the victors hoped to receive. Hythe, Boulogne, and Brussels revealed serious divergence of views among the victors, large and small. Italy especially felt that the improbability of ever getting any money out of Austria should be made up to her by a larger proportion of the German indemnity.