Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

Believing that an idealistic program for peace, such as President Wilson outlined, must be subordinated to the two considerations of security and prosperity for their exhausted country, Premier Clemenceau and Foreign Secretary Pichon warned President Wilson, in speeches before the Chamber of Deputies in the last week of December, that they were going into the Peace Conference with definite obligations, first toward their own people, and then toward their allies—obligations that transcended the Wilsonian principles when conflict arose. France had no intention of subordinating her particular national interests to what Mr. Wilson called general world interests. Bound by definite pledges, she could not do so if she wanted to. Did not Mr. Wilson realize how greatly France had suffered? Neither then nor later has any French statesmen admitted that the idealism of President Wilson might have had as its justification the literal acceptance of their own declarations and promises during the war. Nor has any French statesmen admitted the validity of the pre-armistice agreement with Germany. From the moment the war ended down to the present time the French attitude has been that the victors were amply justified in whatever steps they took because, had Germany been victorious, she would have done the same.

Discarding entirely the Wilsonian principles as the basis for peace, Premier Clemenceau told the Chamber of Deputies that he was still a partisan of the “balance of power” to be maintained by alliances, and that if the nations banded against Germany had been allies in 1914 Germany would not have dared to attack France. He admitted frankly that he could not discuss with the Chamber the Government’s peace ideas because he had a maximum and a minimum program and was going into the conference to get for France all he could. This was an answer—a gauntlet of defiance thrown down, if you will—to Mr. Wilson’s Manchester speech four days earlier, when the American President declared that the “balance of power” was an exploded theory, that the United States would enter into no alliance which was not an alliance of all nations for common good, and that the creation of a new world required new methods of making peace.

M. Clemenceau did not have to appeal to the people. As the principal artisan of victory, who had deserved well of the republic, he was the national hero. Despite wide-spread dissatisfaction among the politicians over matters of internal administration, the people were so united in their demand for a punitive peace, which “the Tiger” embodied, that no party leader dared contest his position.

It was otherwise in England. Mr. Lloyd George had come into power during the war by deserting his old chief, Premier Asquith, and forming a coalition cabinet, dependent upon a combined Liberal and Conservative parliamentary majority. The coalition had been a war measure, born of the feeling that the Asquith Government had been making a mess of the conduct of the war, despite Mr. Asquith’s inclusion in his cabinet of Conservatives and Laborites. Immediately the war was over, it was necessary to go to the country for a new parliament. For a British delegation could not have represented Great Britain adequately in the Peace Conference with Parliament in so confused a state as to party lines. By common agreement Parliament was dissolved on November 25, and December 14 was fixed as polling-day. Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, and Mr. Barnes, representing the three parties, decided to stand together and ask the country to return Coalition members at the General Election. The Labor Party, however, did not agree with Mr. Barnes. They demanded a peace of justice, not a peace of revenge. A group of Liberals, headed by Mr. Asquith, decided to put candidates in the field, in opposition to the Coalition.

The British electorate was asked to choose between two programs for the Peace Conference: a victor’s peace, which was supported by the Conservatives and Coalition Liberals; and a Wilsonian peace, which was supported by the Independent Liberals and the Laborites.

It is not too much to say that the main lines of the future treaty with Germany were settled by the verdict of the British election. Mr. Lloyd George and his associates, against their own better judgment and convictions, appealed to the passions and prejudices of the masses to secure a parliamentary majority. Since both Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Bonar Law have repeatedly repudiated by acts, speeches, and written statements their own policies and arguments advanced in December, 1918, there could be no doubt of the fairness and accuracy of this assertion.

On December 10 Mr. Lloyd George summed up the Coalition program in the following points of treaty policy: (1) trial of the Kaiser; (2) punishment of those responsible for atrocities; (3) fullest indemnities from Germany. Speaking at Bristol the next day Mr. Lloyd George, on the eve of the election, declared that “we propose to demand the whole cost of the war from Germany,” that this was “an absolute right,” and that a financial committee appointed by the British Cabinet believed that all the costs of the war could be extracted from Germany. After his triumphant return to power Mr. Lloyd George explained that the sole guilt and responsibility of Germany for the war was to be the basis of the peace treaty, and not Mr. Wilson’s principles. Nearly a year after the Treaty of Versailles was signed (in May, 1920) he repeated that the Treaty of Versailles was built upon the assumption of Germany’s sole guilt and had no other jurisdiction. The practicability of trying the Kaiser and of extracting from Germany the total expenses of the war was not questioned by responsible British statesmen of the Coalition party until long after the Treaty of Versailles had been made.

Italy’s entrance into the war in 1915 had been prompted by considerations of national self-interest, safeguarded in the secret Treaty of London, and recognized in the zones of occupation, provided for in the armistice of November 3, 1918, that had been the death-warrant of the Hapsburg Empire. But Italy was not satisfied with all that had been offered her to abandon her neutrality. The propaganda for the possession of Fiume and for rendering Greater Serbia innocuous, economically and militarily, had already assumed formidable proportions before the Peace Conference met. Italy did not consider that the pre-armistice agreement with Germany affected in any way her claims, which were signally at variance with President Wilson’s ideas. She had been in the war two years longer than the United States, and the Treaty of London constituted a sacred international obligation. Had not the Allies gone to war to fight for the sanctity of treaties? Similarly, Rumania’s intervention had been bought by definite promises of territorial expansion, set down in a treaty. Japan had no secret understanding with the other Entente Powers until 1917. But when the Japanese Government realized that the United States was going to become a belligerent, its diplomats at the Entente capitals secured a written agreement giving Japan full rights to be considered Germany’s heir in China.

In regard to the German colonies and Italy’s claims in the Tyrol and the Adriatic coastlands, the four Entente Powers had a better argument even than secret treaties to anticipate the decisions of the Peace Conference. They were in possession! Great Britain, France, and Japan had conquered Germany’s colonies and had ensconced themselves in them.

Nor was the future of the Ottoman Empire going to be decided by the Peace Conference in accordance with Mr. Wilson’s ideas. Great Britain and France had arranged their claims under the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916, and Entente spheres of influence had been definitely outlined in 1915 and 1916. Great Britain had conquered Mesopotamia and Palestine, and she had annexed Cyprus and proclaimed a protectorate over Egypt (both of which countries she had occupied for forty years) at the outbreak of the war in 1914. France took possession of Syria and Cilicia immediately after the armistice with Turkey. The Entente Powers were in joint occupation of Constantinople. The British had gone into the Caucasus and Persia. A desultory war was being carried on against Soviet Russia, in which the United States had become involved. There were all sorts of agreements and understandings and intrigues in eastern Europe to prevent the formulation of a common policy toward Russia, which, as President Wilson put it, was to be “the acid test of our sincerity.”