The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative

by Robert Lansing

"What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent, disorder, and rebellion? Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it be harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically committed?

"The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until too late to check those who attempt to put the principle in force. What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered! What misery it will cause!"

Since the foregoing notes were written the impracticability of the universal or even of the general application of the principle has been fully demonstrated. Mr. Wilson resurrected "the consent of the governed" regardless of the fact that history denied its value as a practical guide in modern political relations. He proclaimed it in the phrase "self-determination," declaring it to be an "imperative principle of action." He made it one of the bases of peace. And yet, in the negotiations at Paris and in the formulation of the foreign policy of the United States, he has by his acts denied the existence of the right other than as the expression of a moral precept, as something to be desired, but generally unattainable in the lives of nations. In the actual conduct of affairs, in the practical and concrete relations between individuals and governments, it doubtless exercises and should exercise a measure of influence, but it is not a controlling influence.

In the Treaty of Versailles with Germany the readjustment of the German boundaries, by which the sovereignty over millions of persons of German blood was transferred to the new states of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, and the practical cession to the Empire of Japan of the port of Kiao-Chau and control over the economic life of the Province of Shantung are striking examples of the abandonment of the principle.

In the Treaty of Saint-Germain the Austrian Tyrol was ceded to the Kingdom of Italy against the known will of substantially the entire population of that region.

In both the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain Austria was denied the right to form a political union with Germany, and when an article of the German Constitution of August, 1919, contemplating a "reunion" of "German Austria" with the German Empire was objected to by the Supreme Council, then in session at Paris, as in contradiction of the terms of the Treaty with Germany, a protocol was signed on September 22, 1919, by plenipotentiaries of Germany and the five Principal Allied and Associated Powers, declaring the article in the Constitution null and void. There could hardly be a more open repudiation of the alleged right of "self-determination" than this refusal to permit Austria to unite with Germany however unanimous the wish of the Austrian people for such union.

But Mr. Wilson even further discredited the phrase by adopting a policy toward Russia which ignored the principle. The peoples of Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaidjan have by blood, language, and racial traits elements of difference which give to each of them in more or less degree the character of a distinct nationality. These peoples all possess aspirations to become independent states, and yet, throughout the negotiations at Paris and since that time, the Government of the United States has repeatedly refused to recognize the right of the inhabitants of these territories to determine for themselves the sovereignty under which they shall live. It has, on the contrary, declared in favor of a "Great Russia" comprising the vast territory of the old Empire except the province which belonged to the dismembered Kingdom of Poland and the lands included within the present boundaries of the Republic of Finland.

I do not mention the policy of President Wilson as to an undivided Russia by way of criticism because I believe the policy was and has continued to be the right one. The reference to it is made for the sole purpose of pointing out another example of Mr. Wilson's frequent departure without explanation from his declared standard for the determination of political authority and allegiance. I think that it must be conceded that he has by his acts proved that "self-determination" is "a mere phrase" which ought to be discarded as misleading because it cannot be practically applied.

It may be pointed out as a matter of special interest to the student of American history that, if the right of "self-determination" were sound in principle and uniformly applicable in establishing political allegiance and territorial sovereignty, the endeavor of the Southern States to secede from the American Union in 1861 would have been wholly justifiable; and, conversely, the Northern States, in forcibly preventing secession and compelling the inhabitants of the States composing the Confederacy to remain under the authority of the Federal Government, would have perpetrated a great and indefensible wrong against the people of the South by depriving them of a right to which they were by nature entitled. This is the logic of the application of the principle of "self-determination" to the political rights at issue in the American Civil War.

I do not believe that there are many Americans of the present generation who would support the proposition that the South was inherently right and the North was inherently wrong in that great conflict. There were, at the time when the sections were arrayed in arms against each other, and there may still be, differences of opinion as to the legal right of secession under the Constitution of the United States, but the inherent right of a people of a State to throw off at will their allegiance to the Federal Union and resume complete sovereignty over the territory of the State was never urged as a conclusive argument. It was the legal right and not the natural right which was emphasized as justifying those who took up arms in order to disrupt the Union. But if an American citizen denies that the principle of "self-determination" can be rightfully applied to the affairs of his own country, how can he consistently maintain that it is a right inseparable from a true conception of political liberty and therefore universally applicable, just in principle, and wise from the practical point of view?