With the Big Five in control, with the lesser capitalist states silenced; with the border states made or in the making; with the enemy reduced to economic impotence, and the unexploited portions of the world assigned for exploitation, the conference was compelled to face still another problem—the Socialist Republic of Russia.
Russia, Czar ridden and oppressed, had entered the war as an ally of France and Great Britain. Russia, unshackled and attempting self-government on an economic basis, was an "enemy of civilization." The Allies therefore supported counter-revolution, organized and encouraged warfare by the border states, established and maintained a blockade, the purpose of which was the starvation of the Russian people into submission, and did all that money, munitions, supplies, battleships and army divisions could do to destroy the results of the Russian Revolution.
The Big Five—assuming to speak for all of the twenty-three nations that had declared war on Germany—manipulated the geography of Europe, reduced their enemies to penury, disposed of millions of square miles of territory and tens of millions of human beings as a gardener disposes of his produce, and then turned their united strength to the task of crushing the only thing approaching self-government that Russia has had for centuries.
A more shameless exhibition of imperial lust is not recorded in history. Never before were five nations in a position to sit down at one table and decide the political fate of the world. The opportunity was unique, and yet the statesmen of the world played the old, savage game of imperial aggression and domination.
This brutal policy of dealing with the world and its people was accepted by the United States. Throughout the Conference her representatives occupied a commanding position; at any time they would have been able to speak with a voice of almost conclusive authority; they chose, nevertheless, to play their part in this imperial spectacle. To be sure the Senate refused to ratify the Treaty,—not because of its imperial iniquities, but rather because there was nothing in it for the United States.
3. Italy, France and Japan
The shares of spoil falling to Italy and France as a result of the treaty are comparatively small although both countries—and particularly France—carried a terrific war burden. Japan, the least active of any of the leading participants in the war, received territory of vast importance to her future development.
Italy,—under the secret treaty of London, signed April 26, 1915, by the representatives of Russia, France, Great Britain and Italy,—was to receive that part of Austria known as the Trentine, the entire southern Tyrol, the city and suburbs of Trieste, the Istrian Islands and the province of Dalmatia with various adjacent islands. Furthermore, Article IX of the Treaty stipulated that, in the division of Turkey, Italy should be entitled to an equal share in the basin of the Mediterranean, and specifically to the province of Adalia. Under Article XIII, "In the event of the expansion of French and English colonial domains in Africa at the expense of Germany, France and Great Britain recognize in principle the Italian right to demand for herself certain compensations in the sense of expansions of her lands in Erithria, Somaliland, in Lybia and colonial districts lying on the boundary, with the colonies of France and England." Substantially, this plan was followed in the Peace Treaty.
The territorial claims of France were simple. The secret treaties include a note from the French Minister of Foreign Affairs to the French Ambassador at Petrograd, dated February 1-14, 1917, which stated that under the Peace Treaty: