When the Council finally agreed to a solution, the delegates were convoked to learn its nature and to make a vow of obedience to its decisions. During the first stage of the Conference the representatives of the lesser states had sometimes been permitted to put questions and present objections. But later on even this privilege was withdrawn. The following description of what went on may serve as an illustration of the Council's mode of procedure. One day the Polish delegation was summoned before the Special Commission to discuss an armistice between the Ruthenians of Galicia and the Polish Republic. The late General Botha, a shrewd observer, whose valuable experience of political affairs, having been confined to a country which had not much in common with eastern Europe, could be of little help to him in solving the complex problems with which he was confronted, was handicapped from the outset. Unacquainted with any languages but English and Dutch, the general had to surmount the additional difficulty of carrying on the conversation through an interpreter. The form it took was somewhat as follows:

"It is the wish of the Supreme Council," the chairman began, "that Poland should conclude an armistice with the Ruthenians, and under new conditions, the old ones having lost their force.[180] Are you prepared to submit your proposals?" "This is a military matter," replied the Polish delegate, "and should be dealt with by experts. One of our most competent military authorities will arrive shortly in Paris with full powers to treat with you on the subject. In the meantime, I agree that the old conditions are obsolete and must be changed. I can also mention three provisos without which no armistice is possible: (1) The Poles must be permitted to get into permanent contact with Rumania. That involves their occupation of eastern Galicia. The principal grounds for this demand are that our frontier includes that territory and that the Rumanians are a law-abiding, pacific people whose interests never clash with ours and whose main enemy—Bolshevism—is also ours. (2) The Allies shall purge the Ukrainian army of the Bolshevists, German and other dangerous elements that now pervade it and render peace impossible. (3) The Poles must have control of the oil-fields were it only because these are now being treated as military resources and the Germans are receiving from Galicia, which contains the only supplies now open to them, all the oil they require and are giving the Ruthenians munitions in return, thus perpetuating a continuous state of warfare. You can realize that we are unwilling to have our oil-fields employed to supply our enemies with war material against ourselves." General Botha asked, "Would you be satisfied if, instead of occupying all eastern Galicia at once in order to get into touch with the Rumanians, the latter were to advance to meet you?" "Quite. That would satisfy us as a provisional measure." "But now suppose that the Supreme Council rejects your three conditions—a probable contingency—- what course do you propose to take?" "In that case our action would be swayed by events, one of which is the hostility of the Ruthenians, which would necessitate measures of self-defense and the use of our army. And that would bring back the whole issue to the point where it stands to-day."[181] To the suggestions made by the Polish delegate that the question of the armistice be referred to Marshal Foch, the answer was returned that the Marshal's views carried no authority with the Supreme Council.

General Botha, thereupon adopting an emotional tone, said: "I have one last appeal to make to you. It behooves Poland to lift the question from its present petty surroundings and set it in the larger frame of world issues. What we are aiming at is the overthrow of militarism and the cessation of bloodshed. As a civilized nation Poland must surely see eye to eye with the Supreme Council how incumbent it is on the Allies to put a stop to the misery that warfare has brought down on the world and is now inflicting on the populations of Poland and eastern Galicia." "Truly," replied the Polish delegate, "and so thoroughly does she realize it that it is repugnant to her to be satisfied with a sham peace, a mere pause during which a bloodier war may be organized. We want a settlement that really connotes peace, and our intimate knowledge of the circumstances enables us to distinguish between that and a mere truce. That is the ground of our insistence."

"Bear well in mind," insisted the Boer general, "the friendly attitude of the great Allies toward your country at a critical period of its history. They restored it. They meant and mean to help it to preserve its status. It behooves the Poles to show their appreciation of this friendship in a practical way by deferring to their wishes. Everything they ordain is for your good. Realize that and carry out their schemes." "For their help we are and will remain grateful," was the answer, "and we will go as far toward meeting their wishes as is feasible without actually imperiling their contribution to the restoration of our state. But we cannot blink the facts that their views are sometimes mistaken and their power to realize them generally imaginary. They have made numerous and costly mistakes already, which they now frankly avow. If they persisted in their present plan they would be adding another to the list. And as to their power to help us positively, it is nil. Their initial omission to send a formidable military force to Poland was an irreparable blunder, for it left them without an executive in eastern Europe, where they now can help none of their protegees against their respective enemies. Poles, Rumanians, Jugoslavs are all left to themselves. From the Allies they may expect inspiriting telegrams, but little else. In fact, the utmost they can do is to issue decrees that may or may not be obeyed. Examples are many. They obtained for us by the armistice the right of disembarking troops at Dantzig, and we were unspeakably grateful to them. But they failed to make the Germans respect that right and we had to resign ourselves to abandon it. They ordered the Ukrainians to cease their numerous attacks on us and we appreciated their thoughtfulness. But the order was disobeyed; we were assailed and had no one to look to for help but ourselves. Still we are most thankful for all that they could do. But if we concluded the armistice which you are pleading for, this is what would happen: we should have the Ruthenians arrayed against us on one side and the Germans on the other. Now if the Ruthenians have brains, their forces will attack us at the same time as those of the Germans do. That is sound tactics. But if their strength is only on paper, they will give admission to the Bolsheviki. That is the twofold danger which you, in the name of the Great Powers, are unwillingly endeavoring to conjure up against us. If you admit its reality you cannot blame our reluctance to incur it. On the other hand, if you regard the peril as imaginary, you will draw the obvious consequences and pledge the word of the Great Powers that they will give us military assistance against it should it come?"

If clear thinking and straightforward action has counted for anything, the matter would have been settled satisfactorily then and there. But the Great Powers operated less with argument than with more forcible stimuli. Holding the economic and financial resources of the world in their hands, they sometimes merely toyed with reasoning and proceeded to coerce where they were unable to convince or persuade. One day the chief delegate of one of the states "with limited interests" said to me: "The unvarnished truth is that we are being coerced. There is no milder term to signify this procedure. Thus we are told that unless we indorse the decrees of the Powers, whose interests are unlimited like their assurance, they will withhold from us the supplies of food, raw materials, and money without which our national existence is inconceivable. Necessarily we must give way, at any rate for the time being." Those words sum up the relations of the lesser to the greater Powers.

In the case of Poland the conversation ended thus—General Botha, addressing the delegate, said: "If you disregard the injunctions of the Big Four, who cannot always lay before you the grounds of their policy, you run the risk of being left to your own devices. And you know what that means. Think well before you decide!" Just then, as it chanced, only a part of General Haller's soldiers in France had been transported to their own country,[182] and the Poles were in mortal terror lest the work of conveying the remainder should be interrupted. This, then, was an implicit appeal to which they could not turn a wholly deaf ear. "Well, what is it that the Big Four ask of us?" inquired the delegate. "The conclusion of an armistice with the Ruthenians, also that Poland—as one of the newly created states—should allow the free transit of all the Allied goods through her territory." The delegate expressed a wish to be told why this measure should be restricted to the newly made states. The answer was because it was in the nature of an experiment and should, therefore, not be tried over too large an area. "There is also another little undertaking which you are requested to give—namely, that you will accept and act upon the future decisions of the commission whatever they may be." "Without an inkling of their character?" "If you have confidence in us you need have no misgivings as to that." In spite of the deterrents the Polish delegation at that interview met all these demands with a firm non possumus. It upheld the three conditions of the armistice, rejected the free transit proposal, and demurred to the demand for a promise to bow to all future decisions of a fallible commission. "When the Polish dispute with the Czechoslovaks was submitted to a commission we were not asked in advance to abide by its decision. Why should a new rule be introduced now?" argued the Polish delegates. And there the matter rested for a brief while.

But the respite lasted only a few days, at the expiry of which an envoy called on the members of the Polish delegation and reopened the discussion on new lines. He stated that he spoke on behalf of the Big Four, of whose views and intentions he was the authorized exponent. And doubtless he thought he was. But as a matter of fact the French government had no cognizance of his visit or mission or of the conversation to which it led. He presented arguments before having recourse to deterrents. Poland's situation, he said, called for prudence. Her secular enemy was Germany, with whom it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, ever to cultivate such terms as would conciliate her permanently. All the more reason, therefore, to deserve and win the friendship of her other neighbors, in particular of the Ruthenians. The Polish plenipotentiary met the argument in the usual way, where upon the envoy exclaimed: "Well, to make a long story short, I am here to say that the line of action traced out for your country emanates from the inflexible will of the Great Powers. To this you must bend. If it should lead to hostilities on the part of your neighbors you could, of course, rely on the help of your protectors. Will this not satisfy you?" "If the protection were real it certainly would. But where is it? Has it been vouchsafed at any moment since the armistice? Have the Allied governments an executive in eastern Europe? Are they likely to order their troops thither to assist any of their protegees? And if they issued such an order, would it be obeyed? They cannot protect us, as we know to our cost. That is why we are prepared, in our interests—also in theirs—to protect ourselves."

This remarkable conversation was terminated by the announcement of the penalty of disobedience. "If you persist in refusing the proposals I have laid before you, I am to tell you that the Great Powers will withdraw their aid from your country and may even feel it to be their duty to modify the advantageous status which they had decided to confer upon it." To which this answer was returned: "For the assistance we are receiving we are and will ever be truly grateful. But in order to benefit by it the Polish people must be a living organism and your proposals tend to reduce us to a state of suspended vitality. They also place us at the mercy of our numerous enemies, the greatest of whom is Germany."

But lucid intelligence, backed by unflagging will, was of no avail against the threat of famine. The Poles had to give way. M. Paderewski pledged his word to Messrs. Lloyd George and Wilson that he would have an armistice concluded with the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia, and the Duumvirs rightly placed implicit confidence in his word as in his moral rectitude. They also felt grateful to him for having facilitated their arduous task by accepting the inevitable. To my knowledge President Wilson himself addressed a letter to him toward the end of April, thanking him cordially for the broad-minded way in which he had co-operated with the Supreme Council in its efforts to reconstitute his country on a solid basis. Probably no other representative of a state "with limited interests" received such high mark of approval.

M. Paderewski left Paris for Warsaw, there to win over the Cabinet. But in Poland, where the authorities were face to face with the concrete elements of the problem, the Premier found no support. Neither the Cabinet nor the Diet nor the head of the state found it possible to redeem the promise made in their name. Circumstance was stronger than the human will. M. Paderewski resigned. The Ruthenians delivered a timely attack on the Poles, who counter-attacked, captured the towns of Styra, Tarnopol, Stanislau, and occupied the enemy country right up to Rumania, with which they desired to be in permanent contact. Part of the Ruthenian army crossed the Czech frontier and was disarmed, the remainder melted away, and there remained no enemy with whom to conclude an armistice.

For the "Big Four" this turn of events was a humiliation. The Ruthenian army, whose interests they had so taken to heart, had suddenly ceased to exist, and the future danger which it represented to Poland was seen to have been largely imaginary. Their judgment was at fault and their power ineffectual. Against M. Paderewski's impotence they blazed with indignation. He had given way to their decision and promptly gone to Warsaw to see it executed, yet the conditions were such that his words were treated as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The Polish Premier, it is true, had tendered his resignation in consequence, but it was refused—and even had it been accepted, what was the retirement of a Minister as compared with the indignity put upon the world's lawgivers who represented power and interests which were alike unlimited? Angry telegrams were flashed over the wires from Paris to Warsaw and the Polish Premier was summoned to appear in Paris without delay. He duly returned, but no new move was made. The die was cast.

A noteworthy event in latter-day Polish history ensued upon that military victory over the Ruthenians of eastern Galicia. The Ukrainian[183] Minister at Vienna was despatched to request the Poles to sign a unilateral treaty with them after the model of that which was arranged by the two Anglo-Saxon states in favor of France. The proposal was that the Ukraine government would renounce all claims to eastern Galicia and place their troops under the supreme command of the Polish generalissimus, in return for which the Poles should undertake to protect the Ukrainians against all their enemies. This draft agreement, while under consideration in Warsaw, was negatived by the Polish delegates in Paris, who saw no good reason why their people should bind themselves to fight Russia one day for the independence of the Ukraine. Another inchoate state which made an offer of alliance to Poland was Esthonia, but its advances were declined on similar grounds. It is manifest, however, that in the new state system alliances are more in vogue than in the old, although they were to have been banished from it.

Throughout all the negotiations that turned upon the future status and the territorial frontiers of Poland the British Premier unswervingly stood out against the Polish claims, just as the President of the United States inflexibly countered those of Italy, and both united to negative those of the Rumanians. Whatever one may think of the merits of these controversies—and various opinions have been put forward with obvious sincerity—there can be but one judgment as to the spirit in which they were conducted. It was a dictatorial spirit, which was intolerant not merely of opposition, but of enlightened and constructive criticism. To the representatives of the countries concerned it seemed made up of bitter prejudice and fierce partizanship, imbibed, it was affirmed, from those unseen sources whence powerful and, it was thought, noxious currents flowed continuously toward the Conference. For none of the affronted delegates credited with a knowledge of the subject either Mr. Lloyd George, who had never heard of Teschen, or Mr. Wilson, whose survey of Corsican politics was said to be so defective. And yet to the activity of men engaged like these in settling affairs of unprecedented magnitude it would be unfair to apply the ordinary tests of technical fastidiousness. Their position as trustees of the world's greatest states, even though they lacked political imagination, knowledge, and experience, entitled them to the high consideration which they generally received. But it could not be expected to dazzle to blindness the eyes of superior men—and the delegates of the lesser states, Venizelos, Dmowski, and Benes, were undoubtedly superior in most of the attributes of statesmanship. Yet they were frequently snubbed and each one made to feel that he was the fifth wheel in the chariot of the Conference. No sacred fame, says Goethe, requires us to submit to contempt, and they winced under it. The Big Three lacked the happy way of doing things which goes with diplomatic tact and engaging manners, and the consequence was that not only were their arguments mistrusted, but even their good faith was, as we saw, momentarily subjected to doubt. "Bitter prejudice, furious antipathy" were freely predicated of the two Anglo-Saxon statesmen, who were rashly accused of attempting by circuitous methods to deprive France of her new Slav ally in eastern Europe. Sweeping recriminations of this character deserve notice only as indicating the spirit of discord—not to use a stronger term—prevailing at a Conference which was professedly endeavoring to knit together the peoples of the planet in an organized society of good-fellowship.

The delegates of the lesser states, to whom one should not look for impartial judgments, formulated some queer theories to explain the Allies' unavowed policy and revealed a frame of mind in no wise conducive to the attainment of the ostensible ends of the Conference. One delegate said to me: "I have no longer the faintest doubt that the firm purpose of the 'Big Two' is the establishment of the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, which in the fullness of time may be transformed into the hegemony of the United States of North America. Even France is in some respects their handmaid. Already she is bound to them indissolubly. She is admittedly unable to hold her own without their protection. She will become more dependent on them as the years pass and Germany, having put her house in order, regains her economic preponderance on the Continent. This decline is due to the operation of a natural law which diplomacy may retard but cannot hinder. Numbers will count in the future, and then France's role will be reduced. For this reason it is her interest that her new allies in eastern Europe should be equipped with all the means of growing and keeping strong instead of being held in the leading-strings of the overlords. But perhaps this tutelage is reckoned one of those means?"

Against Britain in especial the Poles, as we saw, were wroth. They complained that whenever they advanced a claim they found her first delegate on their path barring their passage, and if Mr. Wilson chanced to be with them the British Premier set himself to convert him to his way of thinking or voting. Thus it was against Mr. Lloyd George that the eastern Galician problem had had to be fought at every stage. At the outset the British Premier refused Galicia to Poland categorically and purposed making it an entirely separate state under the League of Nations. This design, of which he made no secret, inspired the insistence with which the armistice with the Ruthenians of Galicia was pressed. The Polish delegates, one of them a man of incisive speech, left no stone unturned to thwart that part of the English scheme, and they finally succeeded. But their opponents contrived to drop a spoonful of tar in Poland's pot of honey by ordering a plebiscite to take place in eastern Galicia within ten or fifteen years. Then came the question of the Galician Constitution. The Poles proposed to confer on the Ruthenians a restricted measure of home rule with authority to arrange in their own way educational and religious matters, local communications, and the means of encouraging industry and agriculture, besides giving them a proportionate number of seats in the state legislature in Warsaw. But again the British delegates—experienced in problems of home rule—expressed their dissatisfaction and insisted on a parliament or diet for the Ukraine invested with considerable authority over the affairs of the province. The Poles next announced their intention to have a governor of eastern Galicia appointed by the President of the Polish Republic, with a council to advise him. The British again amended the proposal and asked that the governor should be responsible to the Galician parliament, but to this the Poles demurred emphatically, and finally it was settled that only the members of his council should be responsible to the provincial legislature. The Poles having suggested that military conscription should be applied to eastern Galicia on the same terms as to the rest of Poland, the British once more joined issue with them and demanded that no troops whatever should be levied in the province. The upshot of this dispute was that after much wrangling the British Commission gave way to the Poles, but made it a condition that the troops should not be employed outside the province. To this the Poles made answer that the massing of so many soldiers on the Rumanian frontier might reasonably be objected to by the Rumanians—and so the amoebean word-game went on in the subcommission. In a word, when dealing with the eastern Galician problem, Mr. Lloyd George played the part of an ardent champion of complete home rule.

To sum up, the Conference linked eastern Galicia with Poland, but made the bonds extremely tenuous, so that they might be severed at any moment without involving profound changes in either country, and by this arrangement, which introduced the provisional into the definitive, a broad field of operations was allotted to political agitation and revolt was encouraged to rear its crest.

The province of Upper Silesia was asked for on grounds which the Poles, at any rate, thought convincing. But Mr. Lloyd George, it was said, declared them insufficient. The subject was thrashed out one day in June when the Polish delegates were summoned before their all-powerful colleagues to be told of certain alterations that had been recently introduced into the Treaty which concerned them to know. They appeared before the Council of Five.[184] President Wilson, addressing the two delegates, spoke approximately as follows: "You claim Silesia on the ground that its inhabitants are Poles and we have given your demand careful consideration. But the Germans tell us that the inhabitants, although Polish by race, wish to remain under German rule as heretofore. That is a strong objection if founded on fact. At present we are unable to answer it. In fact, nobody can answer it with finality but the inhabitants themselves. Therefore we must order a plebiscite among them." One of the Polish delegates remarked: "If you had put the question to the inhabitants fifty years ago they would have expressed their wish to remain with the Germans because at that time they were profoundly ignorant and their national sentiment was dormant. Now it is otherwise. For since then many of them have been educated, and the majority are alive to the issue and will therefore declare for Poland. And if any section of the territory should still prefer German sway to Polish and their district in consequence of your plebiscite becomes German, the process of enlightenment which has already made such headway will none the less go on, and their children, conscious of their loss, will anathematize their fathers for having inflicted it. And then there will be trouble."

Mr. Wilson retorted: "You are assuming more than is meet. The frontiers which we are tracing are provisional, not final. That is a consideration which ought to weigh with you. Besides, the League of Nations will intervene to improve what is imperfect." "O League of Nations, what blunders are committed in thy name!" the delegate may have muttered to himself as he listened to the words meant to comfort him and his countrymen.

Much might have been urged against this proffered solace if the delegates had been in a captious mood. The League of Nations had as yet no existence. If its will, intelligence, and power could indeed be reckoned upon with such confidence, how had it come to pass that its creators, Britain and the United States, deemed them dubious enough to call for a reinforcement in the shape of a formal alliance for the protection of France? If this precautionary measure, which shatters the whole Wilsonian system, was indispensable to one Ally it was at least equally indispensable to another. And in the case of Poland it was more urgent than in the case of France, because if Germany were again to scheme a war of conquest the probability is infinitesimal that she would invade Belgium or move forward on the western front. The line of least resistance, which is Poland, would prove incomparably more attractive. And then? The absence of Allied troops in eastern Europe was one of the principal causes of the wars, tumults, and chaotic confusion that had made nervous people tremble for the fate of civilization in the interval between the conclusion of the armistice and the ratification of the Treaty. In the future the absence of strongly situated Allies there, if Germany were to begin a fresh war, would be more fatal still, and the Polish state might conceivably disappear before military aid from the Allied governments could reach it. Why should the safety of Poland and to some extent the security of Europe be made to depend upon what is at best a gambler's throw?

But no counter-objections were offered. On the contrary, M. Paderewski uttered the soft answer that turneth away wrath. He profoundly regretted the decision of the lawgivers, but, recognizing that it was immutable, bowed to it in the name of his country. He knew, he said, that the delegates were animated by very friendly feelings toward his country and he thanked them for their help. M. Paderewski's colleague, the less malleable M. Dmowski, is reported to have said: "It is my desire to be quite sincere with you, gentlemen. Therefore I venture to submit that while you profess to have settled the matter on principle, you have not carried out that principle thoroughly. Doubtless by inadvertence. Thus there are places inhabited by a large majority of Poles which you have allotted to Germany on the ground that they are inhabited by Germans. That is inconsistent." At this Mr. Lloyd George jumped up from his place and asked: "Can you name any such places?" M. Dmowski gave several names. "Point them out to me on the map," insisted the British Premier. They were pointed out on the map. Twice President Wilson asked the delegate to spell the name Bomst for him.[185] Mr. Lloyd George then said: "Well, those are oversights that can be rectified." "Oh yes," added Mr. Wilson, "we will see to that."[186] M. Dmowski also questioned the President about the plebiscite, and under whose auspices the voting would take place, and was told that there would be an Inter-Allied administration to superintend the arrangements and insure perfect freedom of voting. "Through what agency will that administration work? Is it through the officials?" "Evidently," Mr. Wilson answered. "You are doubtless aware that they are Germans?" "Yes. But the administration will possess the right to dismiss those who prove unworthy of their confidence." "Don't you think," insisted M. Dmowski, "that it would be fairer to withdraw one half of the German bureaucrats and give their places to Poles?" To which the President replied: "The administration will be thoroughly impartial and will adopt all suitable measures to render the voting free." There the matter ended.

The two potentates in council, tackling the future status of Lithuania, settled it in an offhand and singular fashion which at any rate bespoke their good intentions. The principle of self-determination, or what was facetiously termed the Balkanization of Europe, was at first applied to that territory and a semi-independent state created in petto which was to contain eight million inhabitants and be linked with Poland. Certain obstacles were soon afterward encountered which had not been foreseen. One was that all the Lithuanians number only two millions, or say at the most two millions and one hundred thousand. Out of these even the Supreme Council could not make eight millions. In Lithuania there are two and a half million Poles, one and a half million Jews, and the remainder are White Russians.[187] It was recognized that a community consisting of such disparate elements, situated where it now is, could hardly live and strive as an independent state. The Lithuanian Jews, however, were of a different way of thinking, and they opposed the Polish claims with a degree of steadfastness and animation which wounded Poland's national pride and left rankling sores behind.

It is worth noting that the representatives of Russia, who are supposed to clutch convulsively at all the states which once formed part of the Tsardom, displayed a degree of political detachment in respect of Lithuania which came as a pleasant surprise to many. The Russian Ambassador in Paris, M. Maklakoff, in a remarkable address before a learned assembly[188] in the French capital, announced that Russia was henceforward disinterested in the status of Lithuania.

That the Poles were minded to deal very liberally with the Lithuanians became evident during the Conference. General Pilsudski, on his own initiative, visited Vilna and issued a proclamation to the Lithuanians announcing that elections would be held, and asking them to make known their desires, which would be realized by the Warsaw government. One of the many curious documents of the Conference is an official missive signed by the General Secretary, M. Dutasta, and addressed to the first Polish delegate, exhorting him to induce his government to come to terms with the Lithuanian government, as behooves two neighboring states. Unluckily for the soundness of that counsel there was no recognized Lithuanian state or Lithuanian government to come to terms with.

As has been often enough pointed out, the actions and utterances of the two world-menders were so infelicitous as to lend color to the belief—shared by the representatives of a number of humiliated nations—that greed of new markets was at the bottom of what purported to be a policy of pure humanitarianism. Some of the delegates were currently supposed to be the unwitting instruments of elusive capitalistic influences. Possibly they would have been astonished were they told this: Great Britain was suspected of working for complete control of the Baltic and its seaboard in order to oust the Germans from the markets of that territory and to have potent levers for action in Poland, Germany, and Russia. The achievement of that end would mean command of the Baltic, which had theretofore been a German lake.[189] It would also entail, it was said, the separation of Dantzig from Poland, and the attraction of the Finns, Esthonians, Letts, and Lithuanians from Germany's orbit into that of Great Britain. In vain the friends of the delegates declared that economic interests were not the mainspring of their deliberate action and that nothing was further from their intention than to angle for a mandate for those countries. The conviction was deep-rooted in the minds of many that each of the Great Powers was playing for its own hand. That there was some apparent foundation for this assumption cannot, as we saw, be gainsaid. Widely and unfavorably commented was the circumstance that in the heat of those discussions at the Conference a man of confidence of the Allies put this significant and impolitic question to one of the plenipotentiaries: "How would you take it if England were to receive a mandate for Lithuania?"

"The Great Powers," observed the most outspoken of the delegates of the lesser states, "are bandits, but as their operations are on a large scale they are entitled to another and more courteous name. Their gaze is fascinated by markets, concessions, monopolies. They are now making preparations for a great haul. At this politicians cannot affect to be scandalized. For it has never been otherwise since men came together in ordered communities. But what is irritating and repellent is the perfume of altruism and philanthropy which permeates this decomposition. We are told that already they are purchasing the wharves of Dantzig, making ready for 'big deals' in Libau, Riga, and Reval, founding a bank in Klagenfurt and negotiating for oil-wells in Rumania. Although deeply immersed in the ethics of politics, they have not lost sight of the worldly goods to be picked up and appropriated on the wearisome journey toward ideal goals. The atmosphere they have thus renewed is peculiarly favorable to the growth of cant, and tends to accelerate the process of moral and social dissolution. And the effects of this mephitic air may prove more durable than the contribution of its creators to the political reorganization of Europe. If we compare the high functions which they might have fulfilled in relation to the vast needs and the unprecedented tendencies of the new age with those which they have unwittingly and deliberately performed as sophists of sentimental morality and destroyers of the wheat together with the tares, we shall have to deplore one of the rarest opportunities missed beyond retrieve."

In this criticism there is a kernel of truth. The ethico-social currents to which the war gave rise had a profoundly moral aspect, and if rightly canalized might have fertilized many lands and have led to a new and healthy state-system. One indispensable condition, however, was that the peoples of the world should themselves be directly interested in the process, that they should be consulted and listened to, and helped or propelled into new grooves of thought and action. Instead of that the delegates contented themselves with giving new names to old institutions and tendencies which stood condemned, and with teaching lawless disrespect for every check and restraint except such as they chose to acknowledge. They were powerful advocates for right and justice, democracy and publicity, but their definitions of these abstract nouns made plain-speaking people gasp. Self-interest and material power were the idols which they set themselves to pull down, but the deities which they put in their places wore the same familiar looks as the idols, only they were differently colored.

FOOTNOTES:

[127] In February, 1919.

[128] The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Pichon, undertook to recognize in principle the independence of Esthonia, provided that Esthonia would take over her part of the Russian debt.

[129] In the first version of the Covenant, Article XIX deals with this subject. In the revised version it is Article XXI.

[130] Cf. L'Echo de Paris, August 19, 1919.

[131] In July, 1919.

[132] L'Echo de Paris, August 19, 1919.

[133] The armistice concluded with Hungary was grossly violated by the Hungarians and had lost its force. The Rumanians, when occupying the country, demanded a new one, and drafted it. The Supreme Council at first demurred, and then desisted from dictation. But its attitude underwent further changes later.

[134] The New York Herald, (Paris ed.), August 20, 1919.

[135] Ibid., May 4, 1919.

[136] I discussed Belgium's demands in a series of special articles published in The London Daily Telegraph and The Philadelphia Public Ledger in the months of January, February, and March, 1919.

[137] In Frisia and Ghelderland.

[138] In August, 1919.

[139] By Article XXI of the Covenant and Article CCCCXXXV of the Treaty.

[140] I was in possession of a complete copy.

[141] Cf. Corriere della Sera, August 24, 1919.

[142] In February.

[143] Cf. Chapter, "Censorship and Secrecy." The writer of these pages was the journalist.

[144] Le Temps, July 8, 1919.

[145] At the close of August, 1916.

[146] I was one of those who at the time maintained that even in the Allies' interests Rumania ought not to enter the war at that conjuncture, and anticipation of that invasion was one of the reasons I adduced.

[147] Also known by the German name of Theiss.

[148] Cf. Le Temps, July 28, 1919.

[149] Cf. The Daily Mail (Paris edition), September 5, 1919.

[150] On June 13, 1919.

[151] On July 11, 1919, some days later, the decision was suspended, owing to the opinion of General Bliss, who disagreed with Foch.

[152] On July 17, 1919.

[153] On July 20th.

[154] Estimated at 85,000.

[155] Moritz Kuhn, who altered his name to Bela Kuhn, was a vulgar criminal. Expelled from school for larceny, he underwent several terms of imprisonment, and is alleged to have pilfered from a fellow-prisoner. Even among some thieves there is no honor.

[156] Italy was represented by Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli, who resided in Budapest; Britain, by Col. Sir Thomas Cunningham, who was in Vienna, as was also Prince Livio Borghese. Later on the Powers delegated generals to be members of a military mission to the Hungarian capital.

[157] At Bruck.

[158] On July 20th.

[159] Le Journal des Debats, August 4, 1919.

[160] This is a larger proportion than was left to the Germans by the Treaty of Versailles.

[161] Le Temps, July 8, 1919.

[162] It was the habitual practice of the Conference to intrust missions abroad to generals who knew nothing whatever about the countries to which they were sent.

[163] Le Temps, August 8, 1919.

[164] Armistice of November 13, 1918, which had become void.

[165] On June 13, 1919.

[166] Composed of four members, one each for Britain, the United States, France, and Italy.

[167] On July 20th.

[168] Paris journals ascribed it to Mr. Balfour, although it does not bear the hall-mark of a diplomatist.

[169] Le Journal des Debats, August 13, 1919.

[170] Pertinax in L'Echo de Paris, August 10, 1919.

[171] The New York Herald (Paris edition), August 10, 1919.

[172] Le Journal des Debats, August 13, 1919. Article by Auguste Gauvain.

[173] General Gorton is the one who is said to have despatched the telegram.

[174] In the beginning of September, 1919.

[175] The French government having prudently refused to furnish an envoy, the British chose Sir George Clark.

[176] On June 10, 1919.

[177] The actors in this episode were not all officers and civil servants. They included some men in responsible positions.

[178] In Teschen.

[179] On Friday, April 18, 1919.

[180] The Rumanians, on the contrary, had been ordered to keep to the old conditions, although they, too, had lost their force.

[181] That is exactly what happened in the end. But the delegates would not believe it until it became an accomplished fact.

[182] About twenty-five thousand had already left France.

[183] The Ruthenians, Ukrainians, and Little Russians are racially the same people, just as those who speak German in northwestern Germany, Dutch in Holland, and Flemish in Belgium are racially close kindred. The main distinctions between the members of each branch are political.

[184] The Messrs. Wilson, George, Clemenceau, Barons Makino and Sonnino. M. Clemenceau was the nominal chairman, but in reality it was President Wilson who conducted the proceedings.

[185] Bomst is a canton in the former Province (Regierungs-besirk) of Posen, with about sixty thousand inhabitants.

[186] Minutes of this conversation exist.

[187] An interesting Russian tribe, dwelling chiefly in the provinces of Minsk and Grodno (excepting the extreme south), a small part of Suvalki, Vilna (excepting the northwest corner), the entire provinces of Vitebsk and Moghileff, the west part of Smolensk, and a few districts of Tshernigoff.

[188] La Societe des Etudes Politiques. The discourse in question was printed and published.

[189] In Germany and Russia the same view was generally taken of the motives that actuated the policy of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. The most elaborate attempt to demonstrate its correctness was made by Cr. Bunke, in The Dantziger Neueste Nachrichten, already mentioned in this book.



VII

POLAND'S OUTLOOK IN THE FUTURE

Casting a parting glance at Poland as she looked when emerging from the Conference in the leading-strings of the Great Western Powers, after having escaped from the Bolshevist dangers that compassed her round, we behold her about to begin her national existence as a semi-independent nation, beset with enemies domestic and foreign. For it would be an abuse of terms to affirm that Poland, or, indeed, any of the lesser states, is fully independent in the old sense of the word. The special treaty imposed on her by the Great Two obliges her to accord free transit to Allied goods and certain privileges to her Jewish and other minorities; to accept the supervision and intervention of the League of Nations, which the Poles contend means in their case an Anglo-Saxon-Jewish association; and, at the outset, at any rate, to recognize the French generalissimus as the supreme commander of her troops.

Poland's frontiers and general status ought, if the scheme of her French protectors had been executed, to have been accommodated to the peculiar functions which they destined her to fill in New Europe. France's plan was to make of Poland a wall between Germany and Russia. The marked tendency of the other two Conference leaders was to transform it into a bridge between those two countries. And the outcome of the compromise between them has been to construct something which, without being either, combines all the disadvantages of both. It is a bridge for Germany and a wall for Bolshevist Russia. That is the verdict of a large number of Poles. Although the Europe of the future is to be a pacific and ethically constituted community, whose members will have their disputes and quarrels with one another settled by arbitration courts and other conciliatory tribunals, war and efficient preparation for it were none the less uppermost in the minds of the circumspect lawgivers. Hence the Anglo-Saxon agreement to defend France against unprovoked aggression. Hence, too, the solicitude displayed by the French to have the Polish state, which is to be their mainstay in eastern Europe, equipped with every territorial and other guaranty necessary to qualify it for the duties. But what the French government contrived to obtain for itself it failed to secure for its new Slav ally. Nay, oddly enough it voted with the Anglo-Saxon delegates for keeping all the lesser states under the tutelage of the League. The Duumvirs, having made the requisite concessions to France, were resolved in Poland's case to avoid a further recoil toward the condemned forms of the old system of equilibrium. Hence the various plebiscites, home-rule charters, subdivisions of territory, and other evidences of a struggle for reform along the line of least resistance, as though in the unavoidable future conflict between timidly propounded theories and politico-social forces the former had any serious chance of surviving. In politics, as in coinage, it is the debased metal that ousts the gold from circulation.

Poland's situation is difficult; some people would call it precarious. She is surrounded by potential enemies abroad and at home—Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, Magyars, and Jews. A considerable number of Teutons are incorporated in her republic to-day, and also a large number of people of Russian race. Now, Russia and Germany, even if they renounce all designs of reconquering the territory which they misruled for such a long span of time, may feel tempted one day to recover their own kindred, and what they consider to be their own territory. And irredentism is one of the worst political plagues for all the three parties who usually suffer from it. If then Germany and Russia were to combine and attack Poland, the consequences would be serious. That democratic Germany would risk such a wild adventure in the near future is inconceivable. But history operates with long periods of time, and it behooves statesmanship to do likewise.

A Polish statesman would start from the assumption that, as Russia and Germany have for the time being ceased to be efficient members of the European state-system, a good understanding may be come to with both of them, and a close intimacy cultivated with one. Resourcefulness and statecraft will be requisite to this consummation. For some Russians are still uncompromising, and would fain take back a part of what the revolutionary wave swept out of their country's grasp, but circumstance bids fair to set free a potent moderating force in the near future. Already it is incarnated in statesmen of the new type. In this connection it is instructive to pass in review the secret maneuvers by which the recognition of Poland's independence was, so to say, extorted from a Russian Minister, who was reputed at the time to be a Democrat of the Democrats. As some governments have now become champions of publicity, I venture to hope that this disclosure will be as helpful to those whom it concerns as was the systematic suppression of my articles and telegrams during the space of four years.[190]

On the outbreak of the Russian revolution Poland's representatives in Britain, who had been ceaselessly working for the restoration of their country, approached the British government with a request that the opportunity should be utilized at once, and the new democratic Cabinet in Petrograd requested to issue a proclamation recognizing the independence of Poland. The reasons for this move having been propounded in detail, orally and in writing, the Foreign Secretary despatched at once a telegram to the Ambassador in the Russian capital, instructing him to lay the matter before the Russian Foreign Minister and urge him to lose no time in establishing the claim of the Polish provisional government to the sympathies of the world, and the redress of its wrongs by Russia. Sir George Buchanan called on Professor Milyukoff, then Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Constitutional Democratic party, and propounded to him the views of the British government, which agreed with those of France and Italy, and hoped he would see his way to profit by the opportunity. The answer was prompt and definite, and within forty-eight hours of Mr. Balfour's despatch it reached the Foreign Office. The gist of it was that the Minister of Foreign Affairs regretted his inability to deal with the problem at that conjuncture, owing to its great complexity and various bearings, and also because of his apprehension that the Poles would demand the incorporation of Russian lands in their reconstituted state. From this answer many conclusions might fairly be drawn respecting persons, parties, and principles on the surface of revolutionary Russia. But to his credit, Mr. Balfour did not accept it as final. He again telegraphed to the British Ambassador, instructing him to insist upon the recognition of Poland, as the matter was urgent, and to exhort the provisional government to give in good time the desired proof of the democratic faith that is to save Russia. Sir George Buchanan accomplished the task expeditiously. M. Milyukoff gave way, drafted and issued the proclamation. Mr. Bonar Law welcomed it in a felicitous speech in the House of Commons,[191] and the Entente press lauded to the skies the generous spirit of the new Russian government. The Russian people and their leaders have traveled far since then, and have rid themselves of much useless ballast.

As Slavs the Poles might have been naturally predisposed to live in amity with the Russians, were it not for the specter of the past that stands between them. But now that Russia is a democracy in fact as well as in name, this is much more feasible than it ever was before, and it is also indispensable to the Russians. In the first place, it is possible that Poland may have consolidated her forces before her mighty neighbor has recovered the status corresponding to her numbers and resources. If the present estimates are correct, and the frontiers, when definitely traced, leave Poland a republic with some thirty-five million people, such is her extraordinary birth-rate and the territorial scope it has for development, that in the not far distant future her population may exceed that of France. Assuming for the sake of argument that armies and other national defenses will count in politics as much as hitherto, Poland's specific weight will then be considerable. She will have become not indeed a world power (to-day there are only two such), but a European Great Power whose friendship will be well worth acquiring.

In the meanwhile Polish statesmen—the Poles have one in Roman Dmowski—may strike up a friendly accord with Russia, abandoning definitely and formally all claims to so-called historic Poland, disinteresting themselves in all the Baltic problems which concern Russia so closely, and envisaging the Ukraine from a point of view that harmonizes with hers. And if the two peoples could thus find a common basis of friendly association, Poland would have solved at least one of her Sphinx questions.

As for the internal development of the nation, it is seemingly hampered with as many hindrances as the international. It may be likened to the world after creation, bearing marks of the chaos of the eve. The German Poles differ considerably from the Austrian, while the Russian Poles are differentiated from both. The last-named still show traces of recent servitude in their everyday avocations. They lack the push and the energy of purpose so necessary nowadays in the struggle for life. The Austrian Poles in general are reputed to be likewise easy-going, lax, and more brilliant than solid, while their administrative qualities are said to be impaired by a leaning toward Oriental methods of transacting business. The Polish inhabitants of the provinces hitherto under Germany are people of a different temperament. They have assimilated some of the best qualities of the Teuton without sacrificing those which are inherent in men of their own race. A thorough grasp of detail and a gift for organization characterize their conceptions, and precision, thoroughness, and conscientiousness are predicated of their methods. If it be true that the first reform peremptorily called for in the new republic is an administrative purge, it follows that it can be most successfully accomplished with the whole-hearted co-operation of the German Poles, whose superior education fits them to conform their schemes to the most urgent needs of the nation and the epoch.

The next measure will be internal colonization. There are considerable tracts of land in what once was Russian Poland, the population of which, owing to the havoc of war, is abnormally sparse. Some districts, like that of the Pripet marshes, which even at the best of times had but five persons to the kilometer, are practically deserts. For the Russian army, when retreating before the Germans, drove before it a huge population computed at eight millions, who inhabited the territory to the east of Brest-Litovsk and northward between Lida and Minsk. Of these eight millions many perished on the way. A large percentage of the survivors never returned.[192] Roughly speaking, a couple of millions (mostly Poles and Jews) went back to their ruined homes. Now the Poles, who are one of the most prolific races in Europe, might be encouraged to settle on these thinly populated lands, which they could convert into ethnographically Polish districts within a relatively short span of time. These, however, are merely the ideas of a friendly observer, whose opinion cannot lay claim to any weight.

To-day Poland's hope is not, as it has been hitherto, the nobleman, the professor, and the publicist, but the peasant. The members of this class are the nucleus of the new nation. It is from their midst that Poland's future representatives in politics, arts, and science will be drawn. Already the peasants are having their sons educated in high-schools and universities, of which the republic has a fair number well supplied with qualified teachers,[193] and they are resolute adversaries of every movement tainted with Bolshevism.

Thus the difficulties and dangers with which new Poland will have to contend are redoubtable. But she stands a good chance of overcoming them and reaching the goal where lies her one hope of playing a noteworthy part in reorganized Europe. The indispensable condition of success is that the current of opinion and sentiment in the country shall buoy up reforming statesmen. These must not only understand the requirements of the new epoch and be alive to the necessity of penetrating public opinion, but also possess the courage to place high social aims at the head of their life and career. Statesmen of this temper are rare to-day, but Poland possesses at least one of them. Her resources warrant the conviction which her chiefs firmly entertain that she may in a relatively near future acquire the economic leadership of eastern Europe, and in population, military strength, and area equal France.

Parenthetically it may be observed that the enthusiasm of the Poles for British institutions and for intimate relations with Great Britain has perceptibly cooled.

In the limitations to which she is now subjected, her more optimistic leaders discern the temporarily unavoidable condition of a beneficent process of working forward toward indefinite amelioration. Their people's faith, that may one day raise the country above the highest summit of its past historical development, if it does not reconcile them to the present, may nerve them to the effort which shall realize that high consummation in the future.

FOOTNOTES:

[190] Most of my articles written during the last half of the war, and some during the armistice, were held back on grounds which were presumably patriotic. I share with those who were instrumental in keeping them from the public the moral portion of the reward which consists in the assumption that some high purpose was served by the suppression.

[191] On April 26, 1917.

[192] Mainly White Russians.

[193] The Poles have universities in Cracow, Warsaw, Lvoff (Lemberg), Liublin, and will shortly open one in Posen. One Polish statesman entertains a novel and useful idea which will probably be tested in the University of Posen. Noticing that the greater the progress of technical knowledge the less is the advance made in the knowledge of men, which is perhaps the most pressing need of the new age, this statesman proposes to create a new type of university, where there would be two principal sections, one for the study of natural sciences and mathematics, and the other for the study of men, which would include biology, psychology, ethnography, sociology, philology, history, etc.



VIII

ITALY

Of all the problems submitted to the Conference, those raised by Italy's demands may truly be said to have been among the easiest. Whether placed in the light of the Fourteen Points or of the old system of the rights of the victors, they would fall into their places almost automatically. But the peace criteria were identical with neither of those principles. They consisted of several heterogeneous maxims which were invoked alternately, Mr. Wilson deciding which was applicable to the particular case under discussion. And from his judgment there was no appeal.

It is of the essence of statesmanship to be able to put oneself in the place—one might almost say in the skin—of the foreign peoples and governments with which one is called upon to deal. But the feat is arduous and presupposes a variety of conditions which the President was unable to fulfil. His conception of Europe, for example, was much too simple. It has been aptly likened to that of the American economist who once remarked to the manager of an English railway: "You Britishers are handicapped by having to build your railway lines through cities and towns. We go to work diligently: we first construct the road and create the cities afterward."

And Mr. Wilson happened just then to be in quest of a fulcrum on which to rest his idealistic lever. For he had already been driven by egotistic governments from several of his commanding positions, and people were gibingly asking whether the new political gospel was being preached only as a foil for backslidings. Thus he abandoned the freedom of the seas ... on which he had taken a determined stand before the world. Although he refused the Rhine frontier to France, he had reluctantly given way to M. Clemenceau in the matter of the Saar Valley, assenting to a monstrous arrangement by which the German inhabitants of that region were to be handed over to the French Republic against their expressed will, as a set-off for a sum in gold which Germany would certainly be unable to pay.[194] He doubtless foresaw that he would also yield on the momentous issue of Shantung and the Chino-Japanese secret treaty. In a word, some of his more important abstract tenets professed in words were being brushed aside when it came to acts, and his position was truly unenviable. Naturally, therefore, he seized the first favorable occasion to apply them vigorously and unswervingly. This was supplied by the dispute between Italy and Jugoslavia, two nations which he held, so to say, in the hollow of his hand.

The latter state, still in the making, depended for its frontiers entirely on the fiat of the American President backed by the Premiers of Britain and France. And of this backing Mr. Wilson was assured. Italy, although more powerful militarily than Jugoslavia, was likewise economically dependent upon the good-will of the two English-speaking communities, who were assured in advance of the support of the French Republic. If, therefore, she could not be reasoned or cajoled into obeying the injunctions of the Supreme Council, she could easily be made malleable by other means. In her case, therefore, Mr. Wilson's ethical notions might be fearlessly applied. That this was the idea which underlay the President's policy is the obvious inference from the calm, unyielding way in which he treated the Italian delegation. In this connection it should be borne in mind that there is no more important distinction between all former peace settlements and that of the Paris Conference than the unavowed but indubitable fact that the latter rests upon the hegemony of the English-speaking communities of the world, whereas the former were based upon the balance of power. So immense a change could not be effected without discreetly throwing out as useless ballast some of the highly prized dogmas of the accepted political creeds, even at the cost of impairing the solidarity of the Latin races. This was effected incidentally. As a matter of fact, the French are not, properly speaking, a Latin race, nor has their solidarity with Italy or Spain ever been a moving political force in recent times. Italy's refusal to fight side by side with her Teuton allies against France and her backers may conceivably be the result of racial affinities, but it has hardly ever been ascribed to that sentimental source. Sentiment in politics is a myth. In any case, M. Clemenceau discerned no pressing reason for making painful efforts to perpetuate the Latin union, while solicitude for national interests hindered him from making costly concessions to it.

Naturally the cardinal innovation of which this was a corollary was never invoked as the ground for any of the exceptional measures adopted by the Conference. And yet it was the motive for several, for although no allusion was made to the hegemony of Anglo-Saxondom, it was ever operative in the subconsciousness of the two plenipotentiaries. And in view of the omnipotence of these two nations, they temporarily sacrificed consistency to tactics, probably without conscientious qualms, and certainly without political misgivings. That would seem to be a partial explanation of the lengths to which the Conference went in the direction of concessions to the Great Powers' imperialist demands. France asked to be recognized and treated as the personification of that civilization for which the Allied peoples had fought. And for many reasons, which it would be superfluous to discuss here, a large part of her claim was allowed. This concession was attacked by many as connoting a departure from principle, but the deviation was more apparent than real, for under all the wrappings of idealistic catchwords lay the primeval doctrine of force. The only substantial difference between the old system and the new was to be found in the wielders of the force and the ends to which they intended to apply it. Force remains the granite foundation of the new ordering, as it had been of the old. But its employment, it was believed, would be different in the future from what it had been in the past. Concentrated in the hands of the English-speaking peoples, it would become so formidable a weapon that it need never be actually wielded. Possession of overwhelmingly superior strength would suffice to enforce obedience to the decrees of its possessors, which always will, it is assumed, be inspired by equity. An actual trial of strength would be obviated, therefore, at least so long as the relative military and economic conditions of the world states underwent no sensible change. To this extent the war specter would be exorcised and trying abuses abolished.

That those views were expressly formulated and thrown into the clauses of a secret program is unlikely. But it seems to be a fact that the general outlines of such a policy were conceived and tacitly adhered to. These outlines governed the action of the two world-arbiters, not only in the dictatorial decrees issued in the name of political idealism and its Fourteen Points, which were so bitterly resented as oppressive by Italy, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Poland, and Greece, but likewise in those other concessions which scandalized the political puritans and gladdened the hearts of the French, the Japanese, the Jugoslavs, and the Jews. The dictatorial decrees were inspired by the delegates' fundamental aims, the concessions by their tactical needs—the former, therefore, were meant to be permanent, the latter transient.

All other explanations of the Italian crisis, however well they may fit certain of its phases, are, when applied to the pith of the matter, beside the mark. Even if it were true, as the dramatist, Sem Benelli, wrote, that "President Wilson evidently considers our people as on the plane of an African colony, dominated by the will of a few ambitious men," that would not account for the tenacious determination with which the President held to his slighted theory.

Italy's position in Europe was in many respects peculiar. Men still living remember the time when her name was scarcely more than a geographical expression which gradually, during the last sixty years, came to connote a hard-working, sober, patriotic nation. Only little by little did she recover her finest provinces and her capital, and even then her unity was not fully achieved. Austria still held many of her sons, not only in the Trentino, but also on the other shore of the Adriatic. But for thirty years her desire to recover these lost children was paralyzed by international conditions. In her own interests, as well as in those of peace, she had become the third member of an alliance which constrained her to suppress her patriotic feelings and allowed her to bend all her energies to the prevention of a European conflict.

When hostilities broke out, the attitude of the Italian government was a matter of extreme moment to France and the Entente. Much, perhaps the fate of Europe, depended on whether they would remain neutral or throw in their lot with the Teutons. They chose the former alternative and literally saved the situation. The question of motive is wholly irrelevant. Later on they were urged to move a step farther and take an active part against their former allies. But a powerful body of opinion and sentiment in the country was opposed to military co-operation, on the ground that the sum total of the results to be obtained by quiescence would exceed the guerdon of victory won by the side of the Entente. The correctness of this estimate depended upon many incalculable factors, among which was the duration of the struggle. The consensus of opinion was that it would be brief, in which case the terms dangled before Italy's eyes by the Entente would, it was believed by the Cabinet, greatly transcend those which the Central Powers were prepared to offer. Anyhow they were accepted and the compact was negotiated, signed, and ratified by men whose idealism marred their practical sense, and whose policy of sacred egotism, resolute in words and feeble in action, merely impaired the good name of the government without bringing any corresponding compensation to the country. The world struggle lasted much longer than the statesmen had dared to anticipate; Italy's obligations were greatly augmented by Russia's defection, she had to bear the brunt of all, instead of a part of Austria's forces, whereby the sacrifices demanded of her became proportionately heavier. Altogether it is fair to say that the difficulties to be overcome and the hardships to be endured before the Italian people reached their goal were and still are but imperfectly realized by their allies. For the obstacles were gigantic, the effort heroic; alone the results shrank to disappointing dimensions.

The war over, Italian statesmen confidently believed that those supererogatory exertions would be appropriately recognized by the Allies. And this expectation quickly crystallized into territorial demands. The press which voiced them ruffled the temper of Anglo-Saxondom by clamoring for more than it was ever likely to concede, and buoyed up their own nation with illusory hopes, the non-fulfilment of which was certain to produce national discontent. Curiously enough, both the government and the press laid the main stress upon territorial expansion, leaving economic advantages almost wholly out of account.

It was at this conjuncture that Mr. Wilson made his appearance and threw all the pieces on the political chessboard into weird confusion. "You," he virtually said, "have been fighting for the dismemberment of your secular enemy, Austria. Well, she is now dismembered and you have full satisfaction. Your frontiers shall be extended at her expense, but not at the expense of the new states which have arisen on her ruins. On the contrary, their rights will circumscribe your claims and limit your territorial aggrandizement. Not only can you not have all the additional territory you covet, but I must refuse to allot even what has been guaranteed to you by your secret treaty. I refuse to recognize that because the United States government was no party to it, was, in fact, wholly unaware of it until recently. New circumstances have transformed it into a mere scrap of paper."

This language was not understood by the Italian people. For them the sacredness of treaties was a dogma not to be questioned, and least of all by the champion of right, justice, and good faith. They had welcomed the new order preached by the American statesman, but were unable to reconcile it with the tearing up of existing conventions, the repudiation of legal rights, the dissolution of alliances. In particular their treaty with France, Britain, and Russia had contributed materially to the victory over the common enemy, had in fact saved the Allies. "It was Italy's intervention," said the chief of the Austrian General Staff, Conrad von Hoetzendorff, "that brought about the disaster. Without that the Central Empires would infallibly have won the war."[195] And there is no reason to doubt his assertion. In truth Italy had done all she had promised to the Allies, and more. She had contributed materially to save France—wholly gratuitously. It was also her neutrality, which she could have bartered, but did not,[196] that turned the scale at Bucharest against the military intervention of Rumania on the side of the Teutons.[197] And without the neutrality of both these countries at the outset of hostilities the course of the struggle and of European history would have been widely different from what they have been. And now that the Allies had achieved their aim they were to refuse to perform their part of the compact in the name, too, of a moral principle from the operation of which three great Powers were dispensed. That was the light in which the matter appeared to the unsophisticated mind of the average Italian, and not to him alone. Others accustomed to abstract reasoning asked whether the best preparation for the future regime of right and justice, and all that these imply, is to transgress existing rights and violate ordinary justice, and what difference there is between the demoralizing influence of this procedure and that of professional Bolshevists. There was but one adequate answer to this objection, and it consisted in the whole-hearted and rigid application of the Wilsonian tenets to all nations without exception. But even the author of these tenets did not venture to make it.

The essence of the territorial question lay in the disposal of the eastern shore of the Adriatic.[198] The Jugoslavs claimed all Istria and Dalmatia, and based their claim partly on the principle of nationalities and partly on the vital necessity of having outlets on that sea, and in particular Fiume, the most important of them all, which they described as essentially Croatian and indispensable as a port. The Italian delegates, joining issue with the Jugoslavs, and claiming a section of the seaboard and Fiume, argued that the greatest part of the East Adriatic shore would still remain Croatian, together with all the ports of the Croatian coast and others in southern Dalmatia—in a word, twelve ports, including Spalato and Ragusa, and a thousand kilometers of seaboard. The Jugoslavs met this assertion with the objection that the outlets in question were inaccessible, all except Fiume and Metkovitch. As for Fiume,[199] the Italian delegates contended that although not promised to Italy by the Treaty of London, it was historically hers, because, having been for centuries an autonomous entity and having as such religiously preserved its Italian character, its inhabitants had exercised their rights to manifest by plebiscite their desire to be united with the mother country. They further denied that it was indispensable to the Jugoslavs because these would receive a dozen other ports and also because the traffic between Croatia and Fiume was represented by only 7 per cent. of the whole, and even that of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia combined by only 13 per cent. Further, Italy would undertake to give all requisite export facilities in Fiume to the Jugoslavs.

The latter traversed many of these statements, and in particular that which described Fiume as a separate autonomous entity and as an essentially Italian city. Archives were ransacked by both parties, ancient documents produced, analyzed, condemned as forgeries or appealed to as authentic proofs, chance phrases were culled from various writers of bygone days and offered as evidence in support of each contention. Thus the contest grew heated. It was further inflamed by the attitude of Italy's allies, who appeared to her as either covertly unfriendly or at best lukewarm.

M. Clemenceau, who maintained during the peace negotiations the epithet "Tiger" which he had earned long before, was alleged to have said in the course of one of those conversations which were misnamed private, "For Italy to demand Fiume is to ask for the moon."[200] Officially he took the side of Mr. Wilson, as did also the British Premier, and Italy's two allies signified but a cold assent to those other claims which were covered by their own treaty. But they made no secret of their desire to see that instrument wholly set aside. Fiume they would not bestow on their ally, at least not unless she was prepared to offer an equivalent to the Jugoslavs and to satisfy the President of the United States.

This advocacy of the claims of the Jugoslavs was bitterly resented by the Italians. For centuries the two peoples had been rivals or enemies, and during the war the Jugoslavs fought with fury against the Italians. For Italy the arch-enemy had ever been Austria and Austria was largely Slav. "Austria," they say, "was the official name given to the cruel enemy against whom we fought, but it was generally the Croatians and other Slavs whom our gallant soldiers found facing them, and it was they who were guilty of the misdeeds from which our armies suffered." Official documents prove this.[201] Orders of the day issued by the Austrian Command eulogize "the Serbo-Croatian battalions who vied with the Austro-German and Hungarian soldiers in resisting the pitfalls dug by the enemy to cause them to swerve from their fidelity and take the road to treason.[202] In the last battle which ended the existence of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy a large contingent of excellent Croatian troops fought resolutely against the Italian armies."

In Italy an impressive story is told which shows how this transformation of the enemy of yesterday into the ally of to-day sometimes worked out. The son of an Italian citizen who was fighting as an aviator was killed toward the end of the war, in a duel fought in the air, by an Austrian combatant. Soon after the armistice was signed the sorrowing father repaired to the place where his son had fallen. He there found an ex-Austrian officer, the lucky victor and slayer of his son, wearing in his buttonhole the Jugoslav cocarde, who, advancing toward him with extended hand, uttered the greeting, "You and I are now allies."[203] The historian may smile at the naivete of this anecdote, but the statesman will acknowledge that it characterized the relations between the inhabitants of the new state and the Italians. One can divine the feelings of these when they were exhorted to treat their ex-enemies as friends and allies.

"Is it surprising, then," the Italians asked, "that we cannot suddenly conceive an ardent affection for the ruthless 'Austrians' of whose cruelties we were bitterly complaining a few months back? Is it strange that we cannot find it in our hearts to cut off a slice of Italian territory and make it over to them as one of the fruits of—our victory over them? If Italy had not first adopted neutrality and then joined the Allies in the war there would be no Jugoslavia to-day. Are we now to pay for our altruism by sacrificing Italian soil and Italian souls to the secular enemies of our race?" In a word, the armistice transformed Italy's enemy into a friend and ally for whose sake she was summoned to abandon some of the fruits of a hard-earned victory and a part of her secular aspirations. What, asked the Italian delegates, would France answer if she were told that the Prussians whom her matchless armies defeated must henceforth be looked upon as friends and endowed with some new colonies which would otherwise be hers? The Italian dramatist Sem Benelli put the matter tersely: "The collapse of Austria transforms itself therefore into a play of words, so much so that our people, who are much more precise because they languished under the Austrian yoke and the Austrian scourge, never call the Austrians by this name; they call them always Croatians, knowing well that the Croatians and the Slavs who constituted Austria were our fiercest taskmasters and most cruel executioners. It is naive to think that the ineradicable characteristics and tendencies of peoples can be modified by a change of name and a new flag."

But there was another way of looking at the matter, and the Allies, together with the Jugoslavs, made the most of it. The Slav character of the disputed territory was emphasized, the principle of nationality invoked, and the danger of incorporating an unfriendly foreign element which could not be assimilated was solemnly pointed out. But where sentiment actuates, reason is generally impotent. The policy of the Italian government, like that of all other governments, was frankly nationalistic; whether it was also statesman-like may well be questioned—indeed the question has already been answered by some of Italy's principal press organs in the negative.[204] They accuse the Cabinet of having deliberately let loose popular passions which it afterward vainly sought to allay, and the facts which they allege in support of the charge have never been denied.

It was certainly to Italy's best interests to strike up a friendly agreement with the new state, if that were feasible, and some of the men in whose hands her destinies rested, feeling their responsibility, made a laudable attempt to come to an understanding. Signor Orlando, whose sagacity is equal to his resourcefulness, was one. In London he had talked the subject over with the Croatian leader, M. Trumbic, and favored the movement toward reconciliation[205] which Baron Sonnino, his colleague, as resolutely discouraged. A congress was accordingly held in Rome[206] and an accord projected. The reciprocal relations became amicable. The Jugoslav committee in the Italian capital congratulated Signor Orlando on the victory of the Piave. But owing to various causes, especially to Baron Sonnino's opposition, these inchoate sentiments of neighborliness quickly lost their warmth and finally vanished. No trace of them remained at the Paris Conference, where the delegates of the two states did not converse together nor even salute one another.

President Wilson's visit to Rome, where, to use an Italian expression, he was welcomed by Delirium, seemed to brighten Italy's outlook on the future. Much was afterward made by the President's enemies of the subsequent change toward him in the sentiments of the Italian people. This is commonly ascribed to his failure to fulfil the expectations which his words or attitude aroused or warranted. Nothing could well be more misleading. Mr. Wilson's position on the subject of Italy's claims never changed, nor did he say or do aught that would justify a doubt as to what it was. In Rome he spoke to the Ministers in exactly the same terms as in Paris at the Conference. He apprized them in January of what he proposed to do in April and he even contemplated issuing a declaration of his Italian policy at once. But he was earnestly requested by the Ministers to keep his counsel to himself and to make no public allusion to it during his sojourn in Italy.[207] It was not his fault, therefore, if the Italian people cherished illusory hopes. In Paris Signer Orlando had an important encounter with Mr. Wilson,[208] who told him plainly that the allotment of the northern frontiers traced for Italy by the London Treaty would be confirmed, while that of the territory on the eastern Adriatic would be quashed. The division of the spoils of Austria there must, he added, be made congruously with a map which he handed to the Italian Premier. It was proved on examination to be identical with one already published by the New Europe.[209] Signor Orlando glanced at the map and in courteous phraseology unfolded the reasons why he could not entertain the settlement proposed. He added that no Italian parliament would ratify it. Thereupon the President turned the discussion to politico-ethical lines, pointed out the harm which the annexation of an alien and unfriendly element could inflict upon Italy, the great advantages which cordial relations with her Slav neighbor would confer on her, and the ease with which she might gain the markets of the new state. A young and small nation like the Jugoslavs would be grateful for an act of generosity and would repay it by lasting friendship—a return worth far more than the contentious territories. "Ah, you don't know the Jugoslavs, Mr. President," exclaimed Signor Orlando. "If Italy were to cede to them Dalmatia, Fiume, and eastern Istria they would forthwith lay claim to Trieste and Pola and, after Trieste and Pola, to Friuli and Gorizia."

After some further discussion Mr. Wilson said: "Well, I am unable to reconcile with my principles the recognition of secret treaties, and as the two are incompatible I uphold the principles." "I, too," rejoined the Italian Premier, "condemn secret treaties in the future when the new principles will have begun to regulate international politics. As for those compacts which were concluded during the war they were all secret, not excluding those to which the United States was a party." The President demurred to this reservation. He conceived and put his case briefly as follows: Italy, like her allies, had had it in her power to accept the Fourteen Points, reject them, or make reserves. Britain and France had taken exception to those clauses which they were determined to reject, whereas Italy signified her adhesion to them all. Therefore she was bound by the principles underlying them and had forfeited the right to invoke a secret treaty. The settlement of the issues turning upon Dalmatia, Istria, Fiume, and the islands must consequently be taken in hand without reference to the clauses of that instrument. Examined on their merits and in the light of the new arrangements, Italy's claims could not be upheld. It would be unfair to the Jugoslavs who inhabit the whole country to cut them off from their own seaboard. Nor would such a measure be helpful to Italy herself, whose interest it was to form a homogeneous whole, consolidate her dominions, and prepare for the coming economic struggle for national well-being. The principle of nationality must, therefore, be allowed full play.

As for Fiume, even if the city were, as alleged, an independent entity and desirous of being incorporated in Italy, one would still have to set against these facts Jugoslavia's imperative need of an outlet to the sea. Here the principle of economic necessity outweighs those of nationality and free determination. A country must live, and therefore be endowed with the wherewithal to support life. On these grounds, judgment should be entered for the Jugoslavs.

The Italian Premier's answer was equally clear, but he could not unburden his mind of it all. His government had, it was true, adhered to the Fourteen Points without reservation. But the assumptions on which it gave this undertaking were that it would not be used to upset past compacts, but would be reserved for future settlements; that even had it been otherwise the maxims in question should be deemed relevant in Italy's case only if applied impartially to all states, and that the entire work of reorganization should rest on this ethical foundation. A regime of exceptions, with privileged and unprivileged nations, would obviously render the scheme futile and inacceptable. Yet this was the system that was actually being introduced. If secret treaties were to be abrogated, then let the convention between Japan and China be also put out of court and the dispute between them adjudicated upon its merits. If the Fourteen Points are binding, let the freedom of the seas be proclaimed. If equal rights are to be conferred upon all states, let the Monroe Doctrine be repealed. If disarmament is to become a reality, let Britain and America cease to build warships. Suppose for a moment that to-morrow Brazil or Chile were to complain of the conduct of the United States, the League of Nations, in whose name Mr. Wilson speaks, would be hindered by the Monroe Doctrine from intervening, whereas Britain and the United States in analogous conditions may intermeddle in the affairs of any of the lesser states. When Ireland or Egypt or India uplifts its voice against Britain, it is but a voice in the desert which awakens no echo. If Fiume were inhabited by American citizens who, with a like claim to be considered a separate entity, asked to be allowed to live under the Stars and Stripes, what would President Wilson's attitude be then? Would he turn a deaf ear to their prayer? Surely not. Why, in the case of Italy, does he not do as he would be done by? What it all comes to is that the new ordering under the flag of equality is to consist of superior and inferior nations, of which the former, who speak English, are to possess unlimited power over the latter, to decide what is good for them and what is bad, what is licit and what is forbidden. And against their fiat there is to be no appeal. In a word, it is to be the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon race.

It is worth noting that Signor Orlando's arguments were all derived from the merits of the case, not from the terms or the force of the London Treaty. Fiume, he said, had besought Italy to incorporate it, and had made this request before the armistice, at a moment when it was risky to proclaim attachments to the kingdom.[210] The inhabitants had invoked Mr. Wilson's own words: "National aspirations must be respected.... Self-determination is not a mere phrase." "Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game. Every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of any adjustment for compromise of claims among rival states." And in his address at Mount Vernon the President had advocated a doctrine which is peculiarly applicable to Fiume—i.e.:

"The settlement of every question, whether of territory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of political relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement, for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery."[211] These maxims laid down by Mr. Wilson implicitly allot Fiume to Italy.

Finally as to the objection that Italy's claims would entail the incorporation of a number of Slavs, the answer was that the percentage was negligible as compared with the number of foreign elements annexed by other states. The Poles, it was estimated, would have some 30 per cent. of aliens, the Czechs not less, Rumania 17 per cent., Jugoslavia 11 per cent., France 4 per cent., and Italy only 3 per cent.

In February the Jugoslavs made a strategic move, which many admired as clever, and others blamed as unwise. They proposed that all differences between their country and Italy should be submitted to Mr. Wilson's arbitration. Considering that the President's mind was made up on the subject from the beginning, and that he had decided against Italy, it was natural that the delegation in whose favor his decision was known to incline should be eager to get it accepted by their rivals. As neither side was ignorant of what the result of the arbitration would be, only one of the two could be expected to close with the offer, and the most it could hope by doing this was to embarrass the other. The Italian answer was ingenious. Their dispute, they said, was not with Serbia, who alone was represented at the Conference; it concerned Croatia, who had no official standing there, and whose frontiers were not yet determined, but would in due time be traced by the Conference, of which Italy was a member. The decision would be arrived at after an exhaustive study, and its probable consequences to Europe's peace would be duly considered. As extreme circumspection was imperative before formulating a verdict, five plenipotentiaries would seem better qualified than any one of them, even though he were the wisest of the group. To remove the question from the competency of the Conference, which was expressly convoked to deal with such issues, and submit it to an individual, would be felt as a slight on the Supreme Council. And so the matter dropped.

Signor Orlando knew that if he had adopted the suggestion and made Mr. Wilson arbiter, Italy's hopes would have been promptly extinguished in the name of the Fourteen Points, and her example held up for all the lesser states to imitate. The President was, however, convinced that the Italian people would have ratified the arrangement with alacrity. It is worth recording that he was so sure of his own hold on the Italian masses that, when urging Signor Orlando to relinquish his demand for Fiume and the Dalmatian coast, he volunteered to provide him with a message written by himself to serve as the Premier's justification. Signor Orlando was to read out this document in Parliament in order to make it clear to the nation that the renunciation had been demanded by America, that it would most efficaciously promote Italy's best interests, and should for that reason be ratified with alacrity. Signor Orlando, however, declined the certificate and things took their course.

In Paris the Italian delegation made little headway. Every one admired, esteemed, and felt drawn toward the first delegate, who, left to himself, would probably have secured for his country advantageous conditions, even though he might be unable to add Fiume to those secured by the secret treaty. But he was not left to himself. He had to reckon with his Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was as mute as an oyster and almost as unsociable. Baron Sonnino had his own policy, which was immutable, almost unutterable. At the Conference he seemed unwilling to propound, much less to discuss it, even with those foreign colleagues on whose co-operation or approval its realization depended. He actually shunned delegates who would fain have talked over their common interests in a friendly, informal way, and whose business it was to strike up an agreement. In fact, results which could be secured only by persuading indifferent or hostile people and capturing their good-will he expected to attain by holding aloof from all and leading the life of a hermit, one might almost say of a misanthrope. One can imagine the feelings, if one may not reproduce the utterances, of English-speaking officials, whose legitimate desire for a free exchange of views with Italy's official spokesman was thwarted by the idiosyncrasies of her own Minister of Foreign Affairs. In Allied circles Baron Sonnino was distinctly unpopular, and his unpopularity produced a marked effect on the cause he had at heart. He was wholly destitute of friends. He had, it is true, only two enemies, but they were himself and the foreign element who had to work with him. Italy's cause was therefore inadequately served.

Several months' trial showed the unwisdom of Baron Sonnino's attitude, which tended to defeat his own policy. Italy was paid back by her allies in her own coin, aloofness for aloofness. After she had declined the Jugoslavs' ingenious proposal to refer their dispute to Mr. Wilson the three delegates[212] agreed among themselves to postpone her special problems until peace was signed with Germany, but Signor Orlando, having got wind of the matter, moved every lever to have them put into the forefront of the agenda. He went so far as to say that he would not sign the Treaty unless his country's claims were first settled, because that document would make the League of Nations—and therefore Italy as a member of the League—the guarantor of other nations' territories, whereas she herself had no defined territories for others to guarantee. She would not undertake to defend the integrity of states which she had helped to create while her own frontiers were indefinite. But in the art of procrastination the Triumvirate was unsurpassed, and, as the time drew near for presenting the Treaty to Germany, neither the Adriatic, the colonial, the financial, nor the economic problems on which Italy's future depended were settled or even broached. In the meanwhile the plenipotentiaries in secret council, of whom four or five were wont to deliberate and two to take decisions, had disagreed on the subject of Fiume. Mr. Wilson was inexorable in his refusal to hand the city over to Italy, and the various compromises devised by ingenious weavers of conflicting interests failed to rally the Italian delegates, whose inspirer was the taciturn Baron Sonnino. The Italian press, by insisting on Fiume as a sine qua non of Italy's approval of the Peace Treaty and by announcing that it would undoubtedly be accorded, had made it practically impossible for the delegates to recede. The circumstance that the press was inspired by the government is immaterial to the issue. President Wilson, who had been frequently told that a word from him to the peoples of Europe would fire their enthusiasm and carry them whithersoever he wished, even against their own governments, now purposed wielding this unique power against Italy's plenipotentiaries. As we saw, he would have done this during his sojourn in Rome, but was dissuaded by Baron Sonnino. His intention now was to compel the delegates to go home and ascertain whether their inflexible attitude corresponded with that of their people and to draw the people into the camp of the "idealists." He virtually admitted this during his conversation with Signor Orlando. What he seems to have overlooked, however, is that there are time limits to every policy, and that only the same causes can be set in motion to produce the same results. In Italy the President's name had a very different sound in April from the clarion-like tones it gave forth in January, and the secret of his popularity even then was the prevalent faith in his firm determination to bring about a peace of justice, irrespective of all separate interests, not merely a peace with indulgence for the strong and rigor for the weak. The time when Mr. Wilson might have summoned the peoples of Europe to follow him had gone by irrevocably. It is worth noting that the American statesman's views about certain of Italy's claims, although originally laid down with the usual emphasis as immutable, underwent considerable modifications which did not tend to reinforce his authority. Thus at the outset he had proclaimed the necessity of dividing Istria between the two claimant nations, but, on further reflection, he gave way in Italy's favor, thus enabling Signor Orlando to make the point that even the President's solutions needed corrections. It is also a fact that when the Italian Premier insisted on having the Adriatic problems definitely settled before the presentation of the Treaty to the Germans[213] his colleagues of France and Britain assured him that this reasonable request would be complied with. The circumstance that this promise was disregarded did not tend to smooth matters in the Council of Five.