clear, but with the introduction of the League of Nations as an international primate superior to the conquerors some rather perplexing questions will have to be answered.
“Do those who have seized the sovereignty transfer it or does Germany transfer it to the League of Nations? If so, how?
“Does the League assume possession of the sovereignty on its renunciation by Germany? If so, how?
“Does the League merely direct the disposition of the sovereignty without taking possession of it?
“Assuming that the latter question is answered in the affirmative, then after such disposition of the right to exercise sovereignty, which will presumably be a limited right, where does the actual sovereignty reside?
“The appointment of a mandatory to exercise sovereign rights over territory is to create an agent for the real sovereign. But who is the real sovereign?
“Is the League of Nations the sovereign, or is it a common agent of the nations composing the League, to whom is confided solely the duty of naming the mandatory and issuing the mandate?
“If the League is the sovereign, can it avoid responsibility for the misconduct of the mandatory, its agent?
“If it is not the League, who is responsible for the mandatory’s conduct?
“Assuming that the mandatory in faithfully performing the provisions of the mandate unavoidably works an injustice upon another party, can or ought the mandatory to be held responsible? If not, how can the injured party obtain redress? Manifestly the answer is, ‘From the sovereign,’ but who is the sovereign?
“In the Treaty of Peace Germany will be called upon to renounce sovereignty over her colonial possessions. To whom will the sovereignty pass?
“If the reply is, ‘The League of Nations,’ the question is: Does the League possess the attributes of an independent state so that it can function as an owner of territory? If so, what is it? A world state?
“If the League does not constitute a world state, then the sovereignty would have to pass to some national state. What national state? What would be the relation of the national state to the League?
“If the League is to receive title to the sovereignty, what officers of the League are empowered to receive it and to transfer its exercise to a mandatory?
“What form of acceptance should be adopted?
“Would every nation which is a member of the League have to give its representatives full powers to accept the title?
“Assuming that certain members decline to issue such powers or to accept title as to one or more of the territories, what relation would those members have to the mandatory named?”
There is no attempt in the memorandum to analyze or classify the queries raised, and, as I review them in the light of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, I do not think that some of them can be asked with any helpful purpose. On the other hand, many of the questions, I believe the large majority, were as pertinent after the Treaty was completed as they were when the memorandum was made.
As Colonel House was the other member of the Commission on the League of Nations and would have to consider the practicability and expediency of including the mandatory system in the Covenant, I read the memorandum to him stating that I had orally presented most of the questions to the President who characterized them as “legal technicalities” and for that reason unimportant. I said to the Colonel that I differed with the President, as I hoped he did, not only as to the importance of considering the difficulties raised by the questions before the system of mandates was adopted, but also as to the importance of viewing from every standpoint the wisdom of the system and the difficulties that might arise in its practical operation. I stated that, in my opinion, a simpler and better plan was to transfer the sovereignty over territory to a particular nation by a treaty of cession under such terms as seemed wise and, in the case of some of the newly erected states, to have them execute treaties accepting protectorates by Powers mutually acceptable to those states and to the League of Nations.
Colonel House, though he listened attentively to the memorandum and to my suggestions, did not seem convinced of the importance of the questions or of the advantages of adopting any other plan than that of the proposed mandatory system. To abandon the system meant to abandon one of the ideas of international supervision, which the President especially cherished and strongly advocated. It meant also to surrender one of the proposed functions of the League as an agent in carrying out the peace settlements under the Treaty, functions which would form the basis of an argument in favor of the organization of the League and furnish a practical reason for its existence. Of course the presumed arguments against the abandonment of mandates may not have been considered, but at the time I believed that they were potent with Colonel House and with the President. The subsequent advocacy of the system by these two influential members of the Commission on the League of Nations, which resulted in its adoption, in no way lessened my belief as to the reasons for their support.
The mandatory system, a product of the creative mind of General Smuts, was a novelty in international relations which appealed strongly to those who preferred to adopt unusual and untried methods rather than to accept those which had been tested by experience and found practical of operation. The self-satisfaction of inventing something new or of evolving a new theory is inherent with not a few men. They are determined to try out their ideas and are impatient of opposition which seeks to prevent the experiment. In fact opposition seems sometimes to enhance the virtue of a novelty in the minds of those who propose or advocate its adoption. Many reformers suffer from this form of vanity.
In the case of the system of mandates its adoption by the Conference and the conferring on the League of Nations the power to issue mandates seemed at least to the more conservative thinkers at Paris a very doubtful venture. It appeared to possess no peculiar advantages over the old method of transferring and exercising sovereign control either in providing added protection to the inhabitants of territory subject to a mandate or greater certainty of international equality in the matter of commerce and trade, the two principal arguments urged in favor of the proposed system.
If the advocates of the system intended to avoid through its operation the appearance of taking enemy territory as the spoils of war, it was a subterfuge which deceived no one. It seemed obvious from the very first that the Powers, which under the old practice would have obtained sovereignty over certain conquered territories, would not be denied mandates over those territories. The League of Nations might reserve in the mandate a right of supervision of administration and even of revocation of authority, but that right would be nominal and of little, if any, real value provided the mandatory was one of the Great Powers as it undoubtedly would be. The almost irresistible conclusion is that the protagonists of the theory saw in it a means of clothing the League of Nations with an apparent usefulness which justified the League by making it the guardian of uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples and the international agent to watch over and prevent any deviation from the principle of equality in the commercial and industrial development of the mandated territories.
It may appear surprising that the Great Powers so readily gave their support to the new method of obtaining an apparently limited control over the conquered territories, and did not seek to obtain complete sovereignty over them. It is not necessary to look far for a sufficient and very practical reason. If the colonial possessions of Germany had, under the old practice, been divided among the victorious Powers and been ceded to them directly in full sovereignty, Germany might justly have asked that the value of such territorial cessions be applied on any war indemnities to which the Powers were entitled. On the other hand, the League of Nations in the distribution of mandates would presumably do so in the interests of the inhabitants of the colonies and the mandates would be accepted by the Powers as a duty and not to obtain new possessions. Thus under the mandatory system Germany lost her territorial assets, which might have greatly reduced her financial debt to the Allies, while the latter obtained the German colonial possessions without the loss of any of their claims for indemnity. In actual operation the apparent altruism of the mandatory system worked in favor of the selfish and material interests of the Powers which accepted the mandates. And the same may be said of the dismemberment of Turkey. It should not be a matter of surprise, therefore, that the President found little opposition to the adoption of his theory, or, to be more accurate, of the Smuts theory, on the part of the European statesmen.
There was one case, however, in which the issuance of a mandate appeared to have a definite and practical value and to be superior to a direct transfer of complete sovereignty or of the conditional sovereignty resulting from the establishment of a protectorate. The case was that of a territory with or without a national government, which, not being self-supporting and not sufficiently strong to protect its borders from aggressive neighbors, or its people sufficiently enlightened to govern themselves properly, would be a constant source of expense instead of profit to the Power, which as its protector and tutor became its overlord. Under such conditions there was more probability of persuading a nation inspired by humanitarian and altruistic motives to assume the burden for the common good under the mandatory system than under the old method of cession or of protectorate. As to nations, however, which placed national interests first and made selfishness the standard of international policy it was to be assumed that an appeal under either system would be ineffective.
The truth of this was very apparent at Paris. In the tentative distribution of mandates among the Powers, which took place on the strong presumption that the mandatory system would be adopted, the principal European Powers appeared to be willing and even eager to become mandatories over territories possessing natural resources which could be profitably developed and showed an unwillingness to accept mandates for territories which, barren of mineral or agricultural wealth, would be continuing liabilities rather than assets. This is not stated by way of criticism, but only in explanation of what took place.
From the beginning to the end of the discussions on mandates and their distribution among the Powers it was repeatedly declared that the United States ought to participate in the general plan for the upbuilding of the new states which under mandatories would finally become independent nationalities, but it was never, to my knowledge, proposed, except by the inhabitants of the region in question, that the United States should accept a mandate for Syria or the Asiatic coast of the Aegean Sea. Those regions were rich in natural resources and their economic future under a stable government was bright. Expenditures in their behalf and the direction of their public affairs would bring ample returns to the mandatory nations. On the other hand, there was a sustained propaganda–for it amounted to that–in favor of the United States assuming mandates over Armenia and the municipal district of Constantinople, both of which, if limited by the boundaries which it was then purposed to draw, would be a constant financial burden to the Power accepting the mandate, and, in the case of Armenia, would require that Power to furnish a military force estimated at not less than 50,000 men to prevent the aggression of warlike neighbors and to preserve domestic order and peace.
It is not too severe to say of those who engaged in this propaganda that the purpose was to take advantage of the unselfishness of the American people and of the altruism and idealism of President Wilson in order to impose on the United States the burdensome mandates and to divide those which covered desirable territories among the European Powers. I do not think that the President realized at the time that an actual propaganda was going on, and I doubt very much whether he would have believed it if he had been told. Deeply impressed with the idea that it was the moral duty of the great and enlightened nations to aid the less fortunate and especially to guard the nationalities freed from autocratic rule until they were capable of self-government and self-protection, the President apparently looked upon the appeals made to him as genuine expressions of humanitarianism and as manifestations of the opinion of mankind concerning the part that the United States ought to take in the reconstruction of the world. His high-mindedness and loftiness of thought blinded him to the sordidness of purpose which appears to have induced the general acquiescence in his desired system of mandates, and the same qualities of mind caused him to listen sympathetically to proposals, the acceptance of which would give actual proof of the unselfishness of the United States.
Reading the situation thus and convinced of the objections against the mandatory system from the point of view of international law, of policy and of American interests, I opposed the inclusion of the system in the plan for a League of Nations. In view of the attitude which Mr. Wilson had taken toward my advice regarding policies I confined the objections which I presented to him, as I have stated, to those based on legal difficulties. The objections on the ground of policy were made to Colonel House in the hope that through him they might reach the President and open his eyes to the true state of affairs. Whether they ever did reach him I do not know. Nothing in his subsequent course of action indicated that they did.
But, if they did, he evidently considered them as invalid as he did the objections arising from legal difficulties. The system of mandates was written into the Treaty and a year after the Treaty was signed President Wilson asked the Congress for authority to accept for the United States a mandate over Armenia. This the Congress refused. It is needless to make further comment.
CHAPTER XIV
DIFFERENCES AS TO THE LEAGUE RECAPITULATED
The differences between the President’s views and mine in regard to the character of the League of Nations and to the provisions of the Covenant relating to the organization and functions of the League were irreconcilable, and we were equally in disagreement as to the duties of the League in carrying out certain provisions of the Treaty of Peace as the common agent of the signatory Powers. As a commissioned representative of the President of the United States acting under his instructions I had no alternative but to accept his decisions and to follow his directions, since surrender of my commission as Peace Commissioner seemed to me at the time to be practically out of the question. I followed his directions, however, with extreme reluctance because I felt that Mr. Wilson’s policies were fundamentally wrong and would unavoidably result in loss of prestige to the United States and to him as its Chief Magistrate. It seemed to me that he had endangered, if he had not destroyed, his preeminent position in world affairs in order to obtain the acceptance of his plan for a League of Nations, a plan which in theory and in detail was so defective that it would be difficult to defend it successfully from critical attack.
The objections to the terms of the Covenant, which I had raised at the outset, were based on principle and also on policy, as has been shown in the preceding pages; and on the same grounds I had opposed their hasty adoption and their inclusion in the Peace Treaty to be negotiated at Paris by the Conference. These objections and the arguments advanced in their support did not apparently have any effect on President Wilson, for they failed to change his views or to modify the plan which he, with General Smuts and Lord Robert Cecil, had worked out for an international organization. They did not swerve him one jot from his avowed purpose to make the creation of the League of Nations the principal feature of the negotiations and the provisions of the Covenant the most prominent articles in the Treaties of Peace with the Central Powers.
Instead of accomplishing their designed purpose, my efforts to induce the President to change his policy resulted only in my losing his confidence in my judgment and in arousing in his mind, if I do not misinterpret his conduct, doubts of my loyalty to him personally. It was characteristic of Mr. Wilson that his firm conviction as to the soundness of his conclusions regarding the character of the League of Nations and his fixity of purpose in seeking to compel its adoption by the Peace Conference were so intense as to brook no opposition, especially from one whom he expected to accept his judgment without question and to give support in thought and word to any plan or policy which he advocated. In view of this mental attitude of the President it is not difficult to understand his opinion of my course of action at Paris. The breach in our confidential relations was unavoidable in view of my conviction of the duty of an official adviser and his belief that objections ought not to be urged as to a matter concerning which he had expressed his opinion. To give implied assent to policies and intentions which seemed to me wrong or unwise would have been violative of a public trust, though doubtless by remaining silent I might have won favor and approval from the President and retained his confidence.
In summarizing briefly the subjects of disagreement between the President and myself concerning the League of Nations I will follow the order of importance rather than the order in which they arose. While they also divide into two classes, those based on principle and those based on policy, it does not seem advisable to treat them by classes in the summary.
The most serious defect in the President’s Covenant was, in my opinion, one of principle. It was the practical denial of the equality of nations in the regulation of international affairs in times of peace through the recognition in the Executive Council of the League of the right of primacy of the Five Great Powers. This was an abandonment of a fundamental principle of international law and comity and was destructive of the very conception of national sovereignty both as a term of political philosophy and as a term of constitutional law. The denial of the equal independence and the free exercise of sovereign rights of all states in the conduct of their foreign affairs, and the establishment of this group of primates, amounted to a recognition of the doctrine that the powerful are, in law as well as in fact, entitled to be the overlords of the weak. If adopted, it legalized the mastery of might, which in international relations, when peace prevailed, had been universally condemned as illegal and its assertion as reprehensible.
It was this doctrine, that the possessors of superior physical power were as a matter of right the supervisors, if not the dictators, of those lacking the physical power to resist their commands, which was the vital element of ancient imperialism and of modern Prussianism. Belief in it as a true theory of world polity justified the Great War in the eyes of the German people even when they doubted the plea of their Government that their national safety was in peril. The victors, although they had fought the war with the announced purpose of proving the falsity of this pernicious doctrine and of emancipating the oppressed nationalities subject to the Central Powers, revived the doctrine with little hesitation during the negotiations at Paris and wrote it into the Covenant of the League of Nations by contriving an organization which would give practical control over the destinies of the world to an oligarchy of the Five Great Powers. It was an assumption of the right of supremacy based on the fact that the united strength of these Powers could compel obedience. It was a full endorsement of the theory of “the balance of power” in spite of the recognized evils of that doctrine in its practical application. Beneath the banner of the democracies of the world was the same sinister idea which had found expression in the Congress of Vienna with its purpose of protecting the monarchical institutions of a century ago. It proclaimed in fact that mankind must look to might rather than right, to force rather than law, in the regulation of international affairs for the future.
This defect in the theory, on which the League of Nations was to be organized, was emphasized and given permanency by the adoption of a mutual guaranty of territorial integrity and political independence against external aggression. Since the burden of enforcing the guaranty would unavoidably fall upon the more powerful nations, they could reasonably demand the control over affairs which might develop into a situation requiring a resort to the guaranty. In fact during a plenary session of the Peace Conference held on May 31, 1919, President Wilson stated as a broad principle that responsibility for protecting and maintaining a settlement under one of the Peace Treaties carried with it the right to determine what that settlement should be. The application to the case of responsible guarantors is obvious and was apparently in mind when the Covenant was being evolved. The same principle was applied throughout the negotiations at Paris.
The mutual guaranty from its affirmative nature compelled in fact, though not in form, the establishment of a ruling group, a coalition of the Great Powers, and denied, though not in terms, the equality of nations. The oligarchy was the logical result of entering into the guaranty or the guaranty was the logical result of the creation of the oligarchy through the perpetuation of the basic idea of the Supreme War Council. No distinction was made as to a state of war and a state of peace. Strongly opposed to the abandonment of the principle of the equality of nations in times of peace I naturally opposed the affirmative guaranty and endeavored to persuade the President to accept as a substitute for it a self-denying or negative covenant which amounted to a promise of “hands-off” and in no way required the formation of an international oligarchy to make it effective.
In addition to the foregoing objection I opposed the guaranty on the ground that it was politically inexpedient to attempt to bind the United States by a treaty provision which by its terms would certainly invite attack as to its constitutionality. Without entering into the strength of the legal argument, and without denying that there are two sides to the question, the fact that it was open to debate whether the treaty-making power under the Constitution could or could not obligate the Government of the United States to make war under certain conditions was in my judgment a practical reason for avoiding the issue. If the power existed to so bind the United States by treaty on the theory that the Federal Government could not be restricted in its right to make international agreements, then the guaranty would be attacked as an unwise and needless departure from the traditional policies of the Republic. If the power did not exist, then the violation of the Constitution would be an effective argument against such an undertaking. Whatever the conclusion might be, therefore, as to the legality of the guaranty or as to whether the obligation was legal or moral in nature, it did not seem possible for it to escape criticism and vigorous attack in America.
It seemed to me that the President’s guaranty was so vulnerable from every angle that to insist upon it would endanger the acceptance of any treaty negotiated if the Covenant was, in accordance with the President’s plan, made an integral part of it. Then, too, opposition would, in my opinion, develop on the ground that the guaranty would permit European Powers to participate, if they could not act independently, in the forcible settlement of international quarrels in the Western Hemisphere whenever there was an actual invasion of territory or violation of sovereignty, while conversely the United States would be morally, if not legally, bound to take part in coercive measures in composing European differences under similar conditions. It could be urged with much force that the Monroe Doctrine in the one case and the Washington policy of avoiding “entangling alliances” in the other would be so affected that they would both have to be substantially abandoned or else rewritten. If the American people were convinced that this would be the consequence of accepting the affirmative guaranty, it meant its rejection. In any event it was bound to produce an acrimonious controversy. From the point of view of policy alone it seemed unwise to include the guaranty in the Covenant, and believing that an objection on that ground would appeal to the President more strongly than one based on principle, I emphasized that objection, though in my own mind the other was the more vital and more compelling.
The points of difference relating to the League of Nations between the President’s views and mine, other than the recognition of the primacy of the Great Powers, the affirmative guaranty and the resulting denial in fact of the equality of nations in times of peace, were the provisions in the President’s original draft of the Covenant relating to international arbitrations, the subordination of the judicial power to the political power, and the proposed system of mandates. Having discussed with sufficient detail the reasons which caused me to oppose these provisions, and having stated the efforts made to induce President Wilson to abandon or modify them, repetition would be superfluous. It is also needless, in view of the full narrative of events contained in these pages, to state that I failed entirely in my endeavor to divert the President from his determination to have these provisions inserted in the Covenant, except in the case of international arbitrations, and even in that case I do not believe that my advice had anything to do with his abandonment of his ideas as to the method of selecting arbitrators and the right of appeal from arbitral awards. Those changes and the substitution of an article providing for the future creation of a Permanent Court of International Justice, were, in my opinion, as I have said, a concession to the European statesmen and due to their insistence.
President Wilson knew that I disagreed with him as to the relative importance of restoring a state of peace at the earliest date possible and of securing the adoption of a plan for the creation of a League of Nations. He was clearly convinced that the drafting and acceptance of the Covenant was superior to every other task imposed on the Conference, that it must be done before any other settlement was reached and that it ought to have precedence in the negotiations. His course of action was conclusive evidence of this conviction.
On the other hand, I favored the speedy negotiation of a short and simple preliminary treaty, in which, so far as the League of Nations was concerned, there would be a series of declarations and an agreement for a future international conference called for the purpose of drafting a convention in harmony with the declarations in the preliminary treaty. By adopting this course a state of peace would have been restored in the early months of 1919, official intercourse and commercial relations would have been resumed, the more complex and difficult problems of settlement would have been postponed to the negotiation of the definitive Treaty of Peace, and there would have been time to study exhaustively the purposes, powers, and practical operations of a League before the organic agreement was put into final form. Postponement would also have given opportunity to the nations, which had continued neutral throughout the war, to participate in the formation of the plan for a League on an equal footing with the nations which had been belligerents. In the establishment of a world organization universality of international representation in reaching an agreement seemed to me advisable, if not essential, provided the nations represented were democracies and not autocracies.
It was to be presumed also that at a conference entirely independent of the peace negotiations and free from the influences affecting the terms of peace, there would be more general and more frank discussions regarding the various phases of the subject than was possible at a conference ruled by the Five Great Powers and dominated in its decisions, if not in its opinions, by the statesmen of those Powers.
To perfect such a document, as the Covenant of the League of Nations was intended to be, required expert knowledge, practical experience in international relations, and an exchange of ideas untrammeled by immediate questions of policy or by the prejudices resulting from the war and from national hatreds and jealousies. It was not a work for politicians, novices, or inexperienced theorists, but for trained statesmen and jurists, who were conversant with the fundamental principles of international law, with the usages of nations in their intercourse with one another, and with the successes and failures of previous experiments in international association. The President was right in his conception as to the greatness of the task to be accomplished, but he was wrong, radically wrong, in believing that it could be properly done at the Paris Conference under the conditions which there prevailed and in the time given for consideration of the subject.
To believe for a moment that a world constitution–for so its advocates looked upon the Covenant–could be drafted perfectly or even wisely in eleven days, however much thought individuals may have previously given to the subject, seems on the face of it to show an utter lack of appreciation of the problems to be solved or else an abnormal confidence in the talents and wisdom of those charged with the duty. If one compares the learned and comprehensive debates that took place in the convention which drafted the Constitution of the United States, and the months that were spent in the critical examination word by word of the proposed articles, with the ten meetings of the Commission on the League of Nations prior to its report of February 14 and with the few hours given to debating the substance and language of the Covenant, the inferior character of the document produced by the Commission ought not to be a matter of wonder. It was a foregone conclusion that it would be found defective. Some of these defects were subsequently corrected, but the theory and basic principles, which were the chief defects in the plan, were preserved with no substantial change.
But the fact, which has been repeatedly asserted in the preceding pages and which cannot be too strongly emphasized by repetition, is that the most potent and most compelling reason for postponing the consideration of a detailed plan for an international organization was that such a consideration at the outset of the negotiations at Paris obstructed and delayed the discussion and settlement of the general terms necessary to the immediate restoration of a state of peace. Those who recall the political and social conditions in Europe during the winter of 1918-19, to which reference has already been made, will comprehend the apprehension caused by anything which interrupted the negotiation of the peace. No one dared to prophesy what might happen if the state of political uncertainty and industrial stagnation, which existed under the armistices, continued.
The time given to the formulation of the Covenant of the League of Nations and the determination that it should have first place in the negotiations caused such a delay in the proceedings and prevented a speedy restoration of peace. Denial of this is useless. It is too manifest to require proof or argument to support it. It is equally true, I regret to say, that President Wilson was chiefly responsible for this. If he had not insisted that a complete and detailed plan for the League should be part of the treaty negotiated at Paris, and if he had not also insisted that the Covenant be taken up and settled in terms before other matters were considered, a preliminary treaty of peace would in all probability have been signed, ratified, and in effect during April, 1919.
Whatever evils resulted from the failure of the Paris Conference to negotiate promptly a preliminary treaty–and it must be admitted they were not a few–must be credited to those who caused the delay. The personal interviews and secret conclaves before the Commission on the League of Nations met occupied a month and a half. Practically another half month was consumed in sessions of the Commission. The month following was spent by President Wilson on his visit to the United States explaining the reported Covenant and listening to criticisms. While much was done during his absence toward the settlement of numerous questions, final decision in every case awaited his return to Paris. After his arrival the Commission on the League renewed its sittings to consider amendments to its report, and it required over a month to put it in final form for adoption; but during this latter period much time was given to the actual terms of peace, which on account of the delay caused in attempting to perfect the Covenant had taken the form of a definitive rather than a preliminary treaty.
It is conservative to say that between two and three months were spent in the drafting of a document which in the end was rejected by the Senate of the United States and was responsible for the non-ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. In view of the warnings that President Wilson had received as to the probable result of insisting on the plan of a League which he had prepared and his failure to heed the warnings, his persistency in pressing for acceptance of the Covenant before anything else was done makes the resulting delay in the peace less excusable.
Two weeks after the President returned from the United States in March the common opinion was that the drafting of the Covenant had delayed the restoration of peace, an opinion which was endorsed in the press of many countries. The belief became so general and aroused so much popular condemnation that Mr. Wilson considered it necessary to make a public denial, in which he expressed surprise at the published views and declared that the negotiations in regard to the League of Nations had in no way delayed the peace. Concerning the denial and the subject with which it dealt, I made on March 28 the following memorandum:
“The President has issued a public statement, which appears in this morning’s papers, in which he refers to the ‘surprising impression’ that the discussions concerning the League of Nations have delayed the making of peace and he flatly denies that the impression is justified.
“I doubt if this statement will remove the general impression which amounts almost to a conviction. Every one knows that the President’s thoughts and a great deal of his time prior to his departure for the United States were given to the formulation of the plan for a League and that he insisted that the ‘Covenant’ should be drafted and reported before the other features of the peace were considered. The _real_ difficulties of the present situation, which had to be settled before the treaty could be drafted, were postponed until his return here on March 13th.
“In fact the real bases of peace have only just begun to receive the attention which they deserve.
“If such questions as the Rhine Provinces, Poland, reparations, and economic arrangements had been taken up by the President and Premiers in January, and if they had sat day and night, as they are now sitting _in camera,_ until each was settled, the peace treaty would, I believe, be to-day on the Conference’s table, if not actually signed.
“Of course the insistence that the plan of the League be first pushed to a draft before all else prevented the settlement of the other questions. Why attempt to refute what is manifestly true? I regret that the President made the statement because I do not think that it carries conviction. I fear that it will invite controversy and denial, and that it puts the President on the defensive.”
The views expressed in this memorandum were those held, I believe, by the great majority of persons who participated in the Peace Conference or were in intimate touch with its proceedings. Mr. Wilson’s published denial may have converted some to the belief that the drafting of the Covenant was in no way responsible for the delay of the peace, but the number of converts must have been very few, as it meant utter ignorance of or indifference to the circumstances which conclusively proved the incorrectness of the statement.
The effect of this attempt of President Wilson to check the growing popular antipathy to the League as an obstacle to the speedy restoration of peace was to cause speculation as to whether he really appreciated the situation. If he did not, it was affirmed that he was ignorant of public opinion or else was lacking in mental acuteness. If he did appreciate the state of affairs, it was said that his statement was uttered with the sole purpose of deceiving the people. In either case he fell in public estimation. It shows the unwisdom of having issued the denial.
CHAPTER XV
THE PROPOSED TREATY WITH FRANCE
There is one subject, connected with the consideration of the mutual guaranty which, as finally reported by the Commission on the League of Nations, appears as Article 10 of the Covenant, that should be briefly reviewed, as it directly bears upon the value placed upon the guaranty by the French statesmen who accepted it. I refer to the treaties negotiated by France with the United States and Great Britain respectively. These treaties provided that, in the event of France being again attacked by Germany without provocation, the two Powers severally agreed to come to the aid of the French Republic in repelling the invasion. The joint nature of the undertaking was in a provision in each treaty that a similar treaty would be signed by the other Power, otherwise the agreement failed. The undertakings stated in practically identical terms in the two treaties constituted, in fact, a triple defensive alliance for the preservation of the integrity of French territory and French independence. It had the same object as the guaranty in the Covenant, though it went even further in the assurance of affirmative action, and was, therefore, open to the same objections on the grounds of constitutionality and policy as Article 10.
In a note, dated March 20, stating my “Impressions as to the Present Situation,” I discussed the endeavors being made by the President to overcome opposition and to remove obstacles to the acceptance of his plan for a League of Nations by means of compromises and concessions. In the note appears the following:
“An instance of the lengths to which these compromises and makeshifts are going, occurred this morning when Colonel House sent to Mr. White, General Bliss, and me for our opinion the following proposal: That the United States, Great Britain, and France enter into a formal alliance to resist any aggressive action by Germany against France or Belgium, and to employ their military, financial, and economic resources for this purpose in addition to exerting their moral influence to prevent such aggression.
“We three agreed that, if that agreement was made, the chief reason for a League of Nations, as now planned, disappeared. So far as France and Belgium were concerned the alliance was all they needed for their future safety. They might or might not accept the League. Of course they would if the alliance depended upon their acceptance. They would do most anything to get such an alliance.
“The proposal was doubtless made to remove two provisions on which the French are most insistent: _First_, an international military staff to be prepared to use force against Germany if there were signs of military activity; _second_, the creation of an independent Rhenish Republic to act as a ‘buffer’ state. Of course the triple alliance would make these measures needless.
“What impressed me most was that to gain French support for the League the proposer of the alliance was willing to destroy the chief feature of the League. It seemed to me that here was utter blindness as to the consequences of such action. There appears to have been no thought given as to the way other nations, like Poland, Bohemia, and the Southern Slavs, would view the formation of an alliance to protect France and Belgium alone. Manifestly it would increase rather than decrease their danger from Germany since she would have to look eastward and southward for expansion. Of course they would not accept as sufficient the guaranty in the Covenant when France and Belgium declined to do it.
“How would such a proposal be received in the United States with its traditional policy of avoiding ‘entangling alliances’? Of course, when one considers it, the proposal is preposterous and would be laughed at and rejected.”
This was the impression made upon me at the time that this triple alliance against Germany was first proposed. I later came to look upon it more seriously and to recognize the fact that there were some valid reasons in favor of the proposal. The subject was not further discussed by the Commissioners for several weeks, but it is clear from what followed that M. Clemenceau, who naturally favored the idea, continued to press the President to agree to the plan. What arguments were employed to persuade him I cannot say, but, knowing the shrewdness of the French Premier in taking advantage of a situation, my belief is that he threatened to withdraw or at least gave the impression that he would withdraw his support of the League of Nations or else would insist on a provision in the Covenant creating a general staff and an international military force and on a provision in the treaty establishing a Rhenish Republic or else ceding to France all territory west of the Rhine. To avoid the adoption of either of these provisions, which would have endangered the approval of his plan for world organization, the President submitted to the French demand. At least I assume that was the reason, for he promised to enter into the treaty of assistance which M. Clemenceau insisted should be signed.
It is of course possible that he was influenced in his decision by the belief that the knowledge that such an agreement existed would be sufficient to deter Germany from even planning another invasion of France, but my opinion is that the desire to win French support for the Covenant was the chief reason for the promise that he gave. It should be remembered that at the time both the Italians and Japanese were threatening to make trouble unless their territorial ambitions were satisfied. With these two Powers disaffected and showing a disposition to refuse to accept membership in the proposed League of Nations the opposition of France to the Covenant would have been fatal. It would have been the end of the President’s dream of a world organized to maintain peace by an international guaranty of national boundaries and sovereignties. Whether France would in the end have insisted on the additional guaranty of protection I doubt, but it is evident that Mr. Wilson believed that she would and decided to prevent a disaster to his plan by acceding to the wishes of his French colleague.
Some time in April prior to the acceptance of the Treaty of Peace by the Premiers of the Allied Powers, the President and Mr. Lloyd George agreed with M. Clemenceau to negotiate the treaties of protective alliance which the French demanded. The President advised me of his decision on the day before the Treaty was delivered to the German plenipotentiaries stating in substance that his promise to enter into the alliance formed a part of the settlements as fully as if written into the Treaty. I told him that personally I considered an agreement to negotiate the treaty of assistance a mistake, as it discredited Article 10 of the Covenant, which he considered all-important, and as it would, I was convinced, be the cause of serious opposition in the United States. He replied that he considered it necessary to adopt this policy in the circumstances, and that, at any rate, having passed his word with M. Clemenceau, who was accepting the Treaty because of his promise, it was too late to reconsider the matter and useless to discuss it.
Subsequently the President instructed me to have a treaty drafted in accordance with a memorandum which he sent me. This was done by Dr. James Brown Scott and the draft was approved and prepared for signature. On the morning of June 28, the same day on which the Treaty of Versailles was signed, the protective treaty with France was signed at the President’s residence in the Place des Etats Unis by M. Clemenceau and M. Pichon for the French Republic and by President Wilson and myself for the United States, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour signing at the same time a similar treaty for Great Britain. Though disagreeing with the policy of the President in regard to this special treaty it would have been futile for me to have refused to accept the full powers issued to me on June 27 or to have declined to follow the directions to act as a plenipotentiary in signing the document. Such a course would not have prevented Mr. Wilson from entering into the defensive alliance with France and Great Britain and might have actually delayed the peace. Feeling strongly the supreme necessity of ending the existing state of war as soon as possible I did not consider that I would be justified in refusing to act as the formal agent of the President or in disobeying his instructions as such agent. In view of the long delay in ratification of the Treaty of the Peace, I have since doubted whether I acted wisely. But at the time I was convinced that the right course was the one which I followed.
In spite of the fact that my judgment was contrary to the President’s as to the wisdom of negotiating this treaty because I considered the policy of doing so bad from the standpoint of national interests and of doubtful expediency in view of the almost certain rejection of it by the United States Senate and of its probable effect on any plan for general disarmament, I was not entirely satisfied because I could not disregard the fact that an argument could be made in its favor which was not without force.
The United States entered the war to check the progress of the autocratic imperialism of Germany. That purpose became generally recognized before the victory was won. In making peace it was deemed, therefore, a matter of first importance to make impossible a revival of the aggressive spirit and ambitious designs of Germany. The prevailing bitterness against France because of the territorial cessions and the reparations demanded by the victor would naturally cause the German people to seek future opportunity to be revenged. With a population almost, if not quite, double that of the French Republic, Germany would be a constant menace to the nation which had suffered so terribly in the past by reason of the imperialistic spirit prevalent in the German Empire. The fear of that menace strongly influenced the French policies during the negotiations at Paris. In fact it was hard to avoid the feeling that this fear dominated the conduct of the French delegates and the attitude of their Government. They demanded much, and recognizing the probable effect of their demands on the German people sought to obtain special protection in case their vanquished enemy attempted in the future to dispossess them by force of the land which he had been compelled to surrender or attempted to make them restore the indemnity paid.
Whether France could have avoided the danger of German attack in the future by lessening her demands, however just they might be, is neither here nor there. It makes little practical difference how that question is answered. The important fact is that the settlements in favor of France under the Treaty were of a nature which made the continuance of peace between the two nations doubtful if Germany possessed the ability to regain her military strength and if nothing was done to prevent her from using it. In these circumstances a special protective treaty seemed a practical way to check the conversion of the revengeful spirit of the Germans into another war of invasion.
However valid this argument in favor of the two treaties of assistance, and though my personal sympathy for France inclined me to satisfy her wishes, my judgment, as an American Commissioner, was that American interests and the traditional policies of the United States were against this alliance. Possibly the President recognized the force of the argument in favor of the treaty and valued it so highly that he considered it decisive. Knowing, however, his general attitude toward French demands and his confidence in the effectiveness of the guaranty in the Covenant, I believe that the controlling reason for promising the alliance and negotiating the treaty was his conviction that it was necessary to make this concession to the French in order to secure their support for the Covenant and to check the disposition in certain quarters to make the League of Nations essentially a military coalition under a general international staff organized and controlled by the French.
There were those who favored the mutual guaranty in the Covenant, but who strongly opposed the separate treaty with France. Their objection was that, in view of the general guaranty, the treaty of assistance was superfluous, or, if it were considered necessary, then it discredited the Covenant’s guaranty. The argument was logical and difficult to controvert. It was the one taken by delegates of the smaller nations who relied on the general guaranty to protect their countries from future aggressions on the part of their powerful neighbors. If the guaranty of the Covenant was sufficient protection for them, they declared that it ought to be sufficient for France. If France doubted its sufficiency, how could they be content with it?
Since my own judgment was against any form of guaranty imposing upon the United States either a legal or a moral obligation to employ coercive measures under certain conditions arising in international affairs, I could not conscientiously support the idea of the French treaty. This further departure from America’s historic policy caused me to accept President Wilson’s “guidance and direction … with increasing reluctance,” as he aptly expressed it in his letter of February 11, 1920. We did not agree, we could not agree, since our points of view were so much at variance.
Yet, in spite of the divergence of our views as to the negotiations which constantly increased and became more and more pronounced during the six months at Paris, our personal relations continued unchanged; at least there was no outward evidence of the actual breach which existed. As there never had been the personal intimacy between the President and myself, such as existed in the case of Colonel House and a few others of his advisers, and as our intercourse had always been more or less formal in character, it was easier to continue the official relations that had previously prevailed. I presume that Mr. Wilson felt, as I did, that it would create an embarrassing situation in the negotiations if there was an open rupture between us or if my commission was withdrawn or surrendered and I returned to the United States before the Treaty of Peace was signed. The effect, too, upon the situation in the Senate would be to strengthen the opposition to the President’s purposes and furnish his personal, as well as his political, enemies with new grounds for attacking him.
I think, however, that our reasons for avoiding a public break in our official relations were different. The President undoubtedly believed that such an event would jeopardize the acceptance of the Covenant by the United States Senate in view of the hostility to it which had already developed and which was supplemented by the bitter animosity to him personally which was undisguised. On my part, the chief reason for leaving the situation undisturbed was that I was fully convinced that my withdrawal from the American Commission would seriously delay the restoration of peace, possibly in the signature of the Treaty at Paris and certainly in its ratification at Washington. Considering that the time had passed to make an attempt to change Mr. Wilson’s views on any fundamental principle, and believing it a duty to place no obstacle in the way of the signature and ratification of the Treaty of Peace with Germany, I felt that there was no course for me as a representative of the United States other than to obey the President’s orders however strong my personal inclination might be to refuse to follow a line of action which seemed to me wrong in principle and unwise in policy.
In view of the subsequent contest between the President and the opposition Senators over the Treaty of Versailles, resulting in its non-ratification and the consequent delay in the restoration of a state of peace between the United States and Germany, my failure at Paris to decline to follow the President may be open to criticism, if not to censure. But it can hardly be considered just to pass judgment on my conduct by what occurred after the signature of the Treaty unless what would occur was a foregone conclusion, and at that time it was not even suggested that the Treaty would fail of ratification. The decision had to be made under the conditions and expectations which then prevailed. Unquestionably there was on June 28, 1919, a common belief that the President would compose his differences with a sufficient number of the Republican Senators to obtain the necessary consent of two thirds of the Senate to the ratification of the Treaty, and that the delay in senatorial action would be brief. I personally believed that that would be the result, although Mr. Wilson’s experience in Washington in February and the rigid attitude, which he then assumed, might have been a warning as to the future. Seeing the situation as I did, no man would have been willing to imperil immediate ratification by resigning as Commissioner on the ground that he was opposed to the President’s policies. A return to peace was at stake, and peace was the supreme need of the world, the universal appeal of all peoples. I could not conscientiously assume the responsibility of placing any obstacle in the way of a return to peace at the earliest possible moment. It would have been to do the very thing which I condemned in the President when he prevented an early signing of the peace by insisting on the acceptance of the Covenant of the League of Nations as a condition precedent. Whatever the consequence of my action would have been, whether it resulted in delay or in defeat of ratification, I should have felt guilty of having prevented an immediate peace which from the first seemed to me vitally important to all nations. Personal feelings and even personal beliefs were insufficient to excuse such action.
CHAPTER XVI
LACK OF AN AMERICAN PROGRAMME
Having reviewed the radical differences between the President and myself in regard to the League of Nations and the inclusion of the Covenant in the Treaty of Peace with Germany, it is necessary to revert to the early days of the negotiations at Paris in order to explain the divergence of our views as to the necessity of a definite programme for the American Commission to direct it in its work and to guide its members in their intercourse with the delegates of other countries.
If the President had a programme, other than the general principles and the few territorial settlements included in his Fourteen Points, and the generalities contained in his “subsequent addresses,” he did not show a copy of the programme to the Commissioners or advise them of its contents. The natural conclusion was that he had never worked out in detail the application of his announced principles or put into concrete form the specific settlements which he had declared ought to be in the terms of peace. The definition of the principles, the interpretation of the policies, and the detailing of the provisions regarding territorial settlements were not apparently attempted by Mr. Wilson. They were in large measure left uncertain by the phrases in which they were delivered. Without authoritative explanation, interpretation, or application to actual facts they formed incomplete and inadequate instructions to Commissioners who were authorized “to negotiate peace.”
An examination of the familiar Fourteen Points uttered by the President in his address of January 8, 1918, will indicate the character of the declarations, which may be, by reason of their thought and expression, termed “Wilsonian” (Appendix IV, p. 314). The first five Points are announcements of principle which should govern the peace negotiations. The succeeding eight Points refer to territorial adjustments, but make no attempt to define actual boundaries, so essential in conducting negotiations regarding territory. The Fourteenth Point relates to the formation of “a general association of the nations for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike.”
It is hardly worth while to say that the Fourteen Points and the four principles declared in the address of February 11, 1918 (Appendix V), do not constitute a sufficient programme for negotiators. Manifestly they are too indefinite in specific application. They were never intended for that purpose when they were proclaimed. They might have formed a general basis for the preparation of instructions for peace commissioners, but they omitted too many of the essentials to be considered actual instructions, while the lack of definite terms to-be included in a treaty further deprived them of that character. Such important and practical subjects as reparations, financial arrangements, the use and control of waterways, and other questions of a like nature, are not even mentioned. As a general statement of the bases of peace the Fourteen Points and subsequent declarations probably served a useful purpose, though some critics would deny it, but as a working programme for the negotiation of a treaty they were inadequate, if not wholly useless.
Believing in the autumn of 1918 that the end of the war was approaching and assuming that the American plenipotentiaries to the Peace Conference would have to be furnished with detailed written instructions as to the terms of the treaty to be signed, I prepared on September 21, 1918, a memorandum of my views as to the territorial settlements which would form, not instructions, but a guide in the drafting of instructions for the American Commissioners. At the time I had no intimation that the President purposed to be present in person at the peace table and had not even thought of such a possibility. The memorandum, which follows, was written with the sole purpose of being ready to draft definite instructions which could be submitted to the President when the time came to prepare for the negotiation of the peace. The memorandum follows:
“The present Russian situation, which is unspeakably horrible and which seems beyond present hope of betterment, presents new problems to be solved at the peace table.
“The Pan-Germans now have in shattered and impotent Russia the opportunity to develop an alternative or supplemental scheme to their ‘Mittel-Europa’ project. German domination over Southern Russia would offer as advantageous, if not a more advantageous, route to the Persian Gulf than through the turbulent Balkans and unreliable Turkey. If both routes, north and south of the Black Sea, could be controlled, the Pan-Germans would have gained more than they dreamed of obtaining. I believe, however, that Bulgaria fears the Germans and will be disposed to resist German domination possibly to the extent of making a separate peace with the Allies. Nevertheless, if the Germans could obtain the route north of the Black Sea, they would with reason consider the war a successful venture because it would give them the opportunity to rebuild the imperial power and to carry out the Prussian ambition of world-mastery.
“The treaty of peace must not leave Germany in possession directly or indirectly of either of these routes to the Orient. There must be territorial barriers erected to prevent that Empire from ever being able by political or economic penetration to become dominant in those regions.
“With this in view I would state the essentials for a stable peace as follows, though I do so in the most tentative way because conditions may change materially. These ‘essentials’ relate to territory and waters, and do not deal with military protection.
“_First._ The complete abrogation or denouncement of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and all treaties relating in any way to Russian territory or commerce; and also the same action as to the Treaty of Bucharest. This applies to all treaties made by the German Empire or Germany’s allies.
“_Second._ The Baltic Provinces of Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia should be autonomous states of a Russian Confederation.
“_Third_. Finland raises a different question and it should be carefully considered whether it should not be an independent state.
“_Fourth_. An independent Poland, composed of Polish provinces of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and in possession of the port of Danzig.
“_Fifth_. An independent state, either single or federal composed of Bohemia, Slovakia, and Moravia (and possibly a portion of Silesia) and possessing an international right of way by land or water to a free port.
“_Sixth_. The Ukraine to be a state of the Russian Confederation, to which should be annexed that portion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in which the Ruthenians predominate.
“_Seventh_. Roumania, in addition to her former territory, should ultimately be given sovereignty over Bessarabia, Transylvania, and the upper portion of the Dobrudja, leaving the central mouth of the Danube as the boundary of Bulgaria, or else the northern half. (As to the boundary there is doubt.)
“_Eighth_. The territories in which the Jugo-Slavs predominate, namely Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, should be united with Serbia and Montenegro forming a single or a federal state. The sovereignty over Trieste or some other port should be later settled in drawing a boundary line between the new state and Italy. My present view is that there should be a good Jugo-Slav port.
“_Ninth_. Hungary should be separated from Austria and possess rights of free navigation of the Danube.
“_Tenth_. Restoration to Italy of all the Italian provinces of Austria. Italy’s territory to extend along the northern Adriatic shore to the Jugo-Slav boundary. Certain ports on the eastern side of the Adriatic should be considered as possible naval bases of Italy. (This last is doubtful.)
“_Eleventh._ Reduction of Austria to the ancient boundaries and title of the Archduchy of Austria. Incorporation of Archduchy in the Imperial German Confederation. Austrian outlet to the sea would be like that of Baden and Saxony through German ports on the North Sea and the Baltic.
“_Twelfth_. The boundaries of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece to follow in general those established after the First Balkan War, though Bulgaria should surrender to Greece more of the Aegean coast and obtain the southern half only of the Dobrudja (or else as far as the Danube) and the Turkish territory up to the district surrounding Constantinople, to be subsequently decided upon.
“_Thirteenth_. Albania to be under Italian or Serbian sovereignty or incorporated in the Jugo-Slav Confederation.
“_Fourteenth._ Greece to obtain more of the Aegean littoral at the expense of Bulgaria, the Greek-inhabited islands adjacent to Asia Minor and possibly certain ports and adjoining territory in Asia Minor.
“_Fifteenth._ The Ottoman Empire to be reduced to Anatolia and have no possessions in Europe. (This requires consideration.)
“_Sixteenth_. Constantinople to be erected into an international protectorate surrounded by a land zone to allow for expansion of population. The form of government to be determined upon by an international commission or by one Government acting as the mandatory of the Powers. The commission or mandatory to have the regulation and control of the navigation of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus as international waterways.
“_Seventeenth._ Armenia and Syria to be erected into protectorates of such Government or Governments as seems expedient from a domestic as well as an international point of view; the guaranty being that both countries will be given self-government as soon as possible and that an ‘Open-Door’ policy as to commerce and industrial development will be rigidly observed.
“_Eighteenth._ Palestine to be an autonomous state under a general international protectorate or under the protectorate of a Power designated to act as the mandatory of the Powers.
“_Nineteenth._ Arabia to receive careful consideration as to the full or partial sovereignty of the state or states established.
“_Twentieth_. Great Britain to have the sovereignty of Egypt, or a full protectorate over it.
“_Twenty-first._ Persia to be freed from all treaties establishing spheres of influence. Rigid application of the ‘Open-Door’ policy in regard to commercial and industrial development.
“_Twenty-second._ All Alsace-Lorraine to be restored to France without conditions.
“_Twenty-third._ Belgium to be restored to full sovereignty.
“_Twenty-fourth._ A consideration of the union of Luxemburg to Belgium. (This is open to question.)
“_Twenty-fifth._ The Kiel Canal to be internationalized and an international zone twenty miles from the Canal on either side to be erected which should be, with the Canal, under the control and regulation of Denmark as the mandatory of the Powers. (This last is doubtful.)
“_Twenty-sixth._ All land north of the Kiel Canal Zone to be ceded to Denmark.
“_Twenty-seventh._ The fortifications of the Kiel Canal and of Heligoland to be dismantled. Heligoland to be ceded to Denmark.
“_Twenty-eighth._ The sovereignty of the archipelago of Spitzbergen to be granted to Norway.
“_Twenty-ninth._ The disposition of the colonial possessions formerly belonging to Germany to be determined by an international commission having in mind the interests of the inhabitants and the possibility of employing these colonies as a means of indemnification for wrongs done. The ‘Open-Door’ policy should be guaranteed.
“While the foregoing definitive statement as to territory contains my views at the present time (September 21, 1918), I feel that no proposition should be considered unalterable, as further study and conditions which have not been disclosed may materially change some of them.
“Three things must constantly be kept in mind, the natural stability of race, language, and nationality, the necessity of every nation having an outlet to the sea so that it may maintain its own merchant marine, and the imperative need of rendering Germany impotent as a military power.”
Later I realized that another factor should be given as important a place in the terms of peace as any of the three, namely, the economic interdependence of adjoining areas and the mutual industrial benefit to their inhabitants by close political affiliation. This factor in the territorial settlements made more and more impression upon me as it was disclosed by a detailed study of the numerous problems which the Peace Conference had to solve.
I made other memoranda on various subjects relating to the general peace for the purpose of crystallizing my ideas, so that I could lay them in concrete form before the President when the time came to draft instructions for the American plenipotentiaries charged with the negotiation of the Treaty of Peace. When the President reached the decision to attend the Conference and to direct in person the negotiations, it became evident that, in place of the instructions customarily issued to negotiators, a more practical and proper form of defining the objects to be sought by the United States would be an outline of a treaty setting forth in detail the features of the peace, or else a memorandum containing definite declarations of policy in regard to the numerous problems presented. Unless there was some framework of this sort on which to build, it would manifestly be very embarrassing for the American Commissioners in their intercourse with their foreign colleagues, as they would be unable to discuss authoritatively or even informally the questions at issue or express opinions upon them without the danger of unwittingly opposing the President’s wishes or of contradicting the views which might be expressed by some other of their associates on the American Commission. A definite plan seemed essential if the Americans were to take any part in the personal exchanges of views which are so usual during the progress of negotiations.
Prior to the departure of the American delegation from the United States and for two weeks after their arrival in Paris, it was expected that the President would submit to the Commissioners for their guidance a _projet_ of a treaty or a very complete programme as to policies. Nothing, however, was done, and in the conferences which took place between the President and his American associates he confined his remarks almost exclusively to the League of Nations and to his plan for its organization. It was evident–at least that was the natural inference–that President Wilson was without a programme of any sort or even of a list of subjects suitable as an outline for the preparation of a programme. How he purposed to conduct the negotiations no one seemed to know. It was all very uncertain and unsatisfactory.
In the circumstances, which seemed to be due to the President’s failure to appreciate the necessity for a definite programme, I felt that something ought to be done, as the probable result would be that the terms of the Treaty, other than the provisions regarding a League of Nations, would be drafted by foreign delegates and not by the President.
Impressed by the unsatisfactory state of affairs and desirous of remedying it if possible, I asked Dr. James Brown Scott and Mr. David Hunter Miller, the legal advisers of the American Commission, to prepare a skeleton treaty covering the subjects to be dealt with in the negotiations which could be used in working out a complete programme. After several conferences with these advisers concerning the subjects to be included and their arrangement in the Treaty, the work was sufficiently advanced to lay before the Commissioners. Copies were, therefore, furnished to them with the request that they give the document consideration in order that they might make criticisms and suggest changes. I had not sent a copy to the President, intending to await the views of my colleagues before doing so, but during the conference of January 10, to which I have been compelled reluctantly to refer in discussing the Covenant of the League of Nations, I mentioned the fact that our legal advisers had been for some time at work on a “skeleton treaty” and had made a tentative draft. The President at once showed his displeasure and resented the action taken, evidently considering the request that a draft be prepared to be a usurpation of his authority to direct the activities of the Commission. It was this incident which called forth his remark, to which reference was made in Chapter VIII, that he did not propose to have lawyers drafting the Treaty.
In view of Mr. Wilson’s attitude it was useless for Dr. Scott and Mr. Miller to proceed with their outline of a treaty or for the Commissioners to give consideration to the tentative draft already made. It was a disagreeable situation. If the President had had anything, however crude and imperfect it might have been, to submit in place of the Scott-Miller draft, it would have been a different matter and removed to an extent the grounds for complaint at his attitude. But he offered nothing at all as a substitute. It is fair to assume that he had no programme prepared and was unwilling to have any one else make a tentative one for his consideration. It left the American Commission without a chart marking out the course which they were to pursue in the negotiations and apparently without a pilot who knew the channel.
Six days after the enforced abandonment of the plan to prepare a skeleton treaty as a foundation for a definite and detailed programme, I made the following note which expresses my views on the situation at that time:
“_January_ 16, 1919
“No plan of work has been prepared. Unless something is done we will be here for many weeks, possibly for months. After the President’s remarks the other day about a draft-treaty no one except the President would think of preparing a plan. He must do it himself, and he is not doing it. He has not even given us a list of subjects to be considered and of course has made no division of our labors.
“If the President does not take up this matter of organization and systematically apportion the subjects between us, we may possibly have no peace before June. This would be preposterous because with proper order and division of questions we ought to have a treaty signed by April first.
“I feel as if we, the Commissioners, were like a lot of skilled workmen who are ordered to build a house. We have the materials and tools, but there are no plans and specifications and no master-workman in charge of the construction. We putter around in an aimless sort of way and get nowhere.
“With all his natural capacity the President seems to lack the faculty of employing team-work and of adopting a system to utilize the brains of other men. It is a decided defect in an executive. He would not make a good head of a governmental department. The result is, so far as our Commission is concerned, a state of confusion and uncertainty with a definite loss and delay through effort being undirected.”
On several occasions I spoke to the President about a programme for the work of the Commission and its corps of experts, but he seemed indisposed to consider the subject and gave the impression that he intended to call on the experts for his own information which would be all that was necessary. I knew that Colonel House, through Dr. Mezes, the head of the organization, was directing the preparation of certain data, but whether he was doing so under the President’s directions I did not know, though I presumed such was the case. Whatever data were furnished did not, however, pass through the hands of the other Commissioners who met every morning in my office to exchange information and discuss matters pertaining to the negotiations and to direct the routine work of the Commission.
It is difficult, even with the entire record of the proceedings at Paris before one, to find a satisfactory explanation for the President’s objection to having a definite programme other than the general declarations contained in the Fourteen Points and his “subsequent addresses.” It may be that he was unwilling to bind himself to a fixed programme, since it would restrict him, to an extent, in his freedom of action and prevent him from assuming any position which seemed to him expedient at the time when a question arose during the negotiations. It may be that he did not wish to commit himself in any way to the contents of a treaty until the Covenant of the League of Nations had been accepted. It may be that he preferred not to let the American Commissioners know his views, as they would then be in a position to take an active part in the informal discussions which he apparently wished to handle alone. None of these explanations is at all satisfactory, and yet any one of them may be the true one.
Whatever was the chief reason for the President’s failure to furnish a working plan to the American Commissioners, he knowingly adopted the policy and clung to it with the tenacity of purpose which has been one of the qualities of mind that account for his great successes and for his great failures. I use the adverb “knowingly” because it had been made clear to him that, in the judgment of others, the Commissioners ought to have the guidance furnished by a draft-treaty or by a definite statement of policies no matter how tentative or subject to change the draft or statement might be.
On the day that the President left Paris to return to the United States (February 14, 1919) I asked him if he had any instructions for the Commissioners during his absence concerning the settlements which should be included in the preliminary treaty of peace, as it was understood that the Council of Ten would continue its sessions for the consideration of the subjects requiring investigation and decision. The President replied that he had no instructions, that the decisions could wait until he returned, though the hearings could proceed and reports could be made during his absence. Astonished as I was at this wish to delay these matters, I suggested to him the subjects which I thought ought to go into the Treaty. He answered that he did not care to discuss them at that time, which, as he was about to depart from Paris, meant that everything must rest until he had returned from his visit to Washington.
Since I was the head of the American Commission when the President was absent and became the spokesman for the United States on the Council of Ten, this refusal to disclose his views even in a general way placed me in a very awkward position. Without instructions and without knowledge of the President’s wishes or purposes the conduct of the negotiations was difficult and progress toward actual settlements practically impossible. As a matter of fact the Council did accomplish a great amount of work, while the President was away, in the collection of data and preparing questions for final settlement. But so far as deciding questions was concerned, which ought to have been the principal duty of the Council of Ten, it simply “marked time,” as I had no power to decide or even to express an authoritative opinion on any subject. It showed very clearly that the President intended to do everything himself and to allow no one to act for him unless it was upon some highly technical matter. All actual decisions in regard to the terms of peace which involved policy were thus forced to await his time and pleasure.
Even after Mr. Wilson returned to Paris and resumed his place as head of the American delegation he was apparently without a programme. On March 20, six days after his return, I made a note that “the President, so far as I can judge, has yet no definite programme,” and that I was unable to “find that he has talked over a plan of a treaty even with Colonel House.” It is needless to quote the thoughts, which I recorded at the time, in regard to the method in which the President was handling a great international negotiation, a method as unusual as it was unwise. I referred to Colonel House’s lack of information concerning the President’s purposes because he was then and had been from the beginning on more intimate terms with the President than any other American. If he did not know the President’s mind, it was safe to assume that no one knew it.
I had, as has been stated, expressed to Mr. Wilson my views as to what the procedure should be and had obtained no action. With the responsibility resting on him for the conduct and success of the negotiations and with his constitutional authority to exercise his own judgment in regard to every matter pertaining to the treaty, there was nothing further to be done in relieving the situation of the American Commissioners from embarrassment or in inducing the President to adopt a better course than the haphazard one that he was pursuing.
It is apparent that we differed radically as to the necessity for a clearly defined programme and equally so as to the advantages to be gained by having a draft-treaty made or a full statement prepared embodying the provisions to be sought by the United States in the negotiations. I did not attempt to hide my disapproval of the vagueness and uncertainty of the President’s method, and there is no doubt in my own mind that Mr. Wilson was fully cognizant of my opinion. How far this lack of system in the work of the Commission and the failure to provide a plan for a treaty affected the results written into the Treaty of Versailles is speculative, but my belief is that they impaired in many particulars the character of the settlements by frequent abandonment of principle for the sake of expediency.
The want of a programme or even of an unwritten plan as to the negotiations was further evidenced by the fact that the President, certainly as late as March 19, had not made up his mind whether the treaty which was being negotiated should be preliminary or final. He had up to that time the peculiar idea that a preliminary treaty was in the nature of a _modus vivendi_ which could be entered into independently by the Executive and which would restore peace without going through the formalities of senatorial consent to ratification.
The purpose of Mr. Wilson, so far as one could judge, was to include in a preliminary treaty of the sort that he intended to negotiate, the entire Covenant of the League of Nations and other principal settlements, binding the signatories to repeat these provisions in the final and definitive treaty when that was later negotiated. By this method peace would be at once restored, the United States and other nations associated with it in the war would be obligated to renew diplomatic and consular relations with Germany, and commercial intercourse would follow as a matter of course. All this was to be done without going through the American constitutional process of obtaining the advice and consent of the Senate to the Covenant and to the principal settlements. The intent seemed to be to respond to the popular demand for an immediate peace and at the same time to checkmate the opponents of the Covenant in the Senate by having the League of Nations organized and functioning before the definitive treaty was laid before that body.
When the President advanced this extraordinary theory of the nature of a preliminary treaty during a conversation, of which I made a full memorandum, I told him that it was entirely wrong, that by whatever name the document was called, whether it was “armistice,” “agreement,” “protocol,” or “_modus_,” it would be a treaty and would have to be sent by him to the Senate for its approval. I said, “If we change the _status_ from war to peace, it has to be by a ratified treaty. There is no other way save by a joint resolution of Congress.” At this statement the President was evidently much perturbed. He did not accept it as conclusive, for he asked me to obtain the opinion of others on the subject. He was evidently loath to abandon the plan that he had presumably worked out as a means of preventing the Senate from rejecting or modifying the Covenant before it came into actual operation. It seems almost needless to say that all the legal experts, among them Thomas W. Gregory, the retiring Attorney-General of the United States, who chanced to be in Paris at the time, agreed with my opinion, and upon being so informed the President abandoned his purpose.
It is probable that the conviction, which was forced upon Mr. Wilson, that he could not independently of the Senate put into operation a preliminary treaty, determined him to abandon that type of treaty and to proceed with the negotiation of a definitive one. At least I had by March 30 reached the conclusion that there would be no preliminary treaty as is disclosed by the following memorandum written on that day:
“I am sure now that there will be no preliminary treaty of peace, but that the treaty will be complete and definitive. This is a serious mistake. Time should be given for passions to cool. The operations of a preliminary treaty should be tested and studied. It would hasten a restoration of peace. Certainly this is the wise course as to territorial settlements and the financial and economic burdens to be imposed upon Germany. The same comment applies to the organization of a League of Nations. Unfortunately the President insists on a full-blown Covenant and not a declaration of principles. This has much to do with preventing a preliminary treaty, since he wishes to make the League an agent for enforcement of definite terms.
“When the President departed for the United States in February, I assumed and I am certain that he had in mind that there would be a preliminary treaty. With that in view I drafted at the time a memorandum setting forth what the preliminary treaty of peace should contain. Here are the subjects I then set down:
“1. Restoration of Peace and official relations.
“2. Restoration of commercial and financial relations subject to conditions.
“3. Renunciation by Germany of all territory and territorial rights outside of Europe.
“4. Minimum territory of Germany in Europe, the boundaries to be fixed in the Definitive Treaty.
“5. Maximum military and naval establishments and production of arms and munitions.
“6. Maximum amount of money and property to be surrendered by Germany with time limits for payment and delivery.
“7. German property and territory to be held as security by the Allies until the Definitive Treaty is ratified.
“8. Declaration as to the organization of a League of Nations.
“The President’s obsession as to a League of Nations blinds him to everything else. An immediate peace is nothing to him compared to the adoption of the Covenant. The whole world wants peace. The President wants his League. I think that the world will have to wait.”
The eight subjects, above stated, were the ones which I called to the President’s attention at the time he was leaving Paris for the United States and which he said he did not care to discuss.
The views that are expressed in the memorandum of March 30 are those that I have continued to hold. The President was anxious to have the Treaty, even though preliminary in character, contain detailed rather than general provisions, especially as to the League of Nations. With that view I entirely disagreed, as detailed terms of settlement and the articles of the Covenant as proposed would cause discussion and unquestionably delay the peace. To restore the peaceful intercourse between the belligerents, to open the long-closed channels of commerce, and to give to the war-stricken peoples of Europe opportunity to resume their normal industrial life seemed to me the first and greatest task to be accomplished. It was in my judgment superior to every other object of the Paris negotiations. Compared with it the creation of a League of Nations was insignificant and could well be postponed. President Wilson thought otherwise. We were very far apart in this matter as he well knew, and he rightly assumed that I followed his instructions with reluctance, and, he might have added, with grave concern.
As a matter of interest in this connection and as a possible source from which the President may have acquired knowledge of my views as to the conduct of the negotiations, I would call attention again to the conference which I had with Colonel House on December 17, 1918, and to which I have referred in connection with the subject of international arbitration. During that conference I said to the Colonel “that I thought that there ought to be a preliminary treaty of peace negotiated without delay, and that all the details as to a League of Nations, boundaries, and indemnities should wait for the time being. The Colonel replied that he was not so sure about delaying the creation of a League, as he was afraid that it never could be put through unless it was done at once. I told him that possibly he was right, but that I was opposed to anything which delayed the peace.” This quotation is from my memorandum made at the time of our conversation. I think that the same reason for insisting on negotiating the Covenant largely influenced the course of the President. My impression at the time was that the Colonel favored a preliminary treaty provided that there was included in it the full plan for a League of Nations, which to me seemed to be impracticable.
There can be little doubt that, if there had been a settled programme prepared or a tentative treaty drafted, there would have been a preliminary treaty which might and probably would have postponed the negotiations as to a League. Possibly the President realized that this danger of excluding the Covenant existed and for that reason was unwilling to make a definite programme or to let a draft-treaty be drawn. At least it may have added another reason for his proceeding without advising the Commissioners of his purposes.
As I review the entire negotiations and the incidents which took place at Paris, President Wilson’s inherent dislike to depart in the least from an announced course, a characteristic already referred to, seems to me to have been the most potent influence in determining his method of work during the Peace Conference. He seemed to think that, having marked out a definite plan of action, any deviation from it would show intellectual weakness or vacillation of purpose. Even when there could be no doubt that in view of changed conditions it was wise to change a policy, which he had openly adopted or approved, he clung to it with peculiar tenacity refusing or merely failing to modify it. Mr. Wilson’s mind once made up seemed to become inflexible. It appeared to grow impervious to arguments and even to facts. It lacked the elasticity and receptivity which have always been characteristic of sound judgment and right thinking. He might break, but he would not bend. This rigidity of mind accounts in large measure for the deplorable, and, as it seemed to me, needless, conflict between the President and the Senate over the Treaty of Versailles. It accounts for other incidents in his career which have materially weakened his influence and cast doubts on his wisdom. It also accounts, in my opinion, for the President’s failure to prepare or to adopt a programme at Paris or to commit himself to a draft of a treaty as a basis for the negotiations, which failure, I am convinced, not only prevented the signature of a short preliminary treaty of peace, but lost Mr. Wilson the leadership in the proceedings, as the statesmen of the other Great Powers outlined the Treaty negotiated and suggested the majority of the articles which were written into it. It would have made a vast difference if the President had known definitely what he sought, but he apparently did not. He dealt in generalities leaving, but not committing, to others their definition and application. He was always in the position of being able to repudiate the interpretation which others might place upon his declarations of principle.
CHAPTER XVII
SECRET DIPLOMACY
Another matter, concerning which the President and I disagreed, was the secrecy with which the negotiations were carried on between him and the principal European statesmen, incidental to which was the willingness, if not the desire, to prevent the proceedings and decisions from becoming known even to the delegates of the smaller nations which were represented at the Peace Conference.
Confidential personal interviews were to a certain extent unavoidable and necessary, but to conduct the entire negotiation through a small group sitting behind closed doors and to shroud their proceedings with mystery and uncertainty made a very unfortunate impression on those who were not members of the secret councils.
At the first there was no Council of the Heads of States (the so-called Council of Four); in fact it was not recognized as an organized body until the latter part of March, 1919. Prior to that time the directing body of the Conference was the self-constituted Council of Ten composed of the President and the British, French, and Italian Premiers with their Secretaries or Ministers of Foreign Affairs, and two Japanese delegates of ambassadorial rank. This Council had a membership identical with that of the Supreme War Council, which controlled the armistices, their enforcement, and other military matters. It assumed authority over the negotiations and proceedings of the Conference, though it was never authorized so to do by the body of delegates. The Council of Four, when later formed, was equally without a mandate from the Conference. They assumed the authority and exercised it as a matter of right.
From the time of his arrival in Paris President Wilson held almost daily conversations with the leading foreign statesmen. It would be of little value to speculate on what took place at these interviews, since the President seldom told the American Commission of the meetings or disclosed to them, unless possibly to Colonel House, the subjects which were discussed. My conviction is, from the little information which the President volunteered, that these consultations were–certainly at first–devoted to inducing the European leaders to give their support to his plan for a League of Nations, and that, as other matters relating to the terms of peace were in a measure involved because of their possible relation to the functions of the League, they too became more and more subjects of discussion.
The introduction of this personal and clandestine method of negotiation was probably due to the President’s belief that he could in this way exercise more effectively his personal influence in favor of the acceptance of a League. It is not unlikely that this belief was in a measure justified. In Colonel House he found one to aid him in this course of procedure, as the Colonel’s intimate association with the principal statesmen of the Allied Powers during previous visits to Europe as the President’s personal envoy was an asset which he could utilize as an intermediary between the President and those with whom he wished to confer. Mr. Wilson relied upon Colonel House for his knowledge of the views and temperaments of the men with whom he had to deal. It was not strange that he should adopt a method which the Colonel had found successful in the past and that he should seek the latter’s aid and advice in connection with the secret conferences which usually took place at the residence of the President.
Mr. Wilson pursued this method of handling the subjects of negotiation the more readily because he was by nature and by inclination secretive. He had always shown a preference for a private interview with an individual. In his conduct of the executive affairs of the Government at Washington he avoided as far as possible general conferences. He talked a good deal about “taking common counsel,” but showed no disposition to put it into practice. He followed the same course in the matter of foreign affairs. At Paris this characteristic, which had often been the subject of remark in Washington, was more pronounced, or at least more noticeable. He was not disposed to discuss matters with the American Commission as a whole or even to announce to them his decisions unless something arose which compelled him to do so. He easily fell into the practice of seeing men separately and of keeping secret the knowledge acquired as well as the effect of this knowledge on his views and purposes. To him this was the normal and most satisfactory method of doing business.
From the time that the President arrived in Paris up to the time that the Commission on the League of Nations made its report–that is, from December 14, 1918, to February 14, 1919–the negotiations regarding the League were conducted with great secrecy. Colonel House, the President’s collaborator in drafting the Covenant, if he was not, as many believed, the real author, was the only American with whom Mr. Wilson freely conferred and to whom he confided the progress that he was making in his interviews with the foreign statesmen, at many of which interviews the Colonel was present. It is true that the President held an occasional conference with all the American Commissioners, but these conferences were casual and perfunctory in nature and were very evidently not for the purpose of obtaining the opinions and counsel of the Commissioners. There was none of the frankness that should have existed between the Chief Executive and his chosen agents and advisers. The impression made was that he summoned the conferences to satisfy the _amour propre_ of the Commissioners rather than out of any personal wish to do so.
The consequence was that the American Commissioners, other than Colonel House, were kept in almost complete ignorance of the preliminary negotiations and were left to gather such information as they were able from the delegates of other Powers, who, naturally assuming that the Americans possessed the full confidence of the President, spoke with much freedom. As Mr. Wilson never held a conference with the American Commission from the first meeting of the Commission on the League of Nations until its report was printed, his American colleagues did not know, except indirectly, of the questions at issue or of the progress that was being made. The fact is that, as the Commission on the League met in Colonel House’s office at the Hotel Crillon, his office force knew far more about the proceedings than did the three American Commissioners who were not present. As the House organization made no effort to hide the fact that they had inside information, the representatives of the press as a consequence frequented the office of the Colonel in search of the latest news concerning the Commission on the League of Nations.
But, in addition to the embarrassment caused the American Commissioners and the unenviable position in which they were placed by the secrecy with which the President surrounded his intercourse with the foreign statesmen and the proceedings of the Commission on the League of Nations, his secret negotiations caused the majority of the delegates to the Conference and the public at large to lose in a large measure their confidence in the actuality of his devotion to “open diplomacy,” which he had so unconditionally proclaimed in the first of his Fourteen Points. If the policy of secrecy had ceased with the discussions preliminary to the organization of the Conference, or even with those preceding the meetings of the Commission on the League of Nations, criticism and complaint would doubtless have ceased, but as the negotiations progressed the secrecy of the conferences of the leaders increased rather than decreased, culminating at last in the organization of the Council of Four, the most powerful and most seclusive of the councils which directed the proceedings at Paris. Behind closed doors these four individuals, who controlled the policies of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy, passed final judgment on the mass of articles which entered into the Treaties of Peace, but kept their decisions secret except from the committee which was drafting the articles.
The organization of the Council of Four and the mystery which enveloped its deliberations emphasized as nothing else could have done the secretiveness with which adjustments were being made and compromises were being effected. It directed attention also to the fact that the Four Great Powers had taken supreme control of settling the terms of peace, that they were primates among the assembled nations and that they intended to have their authority acknowledged. This extraordinary secrecy and arrogation of power by the Council of Four excited astonishment and complaint throughout the body of delegates to the Conference, and caused widespread criticism in the press and among the people of many countries.
A week after the Council of Ten was divided into the Council of the Heads of States, the official title of the Council of Four, and the Council of Foreign Ministers, the official title of the Council of Five (popularly nick-named “The Big Four” and “The Little Five”), I made the following note on the subject of secret negotiations:
“After the experience of the last three months [January-March, 1919] I am convinced that the method of personal interviews and private conclaves is a failure. It has given every opportunity for intrigue, plotting, bargaining, and combining. The President, as I now see it, should have insisted on everything being brought before the Plenary Conference. He would then have had the confidence and support of all the smaller nations because they would have looked up to him as their champion and guide. They would have followed him.
“The result of the present method has been to destroy their faith and arouse their resentment. They look upon the President as in favor of a world ruled by Five Great Powers, an international despotism of the strong, in which the little nations are merely rubber-stamps.
“The President has undoubtedly found himself in a most difficult position. He has put himself on a level with politicians experienced in intrigue, whom he will find a pretty difficult lot. He will sink in the estimation of the delegates who are not within the inner circle, and what will be still more disastrous will be the loss of confidence among the peoples of the nations represented here. A grievous blunder has been made.”
The views, which I expressed in this note in regard to the unwisdom of the President’s course, were not new at the time that I wrote them. Over two months before I had watched the practice of secret negotiation with apprehension as to what the effect would be upon the President’s influence and standing with the delegates to the Conference. I then believed that he was taking a dangerous course which he would in the end regret. So strong was this conviction that during a meeting, which the President held with the American Commissioners on the evening of January 29, I told him bluntly–perhaps too bluntly from the point of view of policy–that I considered the secret interviews which he was holding with the European statesmen, where no witnesses were present, were unwise, that he was far more successful in accomplishment and less liable to be misunderstood if he confined his negotiating to the Council of Ten, and that, furthermore, acting through the Council he would be much less subject to public criticism. I supported these views with the statement that the general secrecy, which was being practiced, was making a very bad impression everywhere, and for that reason, if for no other, I was opposed to it. The silence with which the President received my remarks appeared to me significant of his attitude toward this advice, and his subsequent continuance of secret methods without change, unless it was to increase the secrecy, proved that our judgments were not in accord on the subject. The only result of my representations, it would seem, was to cause Mr. Wilson to realize that I was not in sympathy with his way of conducting the negotiations. In the circumstances I think now that it was a blunder on my part to have stated my views so frankly.
Two days after I wrote the note, which is quoted (April 2, 1919), I made another note more general in character, but in which appears the following:
“Everywhere there are developing bitterness and resentment against a secretiveness which is interpreted to mean failure. The patience of the people is worn threadbare. Their temper has grown ragged. They are sick of whispering diplomats.
“Muttered confidences, secret intrigues, and the tactics of the ‘gum-shoer’ are discredited. The world wants none of them these days. It despises and loathes them. What the world asks are honest declarations openly proclaimed. The statesman who seeks to gain his end by tortuous and underground ways is foolish or badly advised. The public man who is sly and secretive rather than frank and bold, whose methods are devious rather than obvious, pursues a dangerous path which leads neither to glory nor to success.
“Secret diplomacy, the bane of the past, is a menace from which man believed himself to be rid. He who resurrects it invites condemnation. The whole world will rejoice when the day of the whisperer is over.”
This note, read at the present time, sounds extravagant in thought and intemperate in expression. It was written under the influence of emotions which had been deeply stirred by the conditions then existing. Time usually softens one’s judgments and the passage of events makes less vivid one’s impressions. The perspective, however, grows clearer and the proportions more accurate when the observer stands at a distance. While the language of the note might well be changed and made less florid, the thought needs little modification. The public criticism was widespread and outspoken, and from the expressions used it was very evident that there prevailed a general popular disapproval of the way the negotiations were being conducted. The Council of Four won the press-name of “The Olympians,” and much was said of “the thick cloud of mystery” which hid them from the anxious multitudes, and of the secrecy which veiled their deliberations. The newspapers and the correspondents at Paris openly complained and the delegates to the Conference in a more guarded way showed their bitterness at the overlordship assumed by the leading statesmen of the Great Powers and the secretive methods which they employed. It was, as may be gathered from the note quoted, a distressing and depressing time.
As concrete examples of the evils of secret negotiations the “Fiume Affair” and the “Shantung Settlement” are the best known because of the storm of criticism and protest which they caused. As the Shantung Settlement was one of the chief matters of difference between the President and myself, it will be treated later. The case of Fiume is different. As to the merits of the question I was very much in accord with the President, but to the bungling way in which it was handled I was strongly opposed believing that secret interviews, at which false hopes were encouraged, were at the bottom of all the trouble which later developed. But for this secrecy I firmly believe that there would have been no “Fiume Affair.”
The discussion of the Italian claims to territory along the northern boundary of the Kingdom and about the head of the Adriatic Sea began as soon as the American Commission was installed at Paris, about the middle of December, 1918. The endeavor of the Italian emissaries was to induce the Americans, particularly the President, to recognize the boundary laid down in the Pact of London. That agreement, which Italy had required Great Britain and France to accept in April, 1915, before she consented to declare war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, committed the Entente Powers to the recognition of Italy’s right to certain territorial acquisitions at the expense of Austria-Hungary in the event of the defeat of the Central Empires. By the boundary line agreed upon in the Pact, Italy would obtain certain important islands and ports on the Dalmatian coast in addition to the Austrian Tyrol and the Italian provinces of the Dual Monarchy at the head of the Adriatic.
When this agreement was signed, the dissolution of Austria-Hungary was not in contemplation, or at least, if it was considered, the possibility of its accomplishment seemed very remote. It was assumed that the Dalmatian territory to be acquired under the treaty to be negotiated in accordance with the terms of the Pact would, with the return of the Italian provinces, give to Italy naval control over the Adriatic Sea and secure the harborless eastern coast of the Italian peninsula against future hostile attack by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The boundary laid down in the agreement was essentially strategic and based primarily on considerations of Italian national safety. As long as the Empire existed as a Great Power the boundary of the Pact of London, so far as it related to the Adriatic littoral and islands, was not unreasonable or the territorial demands excessive.
But the close of active warfare in the autumn of 1918, when the armistice went into effect, found conditions wholly different from those upon which these territorial demands had been predicated. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had fallen to pieces beyond the hope of becoming again one of the Great Powers. The various nationalities, which had long been restless and unhappy under the rule of the Hapsburgs, threw off the imperial yoke, proclaimed their independence, and sought the recognition and protection of the Allies. The Poles of the Empire joined their brethren of the Polish provinces of Russia and Prussia in the resurrection of their ancient nation; Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia united in forming the new state of Czecho-Slovakia; the southern Slavs of Croatia, Slavonia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia announced their union with their kindred of the Kingdom of Serbia; and Hungary declared the severance of her political union with Austria. In a word the Dual Empire ceased to exist. It was no longer a menace to the national safety of Italy. This was the state of affairs when the delegates to the Peace Conference began to assemble at Paris.
The Italian statesmen realized that these new conditions might raise serious questions as to certain territorial cessions which would come to Italy under the terms of the Pact of London, because their strategic necessity had disappeared with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. While they had every reason to assume that Great Britain and France would live up to their agreement, it was hardly to be expected that under the changed conditions and in the circumstances attending the negotiation and signature of the Pact, the British and French statesmen would be disposed to protest against modifications of the proposed boundary if the United States and other nations, not parties to the agreement, should insist upon changes as a matter of justice to the new state of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. It apparently was considered expedient, by the Italian representatives, in view of the situation which had developed, to increase rather than to reduce their claims along the Dalmatian coast in order that they might have something which could be surrendered in a compromise without giving up the boundaries laid down in the Pact of London.
It is probable, too, that these additional claims were advanced by Italy in order to offset in a measure the claims of the Jugo-Slavs, who through the Serbian delegates at Paris were making territorial demands which the Italians declared to be extravagant and which, if granted, would materially reduce the proposed cessions to Italy under the Pact of London. Furthermore, the Italian Government appeared to be by no means pleased with the idea of a Jugo-Slav state so strong that it might become a commercial, if not a naval, rival of Italy in the Adriatic. The Italian delegates in private interviews showed great bitterness toward the Slavs, who, they declared, had, as Austrian subjects, waged war against Italy and taken part in the cruel and wanton acts attendant upon the invasion of the northern Italian provinces. They asserted that it was unjust to permit these people, by merely changing their allegiance after defeat, to escape punishment for the outrages which they had committed against Italians and actually to profit by being vanquished. This antipathy to the Slavs of the former Empire was in a measure transferred to the Serbs, who were naturally sympathetic with their kinsmen and who were also ambitious to build up a strong Slav state with a large territory and with commercial facilities on the Adriatic coast which would be ample to meet the trade needs of the interior.
While there may have been a certain fear for the national safety of Italy in having as a neighbor a Slav state with a large and virile population, extensive resources, and opportunity to become a naval power in the Mediterranean, the real cause of apprehension seemed to be that the new nation would become a commercial rival of Italy in the Adriatic and prevent her from securing the exclusive control of the trade which her people coveted and which the complete victory over Austria-Hungary appeared to assure to them.
The two principal ports having extensive facilities for shipping and rail-transportation to and from the Danubian provinces of the Dual Empire were Trieste and Fiume. The other Dalmatian ports were small and without possibilities of extensive development, while the precipitous mountain barrier between the coast and the interior which rose almost from the water-line rendered railway construction from an engineering standpoint impracticable if not impossible. It was apparent that, if Italy could obtain both the port of Trieste and the port of Fiume, the two available outlets for foreign trade to the territories lying north and east of the Adriatic Sea, she would have a substantial monopoly of the sea-borne commerce of the Dalmatian coast and its hinterland. It was equally apparent that Italian possession of the two ports would place the new Slav state at a great disadvantage commercially, as the principal volume of its exports and imports would have to pass through a port in the hands of a trade rival which could, in case of controversy or in order to check competition, be closed to Slav ships and goods on this or that pretext, even if the new state found it practicable to maintain a merchant marine under an agreement granting it the use of the port.
In view of the new conditions which had thus arisen through the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the union of the Southern Slavs, the Italian delegates at Paris began a vigorous campaign to obtain sovereignty, or at least administrative control, over Fiume and the adjacent coasts and islands, it having been generally conceded that Trieste should be ceded to Italy. The Italian demand for Fiume had become real instead of artificial. This campaign was conducted by means of personal interviews with the representatives of the principal Powers, and particularly with those of the United States because it was apparently felt that the chief opposition to the demand would come from that quarter, since the President was known to favor the general proposition that every nation should have free access to the sea and, if possible, a seaport under its own sovereignty.
The Italian delegates were undoubtedly encouraged by some Americans to believe that, while the President had not actually declared in favor of Italian control of Fiume, he was sympathetic to the idea and would ultimately assent to it just as he had in the case of the cession to Italy of the Tyrol with its Austrian population. Convinced by these assurances of success the Italian leaders began a nationwide propaganda at home for the purpose of arousing a strong public sentiment for the acquisition of the port. This propaganda was begun, it would seem, for two reasons, first, the political advantage to be gained when it was announced that Signor Orlando and his colleagues at Paris had succeeded in having their demand recognized, and, second, the possibility of influencing the President to a speedy decision by exhibiting the intensity and unity of the Italian national spirit in demanding the annexation of the little city, the major part of the population of which was asserted to be of Italian blood.
The idea, which was industriously circulated throughout Italy, that Fiume was an Italian city, aroused the feelings of the people more than any political or economic argument could have done. The fact that the suburbs, which were really as much a part of the municipality as the area within the city proper, were inhabited largely by Jugo-Slavs was ignored, ridiculed, or denied. That the Jugo-Slavs undoubtedly exceeded in numbers the Italians in the community when it was treated as a whole made no difference to the propagandists who asserted that Fiume was Italian. They clamored for its annexation on the ground of “self-determination,” though refusing to accept that principle as