[14]The proposal of a permanent commission for handling the whole matter of reparations was made first by an American financial adviser, John Foster Dulles. The idea was accepted by Lloyd George and Clemenceau as an efficacious method of enabling them to postpone the decision of a definite sum to be paid by Germany until the political situation in France and Great Britain should be more favorable.
[14]The proposal of a permanent commission for handling the whole matter of reparations was made first by an American financial adviser, John Foster Dulles. The idea was accepted by Lloyd George and Clemenceau as an efficacious method of enabling them to postpone the decision of a definite sum to be paid by Germany until the political situation in France and Great Britain should be more favorable.
In truth the reparations clauses of the treaty, which compelled Germany to hand over what was practically a blank check to the Allies, represented no victory for Wilson. But he had at least prevented the imposition of the crushing indemnities that had been proposed, and which must have been followed by political and economic consequences hardly short of disastrous. As for the eastern frontier of France, it was agreed that the right of property in the coal mines of the Saar district should be given outright to France, as partial but immediate compensation for the damage done at Lens and elsewhere. But the district itself was to be placed under the League of Nations and a plebiscite at the end of fifteen years was to determine its final destiny. The territory on the left bank of the Rhine was left to Germany, but it was to be demilitarized entirely, a condition which also applied to a zone fifty kilometers broad to the east of the Rhine. The bridgeheads on the Rhine, as well as the German districts to the west of the river, were to be occupied for periods extending from five to fifteen years, in order to ensure the execution of the treaty by the Germans. The French press contended that Clemenceau had made over-great concessions, protesting that the League would be utterly unable to protect France against sudden attack, especially since the Covenant had not provided for a general military force. In return for these concessions by Clemenceau, Wilson gave an extraordinaryquid pro quo. He who had declaimed vigorously against all special alliances now agreed that until the League was capable of offering to France the protection she asked, there should be a separate treaty between France, Great Britain, and the United States, according to which the two latter powers should promise to come to the defense of France in case of sudden and unprovoked attack by Germany. The treaty did not, according to Wilson, constitute a definite alliance but merely an "undertaking," but it laid him open to the charge of serious inconsistency.
Thus was passed, by means of compromise, the most serious crisis of the Conference. In France Wilson never recovered the popularity which he then lost by his opposition to French demands. In many quarters of Great Britain and the United States, on the other hand, he was attacked by liberals for having surrendered to the forces of reaction. In the Conference, however, he had maintained his prestige, and most moderates who understood the situation felt that he had done as well as or better than could be expected. He had by no means had his way in the matter of reparations or frontiers, but he had gone far towards a vindication of his principles by avoiding a defeat under circumstances where the odds were against him. More he probably could not have obtained and no other American at that time could have secured so much. The sole alternative would have been for the American delegates to withdraw from the Conference. Such a step might have had the most disastrous consequences. It was true, or Europe believed it to be true, that the Conference represented for themoment the single rallying-point of the elements of social order on the Continent. The withdrawal of the Americans would have shattered its waning prestige, discouraged liberals in every country, and perhaps have led to its dissolution. Nearly every one in Paris was convinced that the break-up of the Conference would be the signal for widespread communistic revolt throughout central Europe. By his broad concessions President Wilson had sacrificed some of his principles, but he had held the Conference together, the supreme importance of which seemed at the time difficult to over-emphasize. Having weathered this crisis the Conference could now meet the storms that were to arise from the demands of the Italians and the Japanese.
Wilson himself was to be encouraged in the midst of those difficulties by the triumph accorded him on the 28th of April. On that day the plenary session of the Conference adopted without a word of dissent the revised Covenant of the League of Nations, including the amendment that formally recognized the validity of the Monroe Doctrine.
President Wilson's success in securing approval for the League as the basis of the Peace Treaty was his greatest triumph at Paris; and it was accentuated by the acceptance of certain of the amendments that were demanded in America, while those which the French and Japanese insisted upon were discarded or postponed. In comparison with this success, he doubtless regarded his concessions in the matter of reparations and the special Franco-British-American alliance as mere details. His task, however, was by no means completed, since Italian and Japanese claims threatened to bring on crises of almost equal danger.
From the early days of the Conference there had been interested speculation in the corridors of the Quai d'Orsay as to whether the promises made to Italy by the Entente Powers in 1915, which were incorporated in the secret Treaty of London, would be carried into effect by the final peace settlement.That treaty had been conceived in the spirit of old-time diplomacy and had assigned to Italy districts which disinterested experts declared could not be hers except upon the principle of the spoils to the strong. Much of the territories promised in the Tyrol, along the Julian Alps, and on the Adriatic coast was inhabited entirely by non-Italians, whose political and economic fortunes were bound up with states other than Italy; justice and wisdom alike seemed to dictate a refusal of Italian claims. The annexation of such districts by Italy, the experts agreed, would contravene directly the right of self-determination and might lead to serious difficulties in the future. Would the President sanction the application of treaties consummated without the knowledge of the United States and in defiance of the principles upon which he had declared that peace must be made? The application of the Treaty of London, furthermore, would be at the expense, chiefly, of the Jugoslavs, that is, a small nation. The Allies, as well as Wilson, had declared that the war had been waged and that the peace must be drafted in defense of the rights of smaller nationalities. Justice for the weak as for the strong was the basis of the newinternational order which Wilson was striving to inaugurate.
Had the struggle been simply over the validity of the Treaty of London, Wilson's position would have been difficult enough, for the Premiers of France and Great Britain had declared that they could do nothing else but honor the pledges given in 1915. But Italian opinion had been steadily aroused by a chauvinist press campaign to demand not merely the application of the Treaty of London but the annexation of Fiume, which the treaty assigned to the Jugoslavs. To this demand both the British and French were opposed, although they permitted Wilson to assume the burden of denying Italian claims to Fiume. As time went on, Orlando and Sonnino pressed for a decision, even threatening that unless their demands were satisfied, Italy would have nothing to do with the German treaty. Finally, on the 23d of April, the crisis came to a head. On that day the President published a statement setting forth the American position, which he felt had been entirely misrepresented by a propagandist press. Emphasizing the fact that Italian claims were inconsistent with the principles upon which all the Allies had agreed, as necessary to the future tranquillity of the world,he appealed directly to the Italian people to join with the United States in the application of those principles, even at the sacrifice of what seemed their own interest.
The appeal was based upon sound facts. Its statements were approved publicly by allied experts who knew the situation, and privately by Clemenceau and Lloyd George. It had been discussed in the Council of Four and by no means took Orlando by surprise. But it gave Orlando an opportunity for carrying out his threat of retiring from the Conference. Insisting that Wilson had appealed to the Italian people over his head and that they must choose between him and the President, he set forth at once for Rome, followed by the other Italian commissioners, although the economic experts remained at Paris. Orlando was playing a difficult game. He was hailed in Rome as the defender of the sacred rights of Italy, but in Paris he lacked partners. Both the British and French agreed with Wilson that Italy ought not to have Fiume. They secretly regretted the promises of the London Treaty, although they were prepared to keep their word, and they were by no means inclined to make further concessions in order to bring Orlando and his colleagues back.After a few days of hesitation, they decided to go on with the German treaty and to warn the Italians that, if they persisted in absenting themselves from the Conference, their withdrawal would be regarded as a breach of the Treaty of London which stipulated a common peace with the enemy. They also decided that Italy could not expect to share in German reparations if her delegates were not present to sign the German treaty. Such arguments could not fail to weigh heavily with the Italian delegates, even at the moment when the Italian press and people were giving them enthusiastic encouragement to persist in their uncompromising course. On the 5th of May Orlando left Rome to resume his place in the Peace Conference.
In the meantime the Japanese had taken advantage of the embarrassment caused by the Italian withdrawal, to put forward their special claims in the Far East. During the early days of the Conference they had played a cautious game, as we have seen, attending meetings but taking no decided stand upon European matters. They had even refused to press to the limit the amendment to the League Covenant which enunciated their favorite principle of the equality of races. But now they insisted that on one point, at least,Japanese claims must be listened to; their right of inheritance to the German lease of Kiau-Chau and economic privileges in the Shantung peninsula must receive recognition. This claim had long been approved secretly by the British and French; it had even been accepted by the Chinese at the time when Japan had forced the twenty-one demands upon her. It was disapproved, however, by the American experts in Paris, and Wilson argued strongly for more generous treatment of China. His strategic position, one must admit, was not nearly so strong as in the Fiume controversy. In the latter he was supported, at least covertly, by France and England, whose treaty with Italy explicitly denied her claim to Fiume. The Japanese threat of withdrawal from the Conference, if their claims were not satisfied, carried more real danger with it than that of the Italians; if the Japanese delegates actually departed making the second of the big five to go, the risk of a complete débâcle was by no means slight. Even assuming that justice demanded as strong a stand for the Chinese as Wilson had taken for the Jugoslavs, the practical importance of the Shantung question in Europe was of much less significance.The eyes of every small nation of Europe were upon Fiume, which was regarded as the touchstone of Allied professions of justice. If the Allied leaders permitted Italy to take Fiume, the small nations would scoff at all further professions of idealism; they would take no further interest either in the Conference or its League. Whereas, on the other hand, the small nationalities of Europe knew and cared little about the justice of Chinese pleas.
Such considerations may have been in the mind of the President when he decided to yield to Japan. The decision throws interesting light upon his character; he is less the obstinate doctrinaire, more the practical politician than has sometimes been supposed. The pure idealist would have remained consistent in the crisis, refused to do an injustice in the Far East as he had refused in the settlement of the Adriatic, and would have taken the risk of breaking up the Conference and destroying all chance of the League of Nations. Instead, Wilson yielded to practical considerations of the moment. The best that he could secure was the promise of the Japanese to retire from the peninsula, a promise the fulfillment of which obviously depended upon the outcome of the struggle between liberal and conservative forces in Japan, and which accordingly remained uncertain.He was willing to do what he admitted was an injustice, in order to assure what seemed to him the larger and the more certain justice that would follow the establishment of the League of Nations.
The settlement of the Shantung problem removed the last great difficulty in completing the treaty with Germany, and on the 7th of May the German delegates appeared to receive it. Nearly eight weeks of uncertainty followed, taken up with the study of German protests, the construction of the treaty with Austria, and finally the last crisis that preceded the signature. The terms were drastic and the German Government, in the persons of Scheidemann, the Premier, and Brockdorff-Rantzau, Minister for Foreign Affairs, seemed determined that, helpless as she was, Germany should not accept them without radical modifications. Their protests touched chiefly upon the economic clauses and reparations, the solution of the Saar problem, the cession of so much German territory to Poland, and the exclusion of Germany from the League of Nations. Ample opportunity was given their delegates to formulate protests, which, although they rarely introduced new facts or arguments that had not been discussed, were carefully studied by Allied experts. Week after week passed.In certain quarters among the Allies appeared a tendency to make decided concessions in order to win the consent of the German delegates. No one wanted to carry out an invasion of the defeated country, and there was no guarantee that a military invasion would secure acquiescence. Germany's strength was in sitting still, and she might thus indefinitely postpone the peace. Was it not the wise course, one heard whispered in Paris, to sugar the bitterness of the treaty and thus win Germany's immediate signature?
Early in June, Lloyd George, evidently under pressure from his Cabinet, declared himself for a decided "softening" of the peace terms in order to secure the acceptance of the enemy. What would Wilson do? He had been anathematized at home and abroad as pro-German and desirous of saving Germany from the consequences of her misdeeds; here was his chance. Would he join with the British in tearing up this treaty, which after four months of concentrated effort had just been completed, in order to secure the soft peace that he was supposed to advocate? His attitude in this contingency showed his ability to preserve an even balance. In the meeting of the American delegation that was called to consider the British proposal,he pronounced himself as strongly in favor of any changes that would ensure more complete justice. If the British and French would consent to a definite and moderate sum of reparations (a consent which he knew was out of the question) he would gladly agree. But he would not agree to any concessions to Germany that were not based upon justice, but merely upon the desire to secure her signature. He was not in favor of any softening which would mar the justice of the settlement as drafted. "We did not come over," he said, "simply to get any sort of peace treaty signed. We came over to do justice. I believe, even, that a hard peace is a good thing for Germany herself, in order that she may know what an unjust war means. We must not forget what our soldiers fought for, even if it means that we may have to fight again." Wilson's stand for the treaty as drafted proved decisive. Certain modifications in details were made, but the hasty and unwise enthusiasm of Lloyd George for scrapping entire sections was not approved. The Conference could hardly have survived wholesale concessions to Germany: to prolong the crisis would have been a disastrous confession of incompetence. For what confidence could have been placed in statesmen who were so patently unable to make and keep their minds?
Still the German Government held firm and refused to sign. Foch inspected the Allied troops on the Rhine and Pershing renounced his trip to England, in order to be ready for the invasion that had been ordered if the time limit elapsed without signature. Only at the last moment did the courage of the Germans fail. A change of ministry brought into power men who were willing to accept the inevitable humiliation. On the 20th of June, the guns and sirens of Paris announced Germany's acceptance of the peace terms and their promise to sign, and, surprising fact, a vast crowd gathered on the Place de la Concorde to cheer Wilson; despite his loss of popularity and the antagonism which he had aroused by his opposition to national aspirations of one sort or another, he was still the man whose name stood as symbol for peace.
Eight days later in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, where forty-eight years before had been born the German Empire, the delegates of the Allied states gathered to celebrate the obsequies of that Empire. It was no peace of reconciliation, this treaty between the new German Republic and the victorious Allies.The hatred and distrust inspired by five years of war were not so soon to be liquidated. As the German delegates, awkward and rather defiant in their long black frock coats, marched to the table to affix their signatures, they were obviously, in the eyes of the Allied delegates and the hundreds of spectators, always "the enemy." The place of the Chinese at the treaty table was empty; for them it was no peace of justice that gave Shantung to the Japanese, and they would not sign. The South African delegate, General Smuts, could not sign without explaining the balance of considerations which led him to sanction an international document containing so many flaws.
It was not, indeed, the complete peace of justice which Wilson had promised and which, at times, he has since implied he believed it to be. Belgians complained that they had not been given the left bank of the Scheldt; Frenchmen were incensed because their frontier had not been protected; Italians were embittered by the refusal to approve their claims on the Adriatic; radical leaders, the world over, were frank in their expression of disappointment at the failure to inaugurate a new social order. The acquiescence in Japanese demands for Kiau-Chau was clearly dictated by expediency rather than by justice.Austria, reduced in size and bereft of material resources, was cut off from the sea and refused the possibility of joining with Germany. The nationalistic ambitions of the Rumanians, of the Jugoslavs, of the Czechoslovaks, and of the Poles were aroused to such an extent that conflicts could hardly be avoided. Hungary, deprived of the rim of subject nationalities, looked forward to the first opportunity of reclaiming her sovereignty over them. The Ruthenians complained of Polish domination. Further to the east lay the great unsettled problem of Russia.
But the most obvious flaws in the treaty are to be found in the economic clauses. It was a mistake to compel Germany to sign a blank check in the matter of reparations. Germany and the world needed to know the exact amount that was to be paid, in order that international commerce might be set upon a stable basis. The extent of control granted to the Allies over German economic life was unwise and unfair.
Complete justice certainly was not achieved by President Wilson at Paris, and it may be questioned whether all the decisions can be regarded even as expedient. The spirit of the Fourteen Points, as commonly interpreted, had not governed the minds of those who sat at the council table.The methods adopted by the Council of Ten and the Council of Four were by no means those to which the world looked forward when it hailed the ideal expressed in the phrase, "Open covenants openly arrived at." The "freedom of the seas," if it meant the disappearance of the peculiar position held by Great Britain on the seas, was never seriously debated, and Wilson himself, in an interview given to the LondonTimes, sanctioned "Britain's peculiar position as an island empire." Adequate guarantees for the reduction of armaments were certainly not taken at Paris; all that was definitely stipulated was the disarmament of the enemy, a step by no means in consonance with the President's earlier policy which aimed at universal disarmament. An "absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims" was hardly carried out by granting the German colonies to the great powers, even as mandatories of the League of Nations.
Nevertheless the future historian will probably hold that the Peace Conference, with all its selfish interests and mistakes, carried into effect an amazingly large part of President Wilson's programme, when all the difficulties of his position are duly weighed. The territorial settlements, on the whole, translated into fact the demands laid down by the more special of Wilson's Fourteen Points.France, Belgium, and the other invaded countries were, of course, evacuated and their restoration promised; Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France and the wrong of 1871 thus righted; an independent Poland was recognized and given the assured access to the sea that Wilson had insisted upon; the subject nationalities of Austria-Hungary received not merely autonomy but independence. Even as regards the larger principles enunciated in the Fourteen Points, it may at least be argued that President Wilson secured more than he lost. Open diplomacy in the sense of conducting international negotiations in an open forum was not the method of the Peace Conference; and it may not be possible or even desirable. The article in the Covenant, however, which insists upon the public registration of all treaties before their validity is recognized, goes far towards a fulfillment of the President's pledge of open covenants, particularly if his original meaning is liberally interpreted. Similarly the Covenant makes provision for the reduction of armaments. If the treaty did not go far in assuring the "removal of economic barriers," at all events the Conference did much to provide for an international control of traffic which would ensure toall European countries, so far as possible, equal facilities for forwarding their goods.
Apart from the Fourteen Points Wilson had emphasized two other principles as necessary to a just and permanent peace. The first of these was that the enemy should be treated with a fairness equal to that accorded to the Allies; the second was the principle that peoples should have the right to choose the government by which they were to be ruled—the principle of self-determination. Neither of these principles received full recognition in the peace settlement. Yet their spirit was infused more completely throughout the settlement than would have been the case had not Wilson been at Paris, and to that extent the just and lasting qualities of the peace were enhanced. In the matter of German reparations the question of justice was not the point at issue; the damage committed by Germany surpassed in value anything that the Allies could exact from her. As to frontiers, the unbiased student will probably admit that full justice was done Germany when the aspirations of France for annexation of the Saar district and the provinces on the left bank of the Rhine were disappointed; it was the barest justice to France, on the other hand, that she should receive the coal mines of the former district and that the latter should be demilitarized.In the question of Danzig, and the Polish corridor to the sea, it was only fair to Poland that she receive the adequate outlet which was necessary to her economic life and which had been promised her, even if it meant the annexation of large German populations, many of which had been artificially brought in as colonists by the Berlin Government; and in setting up a free city of Danzig, the Conference broke with the practices of old style diplomacy and paid a tribute to the rights of peoples as against expediency. The same may be said of the decision to provide for plebiscites in East Prussia and in upper Silesia. On the other hand, the refusal to permit the incorporation of the new, lesser Austria within Germany was at once unjust and unwise—a concession to the most shortsighted of old-style diplomatic principles.
In the reorganization of the former Hapsburg territories, Wilsonian principles were always in the minds of the delegates, although in a few cases they were honored more in the breach than in the observance. Wilson himself surrendered to Italy extensive territories in the Tyrol south of the Brenner which, if he had followed his own professions, would have been left to Austria.A large Jugoslav population on the Julian Alps and in Istria was placed under Italian rule. The new Czechoslovak state includes millions of Germans and Magyars. The boundaries of Rumania were extended to include many non-Rumanian peoples. Bulgars were sacrificed to Greeks and to Serbs. In the settlement of each problem the balance always inclined a little in favor of the victors. But the injustices committed were far less extensive than might have been expected, and in most cases where populations were included under alien rule, the decision was based less on political considerations than on the practical factors of terrain, rivers, and railroads which must always be taken into consideration in the drawing of a frontier. Wherever the issue was clean-cut, as for example between the selfish nationalism of the Italians in their Adriatic demands and the claim to mere economic life of the Jugoslavs, the old rule which granted the spoils to the stronger power was vigorously protested.
Whatever the mistakes of the Conference, Wilson secured that which he regarded as the point of prime importance, the League of Nations. This, he believed, would remedy the flaws and eradicate the vices of the treaties. No settlement, however perfect at the moment, could possibly remain permanent, in view of the constantly changing conditions.What was necessary was an elasticity that would permit change as change became necessary. If the disposition of the Saar basin, for example, proved to be so unwise or unjust as to cause danger of violence, the League would take cognizance of the peril and provide a remedy. If the boundaries of eastern Germany gave undue advantage to the Poles, the League would find ways and means of rectifying the frontier peacefully. If Hungary or Czechoslovakia found themselves cut off from sea-ports, the League could hear and act upon their demands for freedom of transit or unrestricted access to fair markets. That the League was necessary for such and other purposes was recognized by many notable economic experts and statesmen besides the President. Herbert Hoover insisted upon the necessity of a League if the food problems of central Europe were to be met, and Venizelos remarked that "without a League of Nations, Europe would face the future with despair in its heart." Because he had the covenant of such an association incorporated in the German treaty, Wilson accepted all the mistakes and injustices of the treaty as minor details and could say of it, doubtless in all sincerity, "It's a good job."Conscious of victory in the matter which he had held closest to his heart, the President embarked upon theGeorge Washingtonon the 29th of June, the day after the signing of the treaty, and set forth for home. All that was now needed was the ratification of the treaty by the Senate.
Neither President Wilson nor those who had been working with him at Paris seriously feared that, after securing the point of chief importance to him at the Conference, he would fail to win support for the League of Nations and the treaty at home. They recognized, of course, that his political opponents in the Senate would not acquiesce without a struggle. The Republicans were now in the majority, and Henry Cabot Lodge, the new chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, had gone far in his efforts to undermine Wilson's policy at Paris. He had encouraged the Italians in their imperialistic designs in the Adriatic and had done his best to discredit the League of Nations. Former Progressive Senators, such as Johnson and Borah, who like Lodge made personal hostility to Wilson the chief plank in their political programme, had declared vigorously their determination to prevent the entrance of the United States into a League. The Senators as a whole were not well-informed upon foreign conditions and Wilson had done nothing to enlighten them. He had not asked their advice in the formulation of his policy, nor had he supplied them with the facts that justified the position he had taken. Naturally their attitude was not likely to be friendly, now that he returned to request their consent to the treaty, and the approach of a presidential election was bound to affect the action of all ardent partisans.
Opposition was also to be expected in the country. There was always the ancient prejudice against participation in European affairs, which had not been broken even by the events of the past two years. The people, even more than the Senate, were ignorant of foreign conditions and failed to understand the character of the obligations which the nation would assume under the treaty and the covenant of the League. There was genuine fear lest the United States should become involved in wars and squabbles in which it had no material interest, and lest it should surrender its independence of action to a council of foreign powers. This was accompanied by the belief that an irresponsible President might commit the country to anadventurous course of action which could not be controlled by Congress. The chief opposition to the treaty and covenant, however, probably resulted from the personal dislike of Wilson. This feeling, which had always been virulent along the Atlantic coast and in the industrial centers of the Middle West, had been intensified by the President's apparent disregard of Congress. More than one man of business argued that the treaty must be bad because it was Wilson's work and the covenant worst of all, since it was his pet scheme. One heard daily in the clubs and on the golf-courses of New England and the Middle Atlantic States the remark: "I know little about the treaty, but I know Wilson, and I know he must be wrong."
And yet the game was probably in the President's hands, had he known how to play it. Divided as it was on the question of personal devotion to Wilson, the country was a unit in its desire for immediate peace and normal conditions. Admitting the imperfections of the treaty, it was probably the best that could be secured in view of the conflicting interests of the thirty-one signatory powers, and at least it would bring peace at once. To cast it aside meant long delays and prolongation of the economic crisis.The covenant of the League might not be entirely satisfactory, but something must be done to prevent war in the future; and if this League proved unsatisfactory, it could be amended after trial. Even the opposing Senators did not believe that they could defeat the treaty outright. They were warned by Republican financiers, who understood international economic conditions, that the safety and prosperity of the world demanded ratification, and that the United States could not afford to assume an attitude of isolation even if it were possible. Broad-minded statesmen who were able to dissociate partisan emotion from intellectual judgment, such as ex-President Taft, agreed that the treaty should be ratified as promptly as possible. All that Senator Lodge and his associates really hoped for was to incorporate reservations which would guarantee the independence of American action and incidentally make it impossible for the President to claim all the credit for the peace.
Had the President proved capable of coöperating with the moderate Republican Senators it would probably have been possible for him to have saved the fruits of his labor at Paris. An important group honestly believed that the language of the covenant was ambiguous in certain respects, particularly asregards the extent of sovereignty sacrificed by the national government to the League, and the diminution of congressional powers. This group was anxious to insert reservations making plain the right of Congress alone to declare war, defining more exactly the right of the United States to interpret the Monroe Doctrine, and specifying what was meant by domestic questions that should be exempt from the cognizance of the League. Had Wilson at once combined with this group and agreed to the suggested reservations, he would in all probability have been able to secure the two-thirds vote necessary to ratification. The country would have been satisfied; the Republicans might have contended that they had "Americanized" the treaty; and the reservations would probably have been accepted by the co-signatories. It would have been humiliating to go back to the Allies asking special privileges, but Europe needed American assistance too much to fail to heed these demands. After all America had gained nothing in the way of territorial advantage from the war and was asking for nothing in the way of reparations.
It was at this crucial moment that Wilson's peculiar temperamental faults asserted themselves.Sorely he needed the sane advice of Colonel House, who would doubtless have found ways of placating the opposition. But that practical statesman was in London and the President lacked the capacity to arrange the compromise that House approved.
President Wilson alone either would not or could not negotiate successfully with the middle group of Republicans. He went so far as to initiate private conferences with various Senators, a step indicating his desire to avoid the appearance of the dictatorship of which he was accused; but his attitude on reservations that altered the meaning of any portion of the treaty or covenant was unyielding, and he even insisted that merely interpretative reservations should not be embodied in the text of the ratifying resolution. The President evidently hoped that the pressure of public opinion would compel the Senate to yield to the demand for immediate peace and for guarantees against future war. His appearance of rigidity, however, played into the hands of the opponents of the treaty, who dominated the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. Senator Lodge, chairman of the committee, adopted a stand which, to the Administration at least, did not seem to be justified by anything but a desire to discredit the work of Wilson.He had, in the previous year, warmly advocated a League of Nations, but in the spring of 1919 he had given the impression that he would oppose any League for which Wilson stood sponsor. Thus he had raised objections to the preliminary draft of the covenant which Wilson brought from Paris in February; but when Wilson persuaded the Allies to incorporate some of the amendments then demanded by Republican Senators, he at once found new objections. He did not dare attack the League as a principle, in view of the uncertainty of public opinion on the issue; but he obviously rejoiced in the President's inability to unite the Democrats with the middle-ground Republicans, for whom Senator McCumber stood as spokesman.
On the 19th of August a conference was held at the White House, in which the President attempted to explain to the Foreign Relations Committee doubtful points and to give the reasons for various aspects of the settlement. A careful study of the stenographic report indicates that his answers to the questions of the Republican Senators were frank, and that he was endeavoring to remove the unfortunate effects of his former distant attitude. His manner, however, had in it something of the schoolmaster, and the conference was fruitless.Problems which had been studied for months by experts of all the Powers, and to the solution of which had been devoted long weeks of intelligent discussion, were now passed upon superficially by men whose ignorance of foreign questions was only too evident, and who barely concealed their determination to nullify everything approved by the President. Hence, when the report of the committee was finally presented on the 10th of September, the Republican majority demanded no less than thirty-eight amendments and four reservations. A quarter of the report was not concerned at all with the subject under discussion, but was devoted to an attack upon Wilson's autocratic methods and his treatment of the Senate. As was pointed out by Senator McCumber, the single Republican who dissented from the majority report, "not one word is said, not a single allusion made, concerning either the great purposes of the League of Nations or the methods by which these purposes are to be accomplished. Irony and sarcasm have been substituted for argument and positions taken by the press or individuals outside the Senate seem to command more attention than the treaty itself."
The President did not receive the popular support which he expected, and the burst of popularwrath which he believed would overwhelm senatorial opposition was not forthcoming. In truth public opinion was confused. America was not educated to understand the issues at stake. Wilson's purposes at Paris had not been well reported in the press, and he himself had failed to make plain the meaning of his policy. It was easy for opponents of the treaty to muddy discussion and to arouse emotion where reason was desirable. The wildest statements were made as to the effect of the covenant, such as that entrance into the League would at once involve the United States in war, and that Wilson was sacrificing the interests of America to the selfish desires of European states. The same men who, a year before, had complained that Wilson was opposing England and France, now insisted that he had sold the United States to those nations. They invented the catchword of "one hundred per cent Americanism," the test of which was to be opposition to the treaty. They found strange coadjutors. The German-Americans, suppressed during the war, now dared to emerge, hoping to save the Fatherland from the effects of defeat by preventing the ratification of the treaty; the politically active Irish found opportunity to fulminate against British imperialism and"tyranny" which they declared had been sanctioned by the treaty; impractical liberals, who were disappointed because Wilson had not inaugurated the social millennium, joined hands with out-and-out reactionaries. But the most discouraging aspect of the situation was that so many persons permitted their judgment to be clouded by their dislike of the President's personality. However much they might disapprove the tactics of Senator Lodge they could not but sympathize to some extent with the Senate's desire to maintain its independence, which they believed had been assailed by Wilson. Discussions which began with the merits of the League of Nations almost invariably culminated with vitriolic attacks upon the character of Woodrow Wilson.
In the hope of arousing the country to a clear demand for immediate peace based upon the Paris settlement, Wilson decided to carry out the plan formulated some weeks previous and deliver a series of speeches from the Middle West to the Pacific coast. He set forth on the 3d of September and made more than thirty speeches. He was closely followed by some of his fiercest opponents. Senators Johnson and Borah, members of the Foreign Relations Committee, who might have been expected to remain in Washington to assist in theconsideration of the treaty by the Senate, followed in Wilson's wake, attempting to counteract the effect of his addresses, and incidentally distorting many of the treaty's provisions, which it is charitable to assume they did not comprehend. The impression produced by the President was varied, depending largely upon the political character of his audience. East of the Mississippi he was received with comparative coolness, but as he approached the coast enthusiasm became high, and at Seattle and Los Angeles he received notable ovations. And yet in these hours of triumph as in the previous moments of discouragement, farther east, he must have felt that the issues were not clear. The struggle was no longer one for a new international order that would ensure peace, so much as a personal conflict between Lodge and Wilson. Whether the President were applauded or anathematized, the personal note was always present.
It was evident, during the tour, that the nervous strain was telling upon Wilson. He had been worn seriously by his exertions in Paris, where he was described by a foreign plenipotentiary as the hardest worker in the Conference. The brief voyage home, which was purposely lengthened to give him better chance of recuperation, proved insufficient.Forced to resume the struggle at the moment when he thought victory was his, repudiated where he expected to find appreciation, the tour proved to be beyond his physical and nervous strength. At Pueblo, Colorado, on the 25th of September, he broke down and returned hastily to Washington. Shortly afterwards the President's condition became so serious that his physicians forbade all political conferences, insisting upon a period of complete seclusion and rest, which was destined to continue for many months.
Thus at the moment of extreme crisis in the fortunes of the treaty its chief protagonist was removed from the scene of action and the Democratic forces fighting for ratification were deprived of effective leadership. Had there been a real leader in the Senate who could carry on the fight with vigor and finesse, the treaty might even then have been saved; but Wilson's system had permitted no understudies. There was no one to lead and no one to negotiate a compromise. From his sick-room, where his natural obstinacy seemed to be intensified by his illness, the President still refused to consider any reservations except of a purely interpretative character, and the middle-ground Republicans would not vote to ratify without"mild reservations," some of which seemed to him more than interpretative.
Senatorial forces were roughly divided into four groups. There were the "bitter-enders," typified by Johnson, Borah, and Brandegee, who frankly wanted to defeat the treaty and the League outright; there were the "reservationists," most of whom, like Lodge, wanted the same but did not dare say so openly; there were the "mild reservationists," most of whom were Republicans, who sincerely desired immediate peace and asked for no important changes in the treaty; and finally there were those who desired to ratify the treaty as it stood. The last-named group, made up of Democrats, numbered from forty-one to forty-four, and obviously needed the assistance of the "mild reservationists," if they were to secure a two-thirds vote of the Senate. During October, all the amendments which the Foreign Relations Committee brought forward were defeated through the combination of the last two groups. Early in November, however, fourteen reservations were adopted, the "mild reservationists" voting with Senator Lodge, for lack of any basis of compromise with the Democrats. The effect of these reservations would, undoubtedly, have been to release theUnited States from many of the obligations assumed by other members, while assuring to it the benefits of the League. The most serious of the reservations was that concerned with Article X of the covenant, which stated that the United States would assume no obligations to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country, or to interfere in controversies between nations, unless in any particular case Congress should so provide. From the moment when Wilson first developed his policy of international service, coöperative interference in order to prevent acts of aggression by a strong against a weaker power had been the chief point in his programme. It was contained in his early Pan-American policy; it ran through his speeches in the campaign of 1916; it was in the Fourteen Points. It was his specific contribution to the covenant in Paris. Article X was the one point in the covenant which Wilson would not consent to modify or, as he expressed it, see "nullified." Just because it lay nearest Wilson's heart, it was the article against which the most virulent attacks of the "die-hards" were directed.
The President denounced the reservation on Article X, as a "knife-thrust at the heart of the covenant," and its inclusion in the ratifyingresolution of the Senate, spelled the defeat of ratification. On the eve of voting he wrote to Senator Hitchcock, leader of the Democratic forces in the Senate, "I assume that the Senators only desire my judgment upon the all-important question of the resolution containing the many reservations of Senator Lodge. On that I cannot hesitate, for, in my opinion, the resolution in that form does not provide for ratification but rather for nullification of the treaty. I sincerely hope that the friends and supporters of the treaty will vote against the Lodge resolution of ratification." The "mild reservationists" led by McCumber voted with the Lodge group for the resolution; but the "bitter-enders," combining with the supporters of the original treaty, outnumbered them. The vote stood thirty-nine in favor of the resolution and fifty-five against. When a motion for unconditional ratification was offered by Senator Underwood, it was defeated by a vote of fifty-three to thirty-eight.
The Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee had succeeded far beyond the hopes of their leaders in August. They had killed the treaty, but in such an indirect fashion as to confuse the public and to fix upon the President the blame for delaying the peace.It was easy to picture the obstinacy of the President as the root of all the evil which resulted from the political and economic uncertainty overhanging our European relations. So widespread was this feeling among his natural opponents, that the Republican Senators began to assume a far loftier tone, and to laugh at the tardy efforts of the Democrats to arrange a compromise. When Senator Pomerene, after consultation with Administration leaders, proposed the appointment of a "committee of conciliation," to find a basis of ratification that would secure the necessary two-thirds vote, the motion was killed by forty-eight to forty-two. Senator Lodge announced that he would support the resolution suggested by Knox, which would end the war by congressional resolution and thus compel Wilson to negotiate a separate treaty of peace with Germany.
Intelligent public opinion, however, was anxious that the quarrels of the President and the Senate should not be allowed to delay the settlement[15].Rightly or wrongly the people felt that the struggle was largely a personal one between Lodge and Wilson, and insisted that each must yield something of their contention. On the one hand, ex-President Taft and others of the more far-seeing Republicans worked anxiously for compromise, with the assistance of such men as Hoover, who perceived the necessity of a League, but who were willing to sacrifice its efficiency to some extent, if only the United States could be brought in. On the other hand, various Democrats who were less directly under Wilson's influence wanted to meet these friends of the League half-way. During December and January unofficial conferences between the senatorial groups took place and progress towards a settlement seemed likely. The Republicans agreed to soften the language of their minor reservations, and Wilson even intimated that he would consent to a mild reservation on Article X, although as he later wrote to Hitchcock, he felt strongly that any reservation or resolution stating that the "United States assumes no obligation under such and such an article unless or except, would chill our relationship with the nations with whom we expect to be associated in this great enterprise of maintaining the world's peace."It was important "not to create the impression that we are trying to escape obligations."