Part 10

If we now consider the fourteen points of President Wilson, accepted by the Entente as a peace programme, comparing the actual results obtained by the Treaty of Versailles, we are faced with the following situation:

1. "After loyal peace negotiations and the conclusion and signing of peace treaties, secret diplomatic agreements must be regarded as abolished," says Wilson. On the contrary, secret peace negotiations have been protracted for more than six months, and no hearing was even granted to the German delegates who wished to expose their views. By a system of treaties France has created a military alliance with Belgium and Poland, thus completely cornering Germany.

2. Absolute freedom of the sea beyond territorial waters. Nothing, as a matter of fact, has been changed from the pre-war state of things; with the difference that the losers have had to surrender their mercantile fleets and are therefore no longer directly interested in the question.

3. Removal of all economic barriers and equality of trade conditions. The treaty imposes on Germany terms without reciprocity, and almost all Entente countries have already adopted protectionist and prohibitive tariffs.

4. Adequate guarantees to be given and received for the reduction of armaments to a minimum compatible with home defence. The treaties have compelled the vanquished countries to destroy or to surrender their navies, and have reduced the standing armies of Germany to 100,000 men, including officers, of Bulgaria to 23,000, of Austria to 30,000 (in reality only 21,000), of Hungary to 35,000. The conquering states, on the other hand, maintain enormous armies numerically superior to those which they had before the War. France, Belgium and Poland have between them about 1,400,000 men with the colours. Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria altogether have only 179,000 men under arms, while Rumania alone has 206,000 and Poland more than 450,000 men.

5. Loyal and straightforward settlement of colonial rights and claims, based chiefly on the advantage of the peoples directly concerned. All her colonies have been taken from Germany, who needed them more than any other country of continental Europe, having a density of population of 123 inhabitants per square kilometre (Italy has a density of 133 per square kilometre) while France has 74, Spain 40, and European Russia before the War had only 24.

6. Evacuation of all Russian territories and cordial co-operation for the reconstruction and development of Russia. For a long time the Entente has given its support to the military ventures of Koltchak, Judenic, Denikin and Wrangel, all men of the old regime.

7. Evacuation and reconstruction of Belgium. This has been done, but to Belgium have been assigned territories which she never dreamt of claiming before the War.

8. Liberation of French territories, reconstruction of invaded regions and restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to France in respect of the territories taken from her in 1871. France occupies a dominating position in the Saar which constitutes an absolute denial of the principle of nationality.

9. Rectification of the Italian frontier, according to clearly defined lines of nationality. As these lines have never been clearly defined or recognized, the solution arrived at has been distasteful both to the Italians and to their neighbours.

10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary to be left free to unite together or to form autonomous states in the manner best suited to their development. As a matter of fact the treaties have taken the greatest possible number of Germans from Austria and of Magyars from Hungary in order to hand them over to Poland, to Czeko-Slovakia, to Rumania and to Jugo-Slavia, namely to populations for the most part inferior to the Germans.

11. Evacuation of Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro. This has been effected, but whereas the Entente Powers have always proclaimed their fundamental duty for the reconstruction of Montenegro, they all contributed to its disappearance, chiefly at the instigation of France.

12. A limited sovereignty to the Turkish parts of the Ottoman Empire, liberation of other nationalities and freedom of navigation in the Dardanelles placed under international guarantees. What really happened was that the Entente Powers immediately tried to possess themselves of Asia Minor; but events rendered it necessary to adopt a regime of mandates because direct sovereignty would have been too perilous an experiment. A sense of deep perturbation and unrest pervades the whole of Islam.

13. An independent Polish state with populations undoubtedly Polish to be founded as a neutral State with a free and secure outlet to the sea and whose integrity is to be guaranteed by international accords. In reality a Polish state has been formed with populations undoubtedly non-Polish, having a markedly military character and aiming at further expansion in Ukranian and German territory. It has a population of 31,000,000 inhabitants while it should not exceed 18,000,000, and proposes to isolate Russia from Germany. Moreover the Free State of Danzig, practically dependent from Poland, constitutes a standing menace to Germany.

14. Foundation of the League of Nations for the sole purpose of re-establishing order among nations, and laying the basis of reciprocal guarantees of territorial integrity and political independence for all states, both great and small. After more than two years have elapsed since the conclusion of peace and three since the armistice the League of Nations is still nothing but a holy alliance the object of which is to guarantee the privileges of the conquerors. After the vote of the Senate, deserving of all praise from every point of view, the United States does not form part of the League nor do the losing countries, including Germany.

It is therefore obvious that the most solemn pledges on which peace was based have not been maintained; the noble declarations made by the Entente during the War have been forgotten; forgotten all the solemn collective pledges; forgotten and disregarded Wilson's proclamations which, without being real contracts or treaties, were something far more solemn and binding, a pledge taken before the whole world at its most tragic hour to give the enemy a guarantee of justice.

Without expressing any opinion on the treaties it cannot be denied that the manner in which they have been applied has been even worse. For the first time in civilized Europe, not during the War, when everything was permissible in the supreme interests of defence, but now that the War is over, the Entente Powers, though maintaining armies more numerous than ever, for which the vanquished must pay, have occupied German territories, inhabited by the most cultured, progressive and technically advanced populations in the world, as an insult and a slight, with coloured troops, men from darkest and most barbarous Africa, to act as defenders of the rights of civilization and to maintain the law and order of democracy.

III

THE PEACE TREATIES--THEIR ORIGIN AND AIMS

How, after the solemn pledges undertaken during the War, a peace could have been concluded which practically negatives all the principles professed during the War and all the obligations entered into, is easily explained when the progress of events is noted from the autumn of 1918 to the end of the spring of 1919. I took no direct part in those events, as I had no share in the government of Italy from January to the end of June, 1919, the period during which the Treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye were being prepared. The Orlando Ministry was resigning when the Treaty of Versailles was drawn up for signature, and the situation which confronted the Ministry of which I was head was clearly defined. Nevertheless I asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the delegates of the preceding Cabinet to put their signatures to it. Signing was a necessity, and it fell to me later on to put my signature to the ratification.

The Treaty of Versailles and those which have followed with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey have been validly signed, and they pledge the good faith of the countries which have signed them. But in the application of them there is need of great breadth of view; there is need of dispassionate study to see if they can be maintained, if the fulfilment of the impossible or unjust conditions demanded of the conquered countries will not do more harm to the conquerors, will not, in point of actual fact, pave the way to their ruin.

If there is one thing, Lloyd George has said, which will never be forgotten or forgiven, it is arrogance and injustice in the hour of triumph. We have never tired of saying that Germany is the most barbarous among civilized countries, that under her civilization is hidden all the barbarism of mediaeval times, that she puts into practice the doctrine of might over right. At the present moment it is our duty to ask ourselves if something of the principles which we have for so long been attributing to Germany has not passed over to the other side, if in our own hearts there is not a bitterness of hatred clouding our judgment and robbing our programme of all action that can do real good.

Prussia won the war against Austria-Hungary in 1866, and did not ask for or impose any really onerous terms. It was contented with having regained hegemony among the German people. Prussia conquered France in 1870. It was an unjust war, and Prussia laid down two unjust conditions: Alsace-Lorraine and the indemnity of five milliards. As soon as the indemnity was paid--and it was an indemnity that could be paid in one lump sum--Prussia evacuated the occupied territory. It did not claim of France its colonies or its fleet, it did not impose the reduction of its armaments or control of its transport after the peace. The Treaty of Frankfort is a humanitarian act compared with the Treaty of Versailles.

If Germany had won the War--Germany to whom we have always attributed the worst possible intentions--what could it have done that the Entente has not done? It is possible that, as it is gifted with more practical common sense, it might have laid down less impossible conditions in order to gain a secure advantage without ruining the conquered countries.

There are about ninety millions of Germans in Europe, and perhaps fifteen millions in different countries outside Europe. But in the heart of Europe they represent a great ethnic unity; they are the largest and most compact national group in that continent. With all the good and bad points of their race, too methodical and at the same time easily depressed by a severe setback, they are still the most cultivated people on earth. It is impossible to imagine that they can disappear, much less that they can reconcile themselves to live in a condition of slavery. On the other hand, the Entente has built on a foundation of shifting sand a Europe full of small States poisoned with imperialism and in ruinous conditions of economy and finance, and a too great Poland without a national basis and necessarily the enemy of Russia and of Germany.

No people has always been victorious; the peoples who have fought most wars in modern Europe, English, French and Germans, have had alternate victories and defeats. A defeat often carries in its train reconsideration which is followed by renewed energy: the greatness of England is largely due to its steadfast determination to destroy the Napoleonic Empire. What elevates men is this steadfast and persevering effort, and a series of such collective efforts carries a nation to a high place.

There is nothing lasting in the existing groupings. At the moment of common danger eternal union and unbreakable solidarity are proclaimed; but both are mere literary expressions.

Great Britain, the country which has the least need to make war, has been at war for centuries with nearly all the European countries. There is one country only against which it has never made war, not even when a commercial challenge from the mercantile Republics of Italy seemed possible. That country is Italy. That shows that between the action of Italy there is not, nor can there be, contrast, and indeed that between the two nations there is complete agreement in European continental policy. It is the common desire of the two nations, though perhaps for different reasons, that no one State shall have hegemony on the continent. But between the years 1688 and 1815 Great Britain and France were at war for seventy years: for seventy years, that is, out of a hundred and twenty-seven there was a state of deadly hostility between the two countries.