Part 9

Reimbursement to Belgium of all the sums loaned to her by the allied and associated Powers during the War.

Compensation for the losses and damages sustained by the civilian population of the allied and associated Powers during the period in which they were at war with Germany (Art. 232 and Part viii, I).

Payment, during the first two years, of twenty milliard marks in gold or by the delivery of goods, shipping, etc., on account of compensation (Art. 235).

The reparations owed by Germany concern chiefly:

1st. Damages and loss of life and property sustained by the civilian population.

2nd. Damages sustained by civilian victims of cruelty, violence or ill-treatment.

3rd. Damages caused on occupied or invaded territories.

4th. Damages through cruelty to and ill-treatment of prisoners of war.

5th. Pensions and compensations of all kinds paid by the allied and associated Powers to the military victims of the War and to their families.

6th. Subsidies paid by the allied and associated Powers to the families and other dependents of men having served in the army, etc., etc. (Part viii, I). These expenses, which have been calculated at varying figures, commencing from 350 billions, have undergone considerable fluctuations.

I have given the general lines of the Treaty of Versailles.

The other treaties, far less important, inasmuch as the situation of all the losing countries was already well defined, especially as regards territorial questions, by the Treaty of Versailles, are cast in the same mould and contain no essential variation.

Now these treaties constitute an absolutely new fact, and no one can affirm that the Treaty of Versailles derives even remotely from the declarations of the Entente and from Wilson's solemn pledges uttered in the name of those who took part in the War.

If the terms of the armistice were deeply in contrast with the pledges to which the Entente Powers had bound themselves before the whole world, the Treaty of Versailles and the other treaties deriving therefrom are a deliberate negation of all that had been promised, amounting to a debt of honour, and which had contributed much more powerfully towards the defeat of the enemy than the entry in the field of many fresh divisions.

In the state of extreme exhaustion in which both conquerors and losers found themselves in 1918, in the terrible suffering of the Germanic group of belligerents, deprived for four years of sufficient nourishment and of the most elementary necessaries of life, in the moral collapse which had taken the place of boasting and temerity, the words of Wilson, who pledged himself to a just peace and established its terms, proclaiming them to the world, had completely broken down whatever force of resistance there still remained. They were the most powerful instruments of victory, and if not the essential cause, certainly not the least important among the causes which brought about the collapse of the Central Empires.

Germany had been deeply hit by the armistice. Obliged to hand over immediately 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 railway trucks and carriages at the very time when she had to demobilize, during the first months she found her traffic almost completely paralysed.

Every war brings virulent germs of revolution in the vanquished countries. The war of 1870 gave France the impulsive manifestations of La Commune in exactly the same manner as war gave rise in Germany during the first months after the armistice to a violent revolutionary crisis, overcome not without difficulty and still representing a grave menace.

Forced to surrender immediately a large quantity of live stock, to demobilize when the best part of her railway material had gone, still hampered by the blockade, Germany, against the interest of the Allies themselves, has been obliged to sacrifice her exchange because, in the absence of sufficient help, she has had to buy the most indispensable foodstuffs in neutral countries. Her paper currency, which at the end of 1918 amounted to twenty-two milliard marks, not excessive as compared with that of other countries, immediately increased with a growing crescendo till it reached, in a very short time, the figure of eighty-eight milliards, thus rendering from the very first the payment of indemnities in gold extremely difficult.

The most skilled men have been thrust into an absolute impossibility of producing. To have deprived Germany of her merchant fleet, built up with so much care, means to have deprived the freight market of sixty thousand of the most skilled, intelligent and hard-working seamen.

But what Germany has lost as a result of the treaty surpasses all imagination and can only be regarded as a sentence of ruin and decay voluntarily passed over a whole people.

Germany, without taking into account the countries subject to plebiscite, has lost 7.5 per cent. of her population. Should the plebiscites prove unfavourable to her, or, as the tendency seems to be, should these plebiscites be disregarded, Germany would lose 13.5 per cent. of her population. Purely German territories have been forcibly wrenched from her. What has been done in the case of the Saar has no precedents in modern history. It is a country of 650,000 inhabitants of whom not even one hundred are French, a country which has been German for a thousand years, and which was temporarily occupied by France for purely military reasons. In spite of these facts, however, not only have the coal fields of the Saar been assigned in perpetuity to France as compensation for the damages caused to the French mines in the North, but the territory of the Saar forms part of the French customs regime and will be subjected after fifteen years to a plebiscite, when such a necessity is absolutely incomprehensible, as the population is purely German and has never in any form or manner expressed the intention of changing its nationality.

The ebb and flow of peoples in Europe during the long war of nationalities has often changed the situation of frontier countries. Sometimes it may still be regarded as a necessity to include small groups of alien race and language in different states in order to ensure strategically safe frontiers. But, with the exception of the necessity for self-defence, there is nothing to justify what has been done to the detriment of Germany.

Wilson had only said that France should receive compensation for the wrong suffered in 1871 and that Belgium should be evacuated and reconstructed. What had been destroyed was to have been built up again; but no one had ever thought during the War of handing over to Belgium a part, however small, of German territory or of surrendering predominantly and purely German territories to Poland.

The German colonies covered an area of nearly 3,000,000 square kilometres; they had reached an admirable degree of development and were managed with the greatest skill and ability. They represented an enormous value; nevertheless they have been assigned to France, Great Britain and in minor proportion to Japan, without figuring at all in the reparations account.

It is calculated that as a result of the treaty, owing to the loss of a considerable percentage of her agricultural area, Germany is twenty-five per cent. the poorer in regard to the production of cereals and potatoes and ten to twelve per cent. in regard to the breeding of live stock.

The restitution of Alsace-Lorraine (the only formal claim advanced by the Entente in its war programme) has deprived Germany of the bulk of her iron-ore production. In 1913 Germany could count on 21,000,000 tons of iron from Lorraine, 7,000,000 from Luxemburg, 138,000 from Upper Silesia and 7,344 from the rest of her territory. This means that Germany is reduced to only 20.41 per cent. of her pre-war wealth in iron ore.

In 1913 the Saar district represented 8.95 per cent. of the total production of coal, and Upper Silesia 22.85 per cent.

Having lost about eighty per cent. of her iron ore and large stocks of coal, while her production is severely handicapped, Germany, completely disorganized abroad after the suppression of all economic equilibrium, is condemned to look on helplessly while the very sources of her national wealth dry up and cease to flow. In order to form a correct estimate of the facts we must hold in mind that one-fifth of Germany's total exports before the War consisted of iron and of tools and machinery mostly manufactured with German iron.