ページの画像
PDF
ePub

WOODROW WILSON AND
WORLD SETTLEMENT

CHAPTER XXV

THE DARK PERIOD THE FRENCH DEMANDS-FOCH FIRES HIS "BIG BERTHA"-THE STRUGGLE OF THE

T

FRENCH FOR SECURITY

HE Dark Period of the Peace Conference-its "gravest hour"-followed upon the President's return to Paris, March 14, 1919. It lasted about

one month.

It was the result of the discovery that before the three great Powers, America, Great Britain, and France, could make a peace to be imposed upon Germany or, incidentally, meet with united front the unfolding demands of Italy, they must perforce come to some positive understanding among themselves.

The first two months of the Peace Conference, up to this time, had served only to reveal the depth of the chasm of difference that existed between the New Order and the Old: between America, led by Wilson on the one hand, and France led by Clemenceau and supported at essential points by Lloyd George, on the other.

All along President Wilson had clearly seen the inevitability of this conflict. "The Past and Present are in deadly grapple," he had said. He was fighting “to do away with an old order and establish a new one." And

the old order was tenacious and did not propose to be done away with!

The earlier struggles had served to test out the President and it had been shown clearly that he was approaching the settlements with a deadly sincerity of purpose. America had set up a new programme for the world: the President meant to fight for it to the limit of his capacity.

He had had surprising successes at the beginning-as has been shown in previous chapters. He had to a remarkable degree got the attention of the world settled upon the League of Nations, he had secured the acceptance of the Covenant as the basis of the peace; he had made it an "integral part" of the Treaty, he had defeated the attempt to parcel out the colonial spoils, and finally he had demolished in one bold stroke (March 15) the intrigue, hatched while he was away, to sidetrack his whole programme with a preliminary treaty in which the League was to have no place.

These things were most alarming to the other Allies, especially the French. They saw their whole programme for security, reparations, annexations, expansions, going by the board. "Surely the victors, if they want it," as Lloyd George and Clemenceau said in joint memorandum on the Italian settlements, "are entitled to some more solid reward than theoretical map-makers, working in the void, may on abstract principles feel disposed to give them." Theirs was the ancient policy: "To the victors belong the spoils."

Immediately upon Wilson's return, therefore, Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George held a secret meeting at the Crillon Hotel; and this acute problem of finding some basis of unity among themselves was for the first time really faced.

But Wilson argued in effect: "We must get together

on the basis of the new order, on the principles laid down and accepted, with the League of Nations as the cornerstone of the peace." To this Clemenceau responded doggedly: "France must first be made secure!"

Wilson argued that France had been offered a world guarantee of security in the Covenant: that America and Great Britain would go even further and consider a special guarantee until the League could be brought into being, and that large bodies of allied troops would be left to protect France until peace was firmly established. But Clemenceau objected that this was not enough. France must have a military alliance, must make the Rhine a strategic frontier, must cripple Germany permanently in an economic sense.

Here were irreconcilable differences, not of detail but of fundamental attitude and policy. Wilson was thinking of permanent world peace based upon sound moral principles backed by mutual guarantees; France was thinking only of French security, French reparations, French expansion. Wilson saw true safety only in mutual trust, but the French saw safety only in "reeking tube and iron shard."

Four months had elapsed since the war ceased and there was no peace. The world was growing every week more chaotic. Bolshevism, like a vast black cloud, hung in the East: the storm was already breaking in Hungary. Starvation threatened all central Europe. Great strikes had broken out in England. Revolution was brewing in both Germany and Austria. A vast discontent and impatience was arising among the undemobilized and war-weary armies. It looked for a time as though the whole world would be swept over the brink into anarchy. No one who was not at Paris can fully realize how desperate these conditions appeared.

Out of this situation grew the Council of Three (later the Four), the three heads of the great States, the most powerful men in the world, meeting together alone and secretly trying to come to some understanding among themselves. The Council of Ten had proved too cumbersome (sometimes there were thirty to fifty in attendance) and too open. For a month these three men (sometimes four) met together. Often no secretaries were present and no official minutes were kept. It was in this period that the President first broke down physically, and it was during this time, also, that he considered withdrawing the American delegation from the Conference and going home: he even ordered the George Washington to sail immediately from New York to take the Americans away. At this time the Conference came perilously near to a complete break-up. Finally, however, the heads of States were able to arrive at the uneasy and unstable compromises out of which grew the Versailles Treaty. On April 19 they were sufficiently in agreement to face the Italian Settlements.

It is the purpose in this and several following chapters to show what happened during this "Dark Period"-the crisis of the Conference.

While no official minutes of the smaller conferences are available, it is, in many ways, as well documented as any other period of the Conference. For the President saved every memorandum, every report, every letter, that came into his hands during all these weeks, and we have them here before us. We also have the corollary records of the sittings of the Council of Ten and Five during this period, and numerous and enlightening reports of commissions which were conferring from time to time with the Four. Some of the members of these commissions who were advising the President have placed

« 前へ次へ »