EUROPEAN HISTORY, 1900-1960

THE TREATIES, 1919-1923

1.   TREATY-MAKERS : Immediate Results of the War, President Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando,

2.   CONFERENCE PROBLEMS: Treaties, New States, The Fourteen Points

3.   TREATY OF VERSAILLES, 28TH JUNE 1919: The League of Nations, Frontiers, Disarmament, Mandates, Reparations

4.   THE MINOR PEACE TREATIES: Treaty of St Germain, September 1919, Treaty of Trianon, June 1920, Treaties of Sevres (August 1920) and Lausanne (July 1923)

5.   SUCCESS AND FAILURE

1.  THE TREATY-MAKERS

Immediate Results of the War

Some of the immediate results of the war were all too plain.  It had caused the deaths of 10 million fighting men and the wounding of perhaps 30 million more.  A large proportion of these had been the fittest among the young men of all the belligerent countries.  Thus a large proportion of a whole generation of men was cut off in the prime of life.  These, however, were only the outward and visible signs of less tangible results too vast and too widespread to be measurable in any precise terms.  There were, for example, the mental suffering and the physical privation endured by masses of the civilian population.  How many millions would have to struggle with health permanently impaired, how many women would have to bear alone the burden and responsibility of rearing their families because the father had been killed, how many people died in epidemics which spread because of war conditions, these were samples of the many questions that could never be answered.

On the economic side there were similarly incalculable results.  It has been reckoned that 65 million men were engaged in the war and therefore for varying periods - some of them for four years -were withdrawn from productive industry.  Moreover, the civilian populations during the same period were engaged not on work that would maintain or raise the general standard of living but in producing munitions which it was the business of the armies and navies to expend as fast as they could.  The cost of maintaining the civilian war workers and the cost of munitions, in addition to the cost of the fighting men, were ever-mounting charges that somehow would have to be reckoned and met after the fighting stopped.

There were political results, too.  Between 1914 and 1918 Czarist Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had ceased to exist.  So had the Kaiser's regime in Germany.  In their places were numerous small States ruled by national governments of various types.  No one could predict what would be the political future of all these States or what might be their relations to one another or to other Powers.

These economic conditions, and this state of political flux, formed an important part of the political background against which arrangements for a peace settlement would have to be made.

Immediate Results of the War

President Wilson

But these were not the only conditions.  Another factor was the personal calibre and outlook of the men who would bear the responsibility for shaping the terms of the actual peace treaties.  Most important of them was Woodrow Wilson, President of the U.S.A.  Wilson was the representative of the most powerful nation in the world, whether thought of in terms of manpower or of economic resources.  Moreover, Wilson enjoyed a high personal prestige because, before America had entered the war, his pronouncements had seemed to express, as no one else's had done, the aims and the hopes of the fighting nations.  In August 1914 the various nations had found themselves at war for various immediate objectives - the preservation of Belgium's neutrality, or the possession of Alsace-Lorraine, or the boundaries of Serbia, or the like.  When once the nations had become locked together in a life-and-death struggle, they had no leisure or disposition to consider anything beyond the day-to-day problem of survival.  Because Wilson was geographically so far removed from the conflict, and because his country was not directly involved until quite the closing stage, he had the opportunity to ponder the wider implications of the war and express his conclusions about them.  The most notable were his Fourteen Points, of January 1918, which we shall need to examine later in this chapter.  The result was that among masses of people, on both sides of the fighting lines, Wilson was revered as a kind of prophet who held the solution of the world's problems.  This placed upon him a terrible responsibility, and one of the most crucial questions of the day was whether he had the character and the equipment of knowledge sufficient to enable him to do all that was expected of him..

IWilson had been a university professor of political science, and something of the classroom and the study seemed always to remain with him.  That is to say, he was too prone to consider the theory and logic of a question without taking into account sufficiently its personal and practical elements.  This was a serious handicap to a statesman who would have to deal with shrewd and nimble-witted politicians in solving the most complex political problems in Europe.  In this particular task he was further handicapped by having only a limited understanding of what those problems were.  He was apt to assume, for example, that the peoples of eastern Europe were interested chiefly in achieving national independence and a democratic government, whereas, in fact, the average men and women were much more concerned with such ordinary matters as their daily food or how to acquire enough land to support their families.  This is another way of saying that Wilson was apt to see things out of their true proportions.  The most striking example was his advocacy of the League of Nations.  So fervid was his determination to see the League established that, in the course of treaty negotiations, he was apt to lose sight of the importance of other issues.

One further disadvantage Wilson suffered, the practical effects of which were to show themselves later: in November 1918 — at the very time when treaty-making was about to begin — elections for the U.S.  Congress gave majorities to the Republican Party in both Houses of Congress whereas Wilson was a Democrat.  Congressional elections are held half-way through a Presidential term of office, and thus during his remaining two years he would have to work with a hostile Congress.  Yet strangely, in these circumstances, Wilson lacked the plain sense, when he travelled to Paris for the Peace Conference, to bring with him even one member of the Republican Party.  All his advisers were from his own Democratic Party, and even to their views he did not pay much attention.  This situation had a double effect.  First, it undermined his authority in the treaty negotiations because the European statesmen knew that he could no longer wield authority as the real representative of the American nation.  Second, largely because of this party attitude of Wilson, after his return home in 1919 he was unable to win American support for the Covenant of the League of Nations.  His bitter opponent, Senator Lodge, was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and there was no prospect that Congress would accept the Treaty of which the Covenant formed a part.  To these events and their results we shall need to return later.

President Wilson

Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando

Of the men with whom Wilson was chiefly concerned in drafting the treaty, something has been said already.  At the furthest extreme from Wilson was Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France and the chairman of the Conference.  To him the Conference had only one purpose : to produce a treaty that would give to France complete security against any future danger from Germany and would restore to France her lost provinces, Alsace and Lorraine.  This could be done only by depriving Germany of her armed forces and by crippling her economic resources so that never again would she become wealthy enough either to compete with her neighbours in trade or to threaten their peace.  In such matters as doing justice to national groups or granting democratic government to oppressed peoples, he showed no particular interest.  It was a typical 'Tigerish' attitude, little concerned with theories that did not affect him or his people, but fiercely adamant where their interests were concerned.  No one could doubt that he spoke for France.

Lloyd George had taken care to hold a general election (December 1918) before leaving Britain for Paris and this had given him a tremendous parliamentary majority made up of a coalition of parties.  Yet, though there could be no doubt that he spoke for the vast mass of the British people, his popularity had been bought at a high price.  His electioneering propaganda had promised to make Germany pay impossibly huge sums because she was responsible for the war and as reparations towards its cost.  These and similar promises limited the scope of his negotiations in Paris.  But Lloyd George was a wily and unpredictable negotiator who was not likely to be fettered by the letter of his undertakings to electors if circumstances seemed to make it advantageous to do otherwise.  In his favour it must be said that unless the negotiators had included one member with this elastic agility it is difficult to see how any conclusions at all could have been reached.  The rigid, fiery nationalist, Clemenceau, at one extreme over against the equally rigid theorist, Wilson, at the other could never have agreed upon any question had not the supple, quick-witted Lloyd George been present to find a compromise to appease both.  In this sense he was the king-pin of the whole Conference.

In among these three diplomatic giants, the fourth figure at the Conference was the Italian representative, Vittorio Orlando.  He was an able, learned, and eloquent man, but neither in himself nor in the importance of the country that he represented was he the equal of the other three.

The Peace Conference began its work in Paris in January 1919.  During its opening stage the negotiations were conducted by the Council of Ten composed of two representatives of each of the five States that were regarded as the great Powers - Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and U.S.A.  But delicate questions needed to be debated in complete secrecy which was less easy in a meeting of this size than in a smaller group.  Also, experience soon showed that ten was too large a body for speedy decisions.  Hence at the end of March it was decided that preliminary discussions should take place among Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando, and Wilson; and in practice it was the 'Big Four' who shaped the Treaty.

One further item is highly important to note.  Unlike most treaties, this one was not negotiated between victors and vanquished.  It was worked out solely by representatives of the victors and then presented to the vanquished who had to accept its terms or reject them, with almost no opportunity to present a different point of view.  Whatever the theoretical justice of regarding Germany as wholly responsible for the war, and therefore as having no right to be consulted about her punishment at the end of it, in practice this dictated peace left behind it a trail of resentment.  Herein lay seeds which in due course sprang up among the Germans and helped to produce the Nazi movement which in turn led to a new war in 1939.

Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando

2.  CONFERENCE PROBLEMS

Although the Allies had been so completely victorious that the Germans had been compelled to surrender unconditionally, the Peace Conference was not wholly free to draw up whatever terms it might choose.  It had to work within limits and conditions that existed before it met.

2.  CONFERENCE PROBLEMS

Treaties

One of these limitations was the terms of treaties.  Italy and Rumania, before entering the war, had made bargains with Britain and France about territories that they were to receive when victory was attained.

By the secret Treaty of London of April 1915 the Allies had agreed that Italy should acquire land at the head of the Adriatic, including the port of Trieste; but the Croatian coast, including Fiume, was to be divided between Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro.  To this extent the hands of the Conference were already tied.  In fact, though the terms of the London Treaty seemed plain, they led to bitter wrangling among the Conference members.  Wilson especially challenged the agreement because the areas that Italy would thereby acquire would include large majorities of non-Italians who would not wish to be ruled by aliens.  On the contrary, part of the coastal area in dispute would belong properly to a new State, Yugoslavia.  Wilson made a double claim: first that, because the Treaty of London was secret, and he did not know of it, he could not be bound by its conditions ; second that the Conference had accepted the general principle that every people should have the right to choose its own government and therefore the particular agreement with Italy could not stand.  Orlando counterclaimed that, if Italy was to lose part of her promised coastline, she should be compensated by receiving the port of Fiume.  Italy's claims might have been considered more favourably by the Allies if her war record had been better : though France and Britain did not dispute Italy's claims under the Treaty of London, they felt that her doubtful contribution to Germany's defeat did not merit a breakdown in Conference negotiations.  For several weeks the dispute went on.  So sharp was the disagreement that towards the end of April Orlando left the Conference and returned to Rome.  Soon, however, he began to realize that Italy was likely to lose more by his absence than by his presence, and on 9th May he returned to Paris.  Six weeks later his ministry fell from power and he was succeeded as Premier by Nitti.  As to the problem of Fiume, the Conference never did settle it, but handed it over to be negotiated by Italy and Yugoslavia.

Another treaty which would bind the Allies was one which they had made in August 1916 with Rumania whereby she was promised considerable territories, including Transylvania and Bukovina.  Rumania had no proper claim to these areas either nationally or otherwise.  But Rumania had been important because of her strategic position on the Black Sea, bordering also on Russia, Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria, and also because she was rich in oil and in fertile, corn-growing land.  When offered these conditions Rumania had at once entered the war.

Treaties

New States

The second fact facing the Conference when it wanted to adjust State boundaries was that in several instances local populations already had made their own decisions in the matter.

One of the thorniest problems was what should be done with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its complicated populations.  But, by the time that the Conference met, that Empire no longer existed.  It had split up into its elements.  The lead in this movement had been taken by the Czechs whose two spokesmen were men of outstanding qualities of leadership, namely, Thomas Mazaryk and Eduard Benesh.  These men, in exile, ably voiced the Czechs' nationalist ambitions.  At the end of May 1918 the Czechs declared themselves independent.  Before the close of the war both Britain and the United States recognized an independent Czech nation, and by that time a National Committee in Prague was acting as the Czech Government.

Also, in December 1918, the Serbs declared the union of their country with areas inhabited by Slovenes and Croats.  Thus Yugoslavia — the land of the Southern Slays — came into existence.

The Paris Conference, even if it had wanted to set aside these accomplished facts, would have had difficulty in doing so.  In practice it had to work within these further limits.  Nor was this merely a geographical problem.  The Allies had intended to enforce severe terms upon Germany and Austria, but the Austrian Empire of 1914 no longer existed.  The question therefore arose of whether the new nationalist States were to be treated as guilty because parts of them had been within that Empire, though unwillingly so, and though they since had severed themselves from it.

New States

The Fourteen Points

A third limitation under which the Conference had to work arose from the fact that while the war was still in progress the Allies had made known the general principles upon which terms of peace would be drawn up.  Hence the Central Powers, in surrendering, did so in the expectation that these principles would be honoured.

The most important statement of peace principles had been set out by President Wilson in fourteen paragraphs, known as his Fourteen Points, during an address to the U.S.  Congress in January 1918.

The first five of the Points dealt with general aims to secure future peace.  There were to be 'open covenants of peace', 'freedom of navigation upon the seas', 'equality of trade conditions among all the nations', the reduction of armaments 'to the least point consistent with domestic security', and 'a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims'.

Then followed eight proposals for settling particular items of boundaries and nationalities.  The territories of Russia, Belgium, Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro were to be evacuated by the forces of the Central Powers, and Serbia was to have free access to the sea.  Alsace and Lorraine were to be restored to France.  Italy's frontiers were to be adjusted 'along clearly recognizable lines of nationality'.  The peoples of Austria-Hungary and of Turkey were to have full opportunity for self-government.  An independent State of Poland was to be set up with 'free and secure access to the sea'.

Point fourteen was concerned with the formation of 'a general association of nations .  .  .  for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small States alike'.

Much of the Conference's work consisted of deciding how to put into effect the proposals of the Fourteen Points.  Experience would show that, though it was comparatively easy to lay down general principles, it was far more difficult — sometimes impossible — to reach agreement upon how in practice they were to be carried out.  In some instances local circumstances made the application of Wilson's ideas quite impossible.  There were, for example, conflicting claims to territory among some of the peoples who were to be given self-government: this had been shown clearly after the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.  Also, in many instances it would be impossible to draw boundaries that would coincide clearly with nationalities : where populations were mixed, as they were on the fringes of Poland and Italy and in the Balkans, no matter where a boundary was drawn it would leave a discontented minority on one side or other of it, or on both.  We need not be surprised that such questions provoked long and bitter disputes within the Conference or that some of the decisions caused bitter discontent at the time and unrest in the years that followed.

Moreover the Fourteen Points were nearly as remarkable for what they omitted as for what they included.  They made no mention of penalties to be imposed upon the Central Powers or of payment for the cost of the war or of restitution for damage to property during its operations.  If the Points were to be the basis on which the surrenders were made, were the Central Powers justified in thinking that such penalties would not be imposed? The sequel will show that the Treaty sought to impose conditions which were deeply resented, especially in Germany, not merely because they were harsh but because they were outside the implied conditions of surrender.

The Fourteen Points

3.  TREATY OF VERSAILLES, 28TH JUNE 1919

The work of the Peace Conference took final shape in a series of treaties with the chief of the Central Powers and their allies.  These treaties were named from the places where they were signed.  The first was the Treaty of Versailles.  This was the most important of them all because it concerned Germany and also because its provisions became a model for the others that followed.

3.  TREATY OF VERSAILLES, 28TH JUNE 1919

The League of Nations

The first part of the Treaty consisted of the Covenant of the League of Nations.  This was written in as a section of the Treaty so as to give to its terms a special authority binding upon all who signed.  In twenty-six articles the organization and functions of the League were set out in detail.

The original League members were the signatories of the Treaty.  Thereafter other nations would be admitted by a two-thirds vote of the Assembly.  Gradually most States in the world applied for membership, though at first Soviet Russia and Germany were excluded and, as will be explained later, the U.S.A.  refused to join.

The two main bodies of the League were the Assembly and the Council.  On the former, every member had equal voting rights with every other.  The Council had eight members: four were the `Great Powers' – Britain, France, Italy, Japan – who had permanent seats; and four smaller Powers each of whom was elected for a term of years.  It was intended that the different member-qualifications for the two bodies, while allowing leadership to the greater Powers, would ensure also proper influence to the smaller ones.

The League had also a sort of civil service of its own in the Secretariat, at the head of which was the Secretary-General.

Forming part of the League, but with a separate government and organization, was the International Labour Organization, which all League members were eligible to join.  This body was to be concerned with the standards of working conditions among the populations of the member countries.

The headquarters of both the League and the I.L.O.  were to be at Geneva where they were to be housed in two separate buildings.  The first meeting of the Council of the League was held in Paris in January 1920, and of the Assembly in Geneva the following November.

The League's primary business was the preservation of peace, and in the course of its life it had some successes in this respect.  Included in these were the settling of disputes over the possession of Upper Silesia in 1921, between Italy and Greece in 1923, and between Greece and Bulgaria in 1925.  But in addition to this primary function, the League was able to carry out some extremely useful work in other directions.  It saved Austria from complete financial collapse in 1922 and onwards; it administered areas of the Saar and Danzig; and it supervised the working of colonial Mandates (all of which will be explained in due course).  Further, it successfully carried out numerous health and humanitarian projects, including the treatment of epidemics, the relief of refugees, and the repatriation of prisoners of war.

Unfortunately, in spite of all the care and skill exercised in drafting the text of the Covenant, and of all the successes that the League had in various activities, it failed tragically in its main function of preventing a repetition of the 1914 war, or there would have been no war in 1939.  The chief reasons for its failure are plain to see as we look back upon its history.

First, it started with basic weaknesses.  The world naturally expected that the U.S.A.  would provide the chief leadership since her President had done more than anyone else to win acceptance for the League and to include its Covenant in the Peace.  But, partly owing to Wilson's political blindness, the League became a party issue in America so that, when Wilson's Democratic Party lost its Congressional majority in November 1918, the League also was as good as dead in America, and the United States never became a member.  Also the immediate post-war antagonism to Germany and the wide mistrust of Communism led to the exclusion of Germany and of Soviet Russia from membership.  A League which did not include three Powers such as Germany, Russia, and U.S.A.  could never exercise world influence.

A second disability was that the League had no means of enforcing its decisions other than the effect of world opinion expressed on a particular question.  If thereafter a Power, against whom an opinion was directed, chose to be defiant, there was nothing effective that the League could do.  The result was that, though small States might be overawed, larger Powers were likely to go their own way or even to withdraw from the League altogether — which was exactly what Hitler and Mussolini did.

Thirdly, Wilson's insistence that the Covenant should be an integral part of the Peace Treaties had effects not then foreseen.  Experience showed that changes in some of the Covenant's provisions would make the League more efficient; but all such revisions were resisted because there was a fear that this would be, in effect, a tampering with the Peace Treaty and that such tampering would undermine the peace settlement altogether.  Moreover, Germany and the other defeated Powers were never reconciled to the treaties partly because the terms were dictated and not negotiated and partly because they regarded their terms as unjustifiably harsh.  Inevitably antagonism to the Treaty implied antagonism to the Covenant which was part of the Treaty.  Hence, though Germany became a member for a time, she never really liked or trusted it.

There were other, minor, reasons for the League's eventual failure, but most of these arose indirectly out of the three major ones.

We turn now to the decisions of the other sections of the Versailles Treaty.

The League of Nations

Frontiers

To Belgium Germany ceded small districts in the neighbourhood of Eupen and Malmedy.  Plebiscites (peoples' votes) were held in Schleswig which Prussia had taken from Denmark in 1866: the result gave north Schleswig to Denmark and the south to Germany.  The Treaty also confirmed the armistice provision that Alsace and Lorraine should revert to France.  Germany was not to erect fortifications or to station armed forces on the left bank of the Rhine or within fifty kilometres of its right bank.  As compensation for the damage done to French coal-mines, the mines of the Saar Valley were to be transferred to France for fifteen years during which time the Saar was to be administered by the League.  At the end of the fifteen years a plebiscite was to be taken so that the inhabitants could decide upon their future status — to revert to Germany, to become French, or to remain under the League's administration.

In the east Germany suffered considerable losses.  Poland was revived as an independent nation and, in order that she might have access to the sea, she received a 'corridor' reaching the Baltic at Danzig, though Danzig itself was not to be Polish but a free city under the League's administration.  Germany had to cede substantial areas of Posen and West Prussia towards the Polish corridor, and she ceded also an area near Troppau to Czechoslovakia.  She recognized the independence of the Republic of Austria and the annulment of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk.  Also she lost all her overseas possessions.

The overall effect of these concessions was that Germany ceased to be a world Power, and within Europe she was so restricted and hemmed in that it seemed impossible that she could ever again threaten her neighbours' security.

Frontiers

Disarmament

Germany was further fettered by clauses which limited severely the armed forces that she was to be allowed to maintain.  Her army was not to exceed 100,000 men, and these were not for external operations but for purposes of internal order.  Officers would be required to serve for twenty-five years, and other ranks for a minimum of twelve, thus ensuring that there would not be rapid successions of hundreds of thousands who could be passed through the Army for short training periods, so building up large reserves of trained men.  The General Staff was to be abolished.  There was to be no German Air Force.  The manufacture of arms and munitions of every kind was to be strictly limited, and none were to be imported.  The numbers and size of naval vessels were similarly limited: the maximum was six battleships of 10,000 tons, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers, and twelve torpedo-boats; and officers and men in the Navy must not exceed 15,000.

Such restrictions, along with the occupation zone and the neutral zone along the Rhine, seemed to give to France complete security against any German invasion within the foreseeable future.

Disarmament

Mandates

One effect of the defeat of Germany was that she was shorn of all her overseas possessions.  This raised the question of how and by whom these territories should be governed.  Their outright annexation by the victorious Powers - as had happened after previous wars - would have been contrary to the spirit of Wilson's Fourteen Points and to the League Covenant.  Yet some of the peoples freed from German rule lacked the political experience and other qualifications needed for any form of self-government.  Also, because they differed one from another in these respects, no one system of government would be equally suitable to them all.  After much discussion the Allies agreed to assign Germany's and Turkey's colonies to other Powers who would administer them not as permanent members of their own empires but as the wards of the League of Nations.  The Powers who thus had a mandate to administer these colonies were called Mandatory Powers, and the colonies in question were called mandated territories or, more simply, Mandates.  The final objective of this system was that the people of the Mandates should be trained politically until they were mature enough to become fully self-governing.

The Mandates were divided into three classes: A, B, and C.  Class A consisted of Turkish territories, these being regarded as already fit for liberation and needing only guidance in self-government.  Of these, Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine were assigned to Britain as the Mandatory Power, and Syria and.  Lebanon to France.  Class B Mandates had formerly belonged to Germany in Central and East Africa and were not expected to be ready for independence until some time had elapsed.  Britain became the Mandatory Power for most of Tanganyika, and Belgium for the remainder; and Togoland and the Cameroons were divided between Britain and France.  Class C Mandates were areas whose interests, because of their small size or sparse population or remoteness, seemed best served by virtually incorporating them into the possessions of the Mandatory Power who, nevertheless, was still accountable to the League for their welfare.  Thus German South-West Africa was assigned to the Union of South Africa, Pacific islands south of the Equator to Australia and New Zealand, and islands north of the Equator to Japan.

The League appointed an independent Mandatory Commission which each year was to present to the League Council a report on the working of the system, and the Assembly and the Council could discuss any matters affecting the welfare of the inhabitants of any of the mandated territories.

Mandates

Reparations

The thorniest of all the problems that the treaty-makers had to try to solve was that of reparations, that is, compensation payable by the defeated countries to the victors.  A question difficult in itself was made more so by the different attitudes of different Allies towards their defeated enemies.  At one extreme, France's object was so to enfeeble Germany that never again could she endanger French security.  Britain, on the other hand, could never forget that Germany had been her best pre-war customer: though she must be punished, to cripple Germany permanently could not serve Britain's economic interests.  The U.S.A., regarding reparations as mainly a European affair, had no very definite policy about them.  Thus it would be extremely difficult to reach agreement about the basis on which appropriate reparations should be calculated.

Three main questions called for settlement.  First, what ought the compensation to cover? - should it be limited to material damage caused directly by bombardment and fighting or should it include also pensions to injured servicemen and to the dependants of those who had been killed, or even the total costs of waging the war? Until answers to these questions had been agreed upon, there could be no settlement about the total amount to be exacted.  Second, what was the maximum amount that Germany and the others were capable of paying either in a lump sum or over a term of years or both? No matter what might be regarded as just and reasonable, if the amount demanded was beyond the debtors' resources the effect would be bankruptcy and despair, and this could not benefit anyone.  Third, in what form or forms were the reparations to be paid? - if in money the effect must be to raise prices in the receiving countries and so both to decrease the value of the payments and also to increase the prices of goods exported from the receiving countries; if in goods, the effect would be to compete with goods which the Allied manufacturers would have produced and so to cause unemployment.  Experience would show that the whole problem of reparations was so complex that no final solution could be reached during the sessions of the Paris Conference.  Only an interim arrangement was then made, and it, was left to a series of subsequent agreements to find a more permanent settlement of the question .

The Conference's decision on the immediate issue was that by 1921 Germany should pay to the Allies gold marks equivalent to £1,000 million, should surrender all her merchant ships of more than 1,000 tons, and for five years should build merchant ships for the Allies at the rate of 200,000 tons annually.

Also the Conference appointed a Reparations Commission to decide on the total amount payable.  In April 1921 this Commission informed Germany that the total sum for which she would be responsible was the equivalent of £6,600 million which was to be paid off in yearly instalments, partly in cash and partly in materials.

If anyone imagined that this was the final solution of the reparations problem the future would undeceive him.  The problem continued to plague European politics during the years that followed until Hitler's rise to power and Germany's refusal to recognize that she had any further obligations.  We shall need to return to the subject as we trace the history of the years between the two World Wars.

Reparations

4.  THE MINOR PEACE TREATIES

The Treaty of Versailles, imposed upon Germany, established the principles that would be applied also to the smaller States that had been associated with Germany in the war.  Earlier in this chapter we saw that in dealing with members of the former Austrian Empire and its neighbours the Conference had to deal with new countries that had not existed when the war began.  These had been formed by peoples anxious for independence and for self-government.  The boundaries of these new States were still to be defined, and this was one of the chief tasks of the Conference.  In general the Conference adopted the principle of drawing geographical boundaries that would coincide with nationalities, but in so doing there were enormous complications.  Some of these were caused by the admixture of populations, some by the impossibility of finding natural features - mountain ranges or rivers -that neatly divided one nationality from another.  There was the further difficulty sometimes of providing a population with land adequate for its support.  Most of these problems will be illustrated in the provisions of the treaties concerning Austria, Hungary, and Turkey. 

4.  THE MINOR PEACE TREATIES

Treaty of St Germain, September 1919

By the Treaty of St Germain, Austria was compelled to cede Trieste, Istria, and part of the Tyrol to Italy; Bohemia, Moravia, and part of Silesia to Czechoslovakia; Bukovina to Rumania; and Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia to Yugoslavia. 

Austria was thus reduced from a State with more than 50 million people to one with a population of only 6,500,000.  Of these, 2 million were in the capital, Vienna.  It was difficult to see how so small a population, inhabiting country of which a large proportion was mountainous, could support so huge a capital city.  The Austrians would have preferred to join with their fellow-Germans in Germany but the Conference, being determined to keep Germany weak, specifically forbade this by a clause in the Treaty stipulating that 'the independence of Austria is inalienable otherwise than with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations'.

The new Austria, thus shorn of its former subject-peoples and their territories, was solely German in population.  Unfortunately her boundaries were so drawn that large numbers of Austrian Germans found themselves outside Austria and within the non-German States on her borders.  Thus 250,000 Germans in the Tyrol were transferred to Italy, and no less than 3 million Bohemian Germans were around the inside fringe of the new State of Czechoslovakia.  The reason for this latter provision was that if the boundary had been so drawn as to leave the Bohemian Germans inside Austria, the latter would have controlled the mountain passes between the two countries, and Czechoslovakia would need these passes for defensive purposes.  Also, the Bohemian plateau would have been unnaturally divided.  Moreover, Czechoslovakia included a Magyar minority; but this seemed necessary in order to give to the country a means of access to the Danube.  Nonetheless, though the treaty-makers' difficulties are understandable the fact remains that their decisions produced discontent which continued to ferment during many years.  It was the fringe population of Germans within Czechoslovakia - that is, the Sudeten Germans - on whose behalf Hitler campaigned during the years leading to war in 1939.

Treaty of St Germain, September 1919

Treaty of Trianon, June 1920

Hungary was another of the new States resulting from the war.  She had declared her independence in October 1918, and hence the Conference needed to make a separate settlement with her.  Its terms were the most severe of all those imposed upon any of the Central Powers.  Hungary lost no less than three-quarters of her territory (125,000 square miles were reduced to 36,000) and nearly two-thirds of her population (21 million to 8 million).  Rumania benefited most from this arrangement, since she received more than the 36,000 square miles still left to Hungary.  Other considerable areas went to Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, and a small area to Austria.  Two results of this settlement were particularly resented by Hungary: 3 million Magyars were included in the neighbouring States, and she became a landlocked country completely cut off from the sea.  Treaties of Sevres (August 1920) and Lausanne (July 1923).

Treaty of Trianon, June 1920

Treaties of Sevres (August 1920) and Lausanne (July 1923)

There remained a treaty with Turkey.  Here the Conference was faced with a new set of problems.  It had been Turkey's treatment of her subject-peoples that had been one of the causes of endless unrest in the Balkans.  This problem had been almost solved by the 1912 and 1913 Balkan Wars after which Turkish territory in Europe had been limited to little more than Constantinople and Adrianople.  But Turkey had been Germany's ally and could expect to be penalized accordingly.  Wilson's Fourteen Points had asserted that the peoples of Turkey were to have full opportunity for self-government; and, though Turkey had had no alien subjects in Europe since 1913, she had many such in Asia and in northern Africa.  We have seen that the Class A Mandates all consisted of Turkish territories: Mesopotamia (Iraq), Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon were all to be transferred from Turkey to Mandatory Powers.

The treaty which stipulated these terms was signed at Sevres in August 1920.  In addition to the mandated territories, Turkey was to suffer other losses.  Greece was to have Thrace and Adrianople, as well as Smyrna in Asia Minor.  Arabia was to become independent.  Rhodes and the Dodecanese were to go to Italy.  In eastern Asia Minor, Armenia and Kurdistan were to become independent States.  Even Constantinople was not to remain fully Turkish, since the Straits, and a zone on each side of them, were to be controlled by an international commission.  Thus Turkey would be reduced to a small State in the central highlands of Asia Minor.

This Treaty, however, never became effective.  At this point it suffices to note that as far back as 1908 there had been a revolutionary movement in Turkey by a body known as the Young Turks whose first aim had been to reform the Sultan's despotic government, but it became also the centre of strong Turkish nationalism.  Among its leaders was an officer named Mustapha Kemal who became one of the outstanding political figures of his day.  When in 1920 the Sultan's government accepted the Sevres Treaty, Kemal headed a nationalist movement which challenged both the Sultan and the Allies.  Kemal's nationalists, while recognizing that Turkey must lose the non-Turkish parts of her empire, both European and Arab, and that the Straits must be an open waterway, were prepared to resist to the end the loss of any territory in which the population was predominantly Turkish and Moslem.  A nationalist capital was set up in Angora - which changed its name to Ankara - in Asia Minor, and Kemal organized an army to defend Turkish provinces against all corners, including British, French, and Greek.

The result was a long and confused struggle.  In October 1921 the French, tired of fighting and seeing little prospect of any worth-while advantage in it, made terms with Kemal.  The Greeks, who were concerned to make good their hold on territories assigned to them at Sevres, at first had some success, and at one time they seemed within striking distance of Ankara itself.  But the nationalists counter-attacked so vigorously that, by September 1922, the Greeks were expelled entirely from Asia Minor.  The nationalists would even have tried to seize the Straits had not Lloyd George made clear that any such move would be resisted with whatever British forces might be necessary.  Finally hostilities were brought to an end by an armistice signed on 11th October 1922.

The armistice was followed by a peace conference which opened at Lausanne in November 1922.  It was attended by representatives of the Allies and of Russia, Greece, Rumania, and Yugoslavia, and also of Turkey.  Thus this was the only one of the series of post-war treaties that was negotiated with, and not imposed upon, a defeated enemy.  The reason is clear: the new Turkey had not been defeated.  The resulting Treaty of Lausanne was signed on 24th July 1923.  Turkey gave up any claim to rule non-Turkish peoples, including Arabs, and Libya, Egypt, and the Sudan.  Britain retained Cyprus, and Italy retained the Dodecanese Islands.  But in Europe Turkey recovered land around Constantinople as far west as the Maritza river, which thus included Adrianople.  The Dardanelles were to be demilitarized and were to be open to the passage of all vessels except when Turkey was herself at war.  No limitations were placed upon the numbers of Turkish armed forces, and Turkey was not to be liable to pay reparations.

A comparison of these terms with those that would have been imposed at Sevres three years earlier will show how much Turkey had gained.  She now consisted of a solid, continuous block of territory stretching across Asia Minor eastwards to the borders of Persia (Iran) and the U.S.S.R., and she also preserved at Constantinople a foothold in Europe.  She was a national State whose new rulers were determined to modernize, that is to Westernize, her life and thought.

Treaties of Sevres (August 1920) and Lausanne (July 1923)

5.  SUCCESS AND FAILURE

5.  SUCCESS AND FAILURE