On September 14, 1918, Austria asked for a conference to discuss possible peace terms, and after a crushing defeat on the Piave, it signed an armistice on November 3. On October 4, the German Government requested a formal statement of the terms of peace, professing a desire to accept the "Fourteen Points." Before replying to this request, President Wilson tried to find out how genuine the proposal was, and to what extent the government then reflected popular opinion. And he made it plain that he at least would not consider an armistice as long as the Germans remained on Belgian and French territory. On October 12 the German government agreed to evacuate the occupied territory. Having received satisfactory assurances regarding this, and regarding the representative character of the German government, President Wilson laid the correspondence before the Allies. On November 9, the Hohenzollerns abdicated and soon fled to Holland.

On November 11, the German authorities signed an armistice, the terms of which had been drawn up by Marshal Foch. This called for a cessation of hostilities, and for the immediate evacuation of occupied territories, including Alsace-Lorraine. Other sections were designed to render Germany powerless to renew the war. She must surrender thousands of heavy guns, machine guns, and airplanes, as well as locomotives, railroad cars, and automobiles. With these must go all the German submarines and the greater part of the German surface navy. German troops were to be withdrawn from all German territory west of the Rhine, and Allied troops were to occupy this region, and the territory on the other side near the main bridges, at Mayence, Coblenz, and Cologne. With the signing of the armistice Germany ceased to exist as a military or naval power. Great nations had been beaten before, but no great nation had ever been compelled to acknowledge defeat in such overwhelming, spectacular fashion.

CHAPTER LXIX

THE PEACE OF VERSAILLES

In spite of all the preliminary declarations of principles concerning peace, the "Allied and Associated powers" were not fully prepared to embark upon formal negotiations when the war came to an end. During the struggle itself the press and the public had been discouraged from discussing possible terms of peace, and the governments had not dealt openly with the problem. It seemed best to win the war first, and to leave controversial matters until the Germans were beaten. President Wilson's Fourteen Points and his subsequent principles constituted an American peace program of very general character, but it had to be reduced to concrete terms. Some of the Fourteen Points, notably those touching upon Italy, the Balkans, and Poland, were impossible of fulfillment. There were for example, no “clearly recognizable lines of nationality" separating Italy from the other Adriatic peoples, nor was there any line separating the "indisputably Polish populations" from their neighbors. Ethnic lines do not exist in Europe. There are fringes of mixed races surrounding some of the more clearly defined racial groups, but the fringes are wide, and the racial groups themselves are not distinct. Such being the case, the victorious European Allies were inclined to feel that with the Armistice the Fourteen Points had really done their work; they had put the issues of the war into appealing ethical garb, and consequently had contributed to the morale necessary to success. Because some of them were philosophical abstractions, the practicalminded Europeans would calmly scrap the whole list.

THE SECRET TREATIES

These same practical statesmen had gone far toward a settlement of their own, a settlement embodied in a series of "secret" treaties, drawn up between 1915 and 1918. Those which were made prior to the end of 1917 had ceased to be secret. Ruthlessly tearing the veil from the holy of holies of diplomacy, the Bolsheviki had taken a peculiar delight in laying bare these plans for remaking the world,

plans strangely in contrast with the pious prophecies of a new world order issued from time to time to keep the war spirit alive.

In 1915 England and France agreed that Russia should annex Constantinople and the Straits; those three powers made liberal promises to Italy, to secure her services for the Allies, promises covering Austrian territory, the Dalmatian coast, the Dodecanese, a share of Turkey, and colonial territories in Africa. In 1916 the three original Allies came to an agreement concerning the division of Asiatic Turkey. In 1917 France got the consent of her partners for carrying through her plan to annex the Saar Valley, and for the establishment of an "independent" Rhineland republic, consisting of the German provinces west of the Rhine. In 1917 England, France, Russia, and Italy all agreed to uphold Japan in her demand for the former German concessions in China. These are merely samples. They show that the Allies were planning for another Congress of Vienna, with the victors disposing of the spoils to suit themselves, regardless of the possible effect on the future peace of Europe.

PROBLEMS OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE

It is plain that these agreements were not in harmony with the idealistic emotionalism of war time, and even more apparent that in spirit they were absolutely at variance with the Fourteen Points, and the supplementary principles. When the conflict between the Wilsonian and the European programs was pointed out to President Wilson, he professed complete ignorance of the existence of any such treaties. At the time of this denial, college undergraduates were discussing the documents in their history classes. The so-called "practical statesmen" wanted to divide all the spoils among the victors, to secure the largest possible indemnity from Germany, and to annihilate Germany as an economic factor for all time. The "liberal" or "idealist" statesmen on the other hand felt that the primary aim was a new type of world organization, which would minimize the danger of another war; they advocated a peace which would remove bitterness and restore good will. To their way of thinking Germany should not be punished too severely, and new Alsace-Lorraines should not be created, to keep alive the desire for revenge. One of the most difficult of all the problems confronting the coming Peace Conference therefore was that of bringing the victors together upon common ground.

THE AMERICAN COMMISSION

781

More concretely, the Conference would have to settle the estates of three empires, recently deceased: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. Their dependent peoples had to be set free, and established in business for themselves. This work alone necessitated the drawing of thousands of miles of new boundary lines, and the establishment of new frontiers. The password of the day was "self-determination," and numerous petty groups were prepared to present it at Paris, all anxious to multiply sovereignties. As though Europe did not contain enough problems, the Peace Conference was obliged to reallot extensive colonial territories, and in doing so to satisfy the conflicting demands of all the victors except the United States. In many cases, in Europe and out, these boundary lines had to be drawn arbitrarily, because the new nations had no natural frontiers. Worse yet, the lines had to be drawn with due regard to mineral resources, coal, iron, and petroleum. These essential economic considerations sometimes cut across various racial aspirations. But everybody must be satisfied.

Underlying all these matters was the state of mind, or of feeling, in France. The French had suffered tremendously during the war, and in the eyes of every Frenchman Germany appeared very much as the Devil appeared to every medieval theologian: the first cause of all woe. What the French insisted upon therefore was security. After security they wanted reparations. If a change in figure may be permitted, Germany was a cow, to be starved, strangled, and milked continuously for years to come. If the biological miracle proved impossible of performance, in any case provide for strangulation.

The French policy therefore was to strip Germany of her colonies, to deprive her of the Lorraine iron deposits, which she had seized in 1870, and of her coal in the Saar, and to create a buffer state between the French and German borders. Then, because Russia was no longer available as a French ally, Poland and Roumania must be built up, to hold Germany in check upon the East.

THE AMERICAN COMMISSION

President Wilson wanted none of these things, boundary lines, colonies, guarantees, or reparations. According to his view the United States had entered the war primarily to bring about a new world order, in which another war would be impossible. This he

asked, as a fair return for American help. As compared with the European aims, it was certainly a most modest request, for the services of the United States had been considerable. If the Europeans objected to American newspaper assertions that the United States had won the war, they could hardly deny that she had saved them from defeat. But the French program for Germany, so Wilson declared, would perpetuate the very thing he was determined to end: a feeling of bitterness and humiliation. The new Europe must be founded on brotherly love, and the brothers must quit rubbing each others' noses in the dirt. The Peace Conference appeared to be due for some very uncomfortable sessions.

President Wilson decided to upset American tradition and to go to Paris himself. He had come to this decision when he realized that if his program were to have any chance of adoption, there must be some one in authority ready to fight for it. He had formulated the program, and he was not unwilling to enter a diplomatic fight. For his associates on the Peace Commission he selected Robert Lansing, his Secretary of State, General Tasker H. Bliss, his military adviser, Colonel E. M. House of Texas, his intimate friend and unofficial representative, and Henry White, a Republican of considerable diplomatic experience. As one newspaper put it, the peace commissions of 1898, 1814, and 1782 lost nothing by comparison with this. Wilson's project of going to Paris himself, and the personnel of his associates aroused menacing comment. The Republicans had never become reconciled to the idea of Wilson as President. In their eyes he was always an intruder. Unfortunately for Wilson, the Congressional elections of 1918 gave the Republicans a new argument: that he no longer had the backing of a majority of the people.

On October 26, 1918, the President had issued a special appeal for support. "If you have approved of my leadership," he wrote, "and wish me to continue to be your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at home and abroad, I earnestly beg that you will express yourselves unmistakably to that effect by returning a Democratic majority to both the Senate and House of Representatives." In the course of the appeal, he found occasion for hostile criticism of the opposition in Congress during the war. The Republicans had tried, he said, "to take the choice of policy and conduct of the war out of my hands, and put it under the control of instrumentalities of their own choosing." The election of a Republican Congress would be looked upon, he