John Greenleaf Whittier - "My Summer With Dr. Singletary"

Carolyn Wells - "Two Little Women on a Holiday"

Jack London - "The Red One"

C.J. Dennis - "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke"

A Short History of the Great War

A >> A.F. Pollard >> A Short History of the Great War




From German affairs the Conference turned to those of Austria,
Bulgaria, and Turkey, the minor importance of which was indicated by
the departure from Versailles of the principal delegates who had
determined the Covenant of the League and the terms of the treaty with
Germany. President Wilson returned to America to secure the reluctant
consent of the Senate to the settlement he had made; Mr. Lloyd George
came back to England to the less arduous task of obtaining
parliamentary sanction for those parts of the treaty which required
it; and the further work of the Conference was left to the foreign
ministers and other experts rather than to Prime Ministers, though M.
Clémenceau remained to preside, and the Italian affairs in dispute
were vital enough to require the presence of a full Italian
delegation. These were concerned with the liquidation of the Hapsburg
Empire, but not with that fragment of it to which Austria had been
reduced by the recognition of Czecho-Slovakian independence, the
transference of Galicia to Poland, and the union of Croats and
Slovenes under the Serbian crown. Deprived of German support by the
German treaty, this little Austria was but a suppliant at the
Conference, and its efforts were mainly bent towards reducing its
share in the liabilities of the Empire of which it had once formed
part. Hapsburg Government was defunct, and it was difficult to
apportion its liabilities fairly among those who acquired its assets;
for some of them, like the Czechoslovaks and Jugo-Slavs, had
exonerated themselves from complicity for Hapsburg malfeasance by
rebelling against their government and fighting for the Entente. The
problem was complicated by a further revolution in Hungary where a
Soviet Government was established, and Bela Kun endeavoured to rule
after the manner of Lenin. The Russian Bolsheviks were, however,
unable to help their Hungarian pupils, in spite of the hesitancy shown
by the Allies in dealing with the situation; and early in August Bela
Kun's government fell before domestic reaction and the advance of the
Rumanian army, which occupied Buda-Pesth. At last Rumania had her
revenge, and it required energetic protests on the part of Versailles
to induce her to recognize its restraining authority, refrain from
reprisals, and regard the spoils of war as the common assets of the
Allies instead of her own particular booty. She had ample compensation
in the settlement through the redemption of Rumanes not only from the
Hapsburg-Magyar yoke but from that Russian yoke in Bessarabia which
had dulled her ardour for the anti-Hapsburg cause.

These diversions delayed until September the presentation by the
Allies of their final terms to the Austrian Republic. Its territories
were reduced to the limits of Austrian lands before the Hapsburg
Empire was created four hundred years ago by the Emperors Charles V
and Ferdinand I; parts even of their inheritance were lost, though the
ecclesiastical lands like Salzburg acquired during the Napoleonic
secularization were retained, and the future of Klagenfurt was
reserved for plebiscitary determination. Instead of an Empire Austria
became the fragment of a nation, divorced from the rest of the German
people by the fears of the Entente, required like Germany to forswear
conscription, denied all access to the sea, and left with regard to
the size of its territories and weakness of its frontiers in much the
same situation as the Serbia she had attacked in 1914. Protest was as
idle as delay, and the treaty which was presented on 2 September was
signed on the 10th.

Nine days later Bulgaria learnt her fate, and the draft treaty
presented to her delegates at Versailles on 19 September condemned her
to pay an indemnity of ninety millions, to reduce her army to 20,000,
and to lose the town and district of Strumnitza and the whole of her
Ægean coast. Strumnitza was given to Serbia, but the Ægean coast was
reserved for disposal with the rest of Thrace and the remains of the
Turkish empire. Bulgaria herself received a fraction of Turkish
territory on the river Maritza, and her frontiers with Rumania were
left unchanged. In the Balkans, as elsewhere, the Allies applied the
principle of self-determination only to conquered countries; none but
an Ally was allowed the privilege of retaining Irelands in subjection,
and in the Balkans at least the victory of the Entente increased the
populations under alien rule. Guarantees respecting the rights of
minorities were, indeed, imposed on the lesser States, but they would
have been more effective and less invidious, had the greater Powers
subjected themselves to the rule they made for others.

The Conference found it easier to dispose of its enemies' lands than
to compose the rivalries of its friends; and the blunders of Italy's
statesmen combined with the blindness of public opinion to reduce her
to a position of almost pathetic isolation. Signor Orlando's
abandonment of the Conference in April failed to shake the resistance
of the Allies to her extravagant expectations, and on 20 June, by a
remarkable vote of 229 to 80 in the Italian Chamber, his government
was driven from office. Not only in Italy but in Allied countries,
Italian communities abstained from celebrating the peace with Germany,
and grave indeed would have been the difficulties of the Conference if
the conclusion of that treaty had depended upon Italy's signature.
There was friction amounting to bloodshed between French and Italians
at Fiume, and an Albanian rising against the protectorate which Italy
had proclaimed. Her resolve to establish Italian domination along the
eastern coasts of the Adriatic evoked opposition from all the native
populations, who strongly appealed to the sympathies and principles of
the Allies; and her dependence upon them for the necessaries of
commerce and industry made defiance an impossible policy. Gradually
her new government under Signor Nitti sought to withdraw from an
untenable position; but D'Annunzio's raid on Fiume in September once
more inflamed popular passion, and Dalmatia, the islands in the
Adriatic, Albania, Epirus, and the Dodecanese were apples of discord
between Italy and the Balkan States which distracted the Allies
throughout the summer and autumn.

The settlement was also delayed by the enormous difficulty of
liquidating the Ottoman Empire and the reluctance of the United States
to accept the obligation of mandates in Europe or Asia. The curious
spectacle was afforded of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon
race indulging in a rivalry of retirement and endeavouring to saddle
each other with fresh acquisitions of territory; and between them
Armenia was almost abandoned once more to the Turks and the Kurds.
France was less retiring in Syria, the inhabitants of which were
believed to prefer to French rule any one of three alternatives, Arab
independence, a mandate for the United States, or one for Great
Britain; and the anxiety of great Powers to leave countries where
their presence was wanted was only equalled by their determination to
stay where it was not. French soreness over the lack of appreciation
shown by the Syrian people was increased by an independent arrangement
between Great Britain and Persia which gave us as complete a control
over Persian administration as we possessed in Egypt during the
eighties; and it was somewhat pertinently asked why Persia should be
allowed to dispose of her government in this way, while Austria was
sternly forbidden to unite with Germany without the consent of the
League of Nations. The sovereignty of Persia had, however, been
recognized at Versailles, and the League could not entrust a mandate
for its government to any other State. It was therefore left for
Persia to secure assistance in its administration by private treaty
dictated by Lord Curzon and traditional views about India, Russia, and
the Persian Gulf. Our patronage of Koltchak's government prevented him
from making any protest.

Russia remained the sphinx of the situation, and the obscurity of her
future darkened the counsels of Versailles. Early in the war the
Entente had acquiesced in all the imperialist pretensions of the
Tsardom to Constantinople, the Dardanelles, and Asia Minor; and even
after the Revolution the web of the old diplomacy entangled the feet
of the Allies. Fear of Bolshevism threw them on to the side of
Restoration, and Restoration at the hands of Koltchak and Denikin
implied a revival of the Russian Empire at the expense of independent
fringes. The Ukraine, Lithuania, Esthonia, and Latvia, and even Poland
and Finland, looked askance at such a policy, and naturally could not
be brought into a crusade to carry it out. The straightforward line to
take would have been to recognize these emancipated States on the
principle of self-determination and limit our action to their defence.
Hatred and haste had, however, betrayed the Allies into armed
intervention in the domestic politics of Russia proper, and committed
them to supporting a cause which had doubtful chances of success and,
if successful, might produce greater embarrassment for them than
defeat. From success they were saved by Koltchak's failure. Having
mastered Siberia and made a brave show of descending on Bolshevist
Russia from the Urals in the spring, he was routed in July and August
and driven back to Omsk, while Bolshevist forces rose up in his rear.
His defeat ruined our plans in North Russia, and at last convinced the
Allies of their folly in seeking to impose a government on the Russian
people; and evacuation became the order of the day. In South Russia
Denikin, unassisted by foreign legions, met with more native support
and greater success. The Bolsheviks were driven from the shores of the
Black Sea, and the Ukraine recovered Kiev. Students of Russian history
drew interesting parallels with the Russian Time of Troubles in the
seventeenth century, but rather neglected the fact that they lasted
thirty years; and the foundations laid at Versailles had long to wait
before the temple of peace was erected upon them in Russia.

The Allies themselves were slow to ratify the terms they dictated to
others, and months passed after the German ratification before its
example of promptness was followed by the Entente. The British Empire
had to await the separate decisions of all its Dominions; and the
Senate of the United States was led, by the fact that a majority in it
was politically opposed to the President, to make an even greater use
than was customary of its constitutional powers of obstruction in
foreign policy. Italy ratified the treaty on 7 October; Great Britain,
her four Dominions having assented by 2 October, ratified on the 10th,
and France on the 12th. But the Adriatic and the Baltic, Russia and
the Balkans, Turkey and Syria, still defied a settlement and delayed
the peace; and the Powers at Versailles discovered that their apparent
omnipotence was impotent for many purposes. Not one of their peoples
was willing to go to war to enforce the decisions of the Conference,
and the submission of Germany removed the one possible exception to
this rule. Almost against its own will the Conference was compelled to
act on its own principles and find other methods than those of
military force to settle the problems with which it was faced; and
this situation provided ample scope for diplomatic recalcitrance and
delay. The advantage was that practice was thus acquired in the
exercise of such economic and other peine forte et dure as the League
of Nations would in future have to use to reduce its unruly members to
order. Proceedings at Versailles therefore took less and less the
character of a conclusion to the war and more and more that of an
endless introduction to a new era. The work of a temporary Conference
to settle terms of peace was merging into that of a permanent League
of Nations for maintaining it; and the world happily got into its
international habits while its individual governments and legislatures
were still debating whether they would fit. Just as before the war the
appearance of peace was deceptive, so the clouds of a storm that was
passed obscured the clearing sky, and filled the weather-prophets of
the platform and the press with a gloom which the people declined
instinctively to share. There were indeed symptoms that we, like our
forefathers a century ago, were destined to tread the downward path
from Waterloo to Peter-loo. The ties of nationality and the stimulus
of patriotism weakened; the home-fires which kept brightly burning in
the war threatened to end in smoke through dissensions over coal, and
men reverted to their ancient anarchy of class and craft. Mr. Lloyd
George's House of Commons, which owed its existence to past events and
to a passing mood, soon forfeited the confidence of a fickle public,
and the impotence to which it was reduced left the country prone to
the temptations and a prey to the turbulence of direct and
unrepresentative action. In the absence of effective opposition and
incentive in Parliament nothing constitutional appeared to move the
Government, and an evil example was set when a few hundred soldiers in
January demanded in Whitehall and obtained their prompt
demobilization. The Premier himself, who had been on Pisgah in
September 1914, descended to a lower level and a dusty arena in his
general election speeches; and animosities which had been concentrated
on the Huns were dissipated in domestic directions.

Distance alone will lend discernment to the view, and only time will
reveal the ascent of man during the five great years of war. There
will be much backsliding to measure and record, and the intense
agitation of war brought out the worst in the bad as well as the best
in the good. Much that came to the top was scum, while often the salt
of the earth went under. Treason blotted the pages illumined by
heroism, and profiteering tarnished peoples redeemed by the devotion
of their sons. Wastefulness and corruption ran riot even in government
circles, while hundreds of thousands of humble men and women
voluntarily stinted and starved themselves beyond the rigid
requirements of the law. Lip-service was paid to the principle of
equality in sacrifice, and some efforts were made to enforce it. But
they failed to remove the inexorable inequalities of human fate, and
the war which brought death and distress to millions, brought to
others ease and honours, wealth and fame. These are the common
property of wars; and if men did more evil in this than in any
preceding conflict, it was not because they were worse than their
forefathers, but because the war was more comprehensive and they had
ampler means of working ill. Even the cruelty with which it was waged
by the Germans created horror mainly because they sinned against the
higher standards of modern times, and because their cruelty found more
scientific and effective methods of expression.

All the nations which fought believed in the justice of their cause
and fought as a rule with a courage which belied the alleged
degeneracy of the human race. None of the Powers save Russia fell
short of their previous fame. France strove at Verdun with a fortitude
in adversity unequalled in her annals. German discipline and
determination would have evoked unstinted praise but for the cause in
which those qualities were displayed. Belgium exhibited a national
spirit new in her history, and Serbian heroism was a revelation which
earned for the southern Slavs the greatest relative gains in the war.
The people of the United States became a nation of crusaders moved by
motives at least as high as those which inspired the hearers of Peter
the Hermit, Urban II, or St. Bernard; and the British Empire eclipsed
its own and all other records. History tells of many a shining example
of ancient valour in individuals and in the elect; but here we had
heroism in the mass and courage in the common man. Human memory
recalls no parallel to that uprising of the spirit which led five
million Britons to fight as volunteers for the honour of their country
and the liberty of other lands; despite its shortcomings the
Conference of Versailles achieved higher ideals than those attained by
any preceding congress of peace; and if during the war for its common
weal the world paid, in flesh and in spirit, a price greater than that
ever paid before, it purchased a larger heritage of hope and laid a
surer foundation for its faith.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.