Paris 1919

Paris 1919
By Margaret Macmillan

I picked up this book as next in a series of books looking at why countries go to war. Given Germany’s propensity for such since it’s unification, this material seems to fit my quest. Summarily this book covers the mood of the times closing out one war and at the same time laying the pretext for the next. WWI was the culmination of a new world order, one that like its beginning could not wait for diplomacy to work its magic. I say this with the understanding that war is the final step in diplomacy. This book describes the final phase of the Wars’ diplomacy. With regard to German apt for WWII, the stab-in-the back, felt in 1919 is all the further you need to look. With regard for the apt for German apt for war, I must read on before I recommend the removal of the allied boot upon the German neck.

One by one Central Powers countries were laying down their arms. In September of 1918 when Austria- Hungry withdrew, the German generals sued for an armistice soon after. The Armistice was signed in November of 1918. Keep in mind armistice is a cessation of fighting not surrender. Treaties of some sort had to be hammered out in quick time as to alleviate a resumption of war. Ironically, troop withdrawal and a general consensus of the people of the world led to a fait accompli on unfinished business. The Treaty of Versailles was therefore a document to settle and end to a war that had a precarious beginning. A beginning that officially took place in 1914, but like a summer thunderstorm, was long in the making.

In the minds of the world and in particular the so-called “Great Powers” they saw the armistice and the world in their own self serving way. Their agenda had every appearance to secure a world order with their respective Empires in tact and their place as Great Powers in enforce. With such a daunting task of organizing a new world order the Great Powers created an organization where by they would meet daily through the first six months of 1919 and decide on boarders and mandates over the peoples of the world. There were planetary committees that were either self appointed and organized or directly assigned by the great powers to a specific study. Hence, not included in these six months of deliberation was Germany. They sat at home preparing to defend their stab-in-the-back.

The Supreme Council of Four consisted of America, England, France, and Italy; albeit Italy’s membership was dubiously appointed and therefore its role ineffectual. America’s Woodrow Wilson brought America to the table carrying the flag of self-determination, and an agenda for a League of Nations to subjugate the United States to. The framers of our Constitution rallied the souls of a Republican Congress and the people from their graves to bring back an era of splendid isolation. Wilson chose to swim against currents stronger that his own self-determination. To exacerbate Wilson’s challenges, he alienated among many, his Secretary of State; Lansing who turned on him on occasional inopportune moments during and after the Treaty deliberations. The gossip surrounding Wilson’s affairs with women followed him to Paris. This book casts a dubious shadow on Wilson personally and his mark on history as a president of the United States.

France’s Clemenceau came to the party set to preserve the wartime alliance as France’s first line of defense against the Germans. In his personal life he took a wife and sired three children early in life and then cast them all away. His fortunes did tend to their needs, but he preferred the life of convenient mistresses. This womanizing man without a true conscience towards family value, the bedrock of social foundation, schemed in behalf of the French.

Lloyd George of England represented a country ill prepared for peace. He was torn by irrational expectations that making peace would be easy. He was preoccupied with an election and the Irish problem. He brought with him his Mistress, Frances Stevenson to provide soothing distractions to his ego.

Somehow Orlando from Italy found his way as a sitting or fleeing member, depending on the moment, of the Supreme Council of four. Sitting because he weighed in on the formation of Yugoslavia among others. Fleeing because like an old woman, he walked out on the deliberations when the other three members parlayed against Italy when they attempted to use their late and feeble war effort to grab land that had no reason to become Italian.

Personalities of each of the Supreme Council, the key decision makers of the critical Three Prime Movers of 1919, is characterized in this book by their precarious management of the women in their life. Likewise their internal political management styles found much friction. Amazing our fate could be dressed in such fabric. As representation of how well these personalities worked with each other said Clemenceau, “I feel I am sitting between Jesus Christ on the one hand, and Napoleon Bonaparte on the other.” Wilson puzzled him…he found him priggish and arrogant. Of the three, Lloyd George appeared best suited for the job, as he was far more willing to listen to reason. The one flaw in the Europeans was they bought into the argument the Fourteen Points when it suited them; however when their Imperialistic agendas were at risk they quickly fell back to old habits. The Germans made this point succinctly enough to have Lloyd George rethink what he had put down in a Treaty and demanded a signature. While he was willing to consider in earnest the German view at signature an aged Wilson said “it makes me tired for people to come and now say that they are afraid the Germans wont sign, and their fear is based upon things that they insisted upon at the time of the writing of the treaty”, and to this Clemenceau’s said the treaty was still to weak in holding down the Germans.

An intriguing side note on the personalities of a couple background players should be given to the views of the Arab consensus of their new rulers. Pertinent to the Sykes Picot Treaty on how to divide the Ottoman – Arab world in ways solely derived form Imperial goals; English sent noblemen (Sykes) the French sent lower rank citizens (Picot). The English were arrogant and the French were practical. In summary of all the role players whether Supreme council members or those allowed to plea their case, their existed a lack of internal harmony within each of the leaders’ and guiding ideology with no agreement on details.

The basic themes for each petitioner’s case were filtered through the dynamics of personalities and principles on the stage of diplomacy. As Wilson’s agenda of a League with its 14 points blinded him to the agendas of the European powers with regard to Imperialism over colonies, Clemenceau and Lloyd George duped Wilson and took the world for a imperialistic ride. Wilson’s proclamation of self-determination held nothing more than esoteric idealism that was twisted and molded into prevailing argument, by many aspiring nations beyond the refereeing “Great Powers”, to fit their needs. Wilson’s preoccupation with the League as an instrument blinded him from the light of his own guiding principle of self-determination. Thus he never realized a practical implementation of either. Above all a war was won, but history shows peace was not achieved. Yet his Wilsonian legacy still thrives in the intentions of every American president and most world leaders since.

England, France and Italy dragged a distracted Wilson down this foggy road of imperialism – v- self-determination. What became lost in the fog was the difference between self-determination of the people and that of their leaders. The prevailing arguments put forth by each of the petitioners were a combination of Ethnic, Religion, History, Natural resources needed to survive as a country and, participation in the war. Each petitioner would cook these ingredients in a way that brought a defining of their country. Some were earnest arguments, while some appeared as mere land grabs. Some had to deal with misplaced minorities within the boundaries of their claims. No one gave much thought to the kind of tolerance to the differences in people as we strive for here in the United States. Wilson a bigoted southerner of the time never though to put forward that precarious argument that really only took flight in the 1960s here in America.

Giving full consideration to the already crumbling Empires of subject, the Great War was really about Empires and not self-determination. Hence Wilson’s esoteric words of self-determination by newly proclaimed nations were a welcome relief to the carnage. Boundaries much like the Mason – Dixon line, were drawn prior to the War making any extreme civil settlement an assumed international affair in the end and post WWI. Here in America, we in the North celebrate our own Civil War and at the same time we cast aspersions on those who attempt to advocate a democratic process of divisional proportions up to and including a civil war. This in my opinion is clearly a symptom of our true penchant for splendid isolation that has mutated into selective ignorance, in terms of selfish sovereignty, oblivious to self-determination elsewhere…anywhere.

There was not one country discussed in the book were there were not trade offs. And many solutions only laid the groundwork for succeeding wars. In my opinion the breaking up the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires created a fever of Nationalism that has yet to see resolution. Austria was left weak enough that Hitler only resorted to an Anschluss of Austria. Yugoslavia was left to its final settlement early in the next century, and 90 years later we still have United Nations peace keeping forces on location. The Ottomans’ Iraq, with its boarders largely influenced by Britain is now a tinderbox. In the end self-determination was not achieved through the ballot box now leading to the extreme case an imminent civil war. It must be understood that the Serbian –Austrian conflict was in fact a civil war in its legacy years, post the two wars defining the birth of Serbia as a nation. That is until Germany and Russia jumped in. This drew in the rest.

On the note of a new classification of self determination and Civil Wars was fear of Bolshevism.- This was central to much of the decision making in the Supreme Council. Through this book this fear was paramount amongst leaders of Nations. Bolshevism, in the context of this book, represented a ruling process that supposedly did not require the dominion of national leaders. One must remember that in 1919 the tyranny of Bolshevism was not fully appreciated as an international affair because Russia was only in the midst of a Civil War between White and Red, leaving the real fear in the minds of national leaders that a Bolshevik mentality may also catch fire in their own nations. Would they lose their power?!!! They did their best to create buffer states that would be subject to the protectorate of an assigned “great power” which came with an obligation of subjugation of that great power’s mandates.

Failures were many. The following is a summary of just a few. Germany’s – armistice –v- surrender may be cited as the prime failure of the Treaty o Versailles. It was one sided and, not only in the minds Germans but also in the mind of two of its authors immediately after his cabinets were allowed to read it. It is not that Germany did not make a good case for themselves, they were simply not allowed to participate. The author of this book does not make it clear if this unprecedented approach to peacemaking was because of the way Germany fought on the battlefield or in its foreign policy as communicated during the war, or the war they presumably provoked. After lengthy debate, the German National Assembly, a collection of German leaders in a government in complete disarray, voted in favor of signing, with reservation that Germany did not recognize the articles dealing with surrender and trial of those responsible for the war and the “war guilt” clause. The response from Paris was swift. “The German government must accept or refuse, without any possible equivocation, to sign the treaty within a fixed period of time.” One thing the reader becomes impressed with is the stab-in-the back, feeling of the German people and the perfect material for Corporal Hitler to write his book and deliver his speeches.

Italy’s overreaching was clearly forms of their newfound sense as a world power and imperialism. Before the war they had the third largest navy in the world. At that time in all countries involved your navy gave a sense of nationalism and power. Italy’s performances on the battlefield were late and half-baked. So the disillusioned Italians were perceived in poor view by the rest of the three in the Supreme Council, a view that deteriorated when Orlando and company left the negotiations in protest.

What is now Yugoslavia began as a Serbian problem that lit the fuse for the war. Yugoslavia was at the core of a newfound sense of nationalism in the wake of crumbling Austro-Hungarian & Ottoman Empires. There was and still exists an amalgamation of religion, language, ethnicity, and history that could not allow boarders to be drawn without consideration to imposition on their people. This book does not touch on the economic situation of that era and in my mind ignores, albeit a secondary factor to the cause of WWI, the true battle of the “haves and the have-nots”. There is evidence that in some cases it was the “haves” who provoked war so they can at least secure what they have, but more likely to get “more”. If only civil tolerance and free trade (not fair but free) were allowed into the equation then, and now; the tension would find its relief. There was an attempt post WWI with Tito forced social acceptance, much like Cuba does to its Latinos and blacks. Tolerance and commercial equity has to be a personal choice, not one made by leaders. However the Balkans went a different direction. It has taken almost 100 years with uncertainty still in the wind.. By contrast, democracy is not easy, but I have seen where once established, long lasting peace followed. I do not foresee a day when the UN can leave this region any time soon.

Imperialistic Japan brought to the deliberations the issue of discrimination. Of all countries guilty of a superior attitude towards another, still today I find this in Japan. Recently I walked up to a restaurant in Tokyo that posted a sign that saying no round eyes allowed, in English. In the aftermath of Japan conquering Russian and Chinese territories from 1905 through 1918, activity that was mostly separate from the theater of WWI, Japan took the opportunity on Wilson’s stage of self-determination with an attempt to remove the discriminatory feeling they felt from dealing with the western world. I find it mostly paradoxical that a nation can be imperialistic and in self-doubt at the same time.
For me reading this chapter was difficult with respect to Wilson’s own bigoted attitude of the time. When it came time for self-determination and the democratic process to be put to the test, our Prime Mover to the cause wilted. The Japanese delegate insisted on a vote. When the majority voted for the amendment dissolving discrimination, Wilson, (a southerner) with the dexterity he had no doubt learned as a university president, announced that because there were strong objections to the amendment it would not carry. The Japanese chose not to challenge the dubious ruling and so the racial equality clause did not become part of the covenant…The failure to get the racial equality clause was an important factor in the interwar years in turning Japan away from cooperation with the West, and toward more aggressively nationalistic policies.

Wilson was equally un-impressive with regard to the handling of China’s desire to reclaim her Shantung territory from both the Germans and/or the Japanese. Because Wilson sold Japan’s discrimination demands down the river, he thought he would regain Japans favor by selling China’s Shantung territory which was under German colonial influence prior to the war to Japan. With regard to Wilson selling out the Chinese to the Japanese: The Chinese were shattered. Lu China’s prominent spokesman, who followed the rules of diplomacy with high regard to American philosophy, sent Wilson a dignified note. China had put its faith in the Fourteen Points and on the promise of a new way of conducting international relations. “She has relied, above all, on the justice and equity of her case. The result has been, to her, a grievous disappointment. … Wilson’s advisors threatened to resign and not sign the treaty over Wilson’s decision.

Wilson’s ideology was what the world needed, his institutions. However his applications of such were so opaque in practical substance, even in his own mind, that he committed many blunders in drawing national boarders where they should not be. A prime example is Iraq where the idea of an Iraq nation was the farthest thing from the minds of the people in that region. Wilson was succumbed by the imperial intrigue of the British and the French. So while, Wilsonism thrives still today, we are now fighting in a region to glue a people together where their “self determination” has never been sought after.

Hence, their is a striking parallel with regard to George W. Bush and Woodrow Wilson; starting with ideals that be may universal to all man kind, but their administration of such has been partially inconsistent with the people they led. I use the word partially because in both cases, their administrations and their opposing political parties waged political mayhem to such an extent that, in conjunction with their own inabilities to execute, both Presidents were not allowed to execute on their ideals. We may choose to blame our Presidents for where we are today, or we could blame ourselves for hamstringing our presidents. The irony is that a President with a naturalized American paradigm could be prone to American ideals abroad; after all they work at home with the same mix of people. The question why does it not fall so naturally into place in the hot spots around the globe?

It is hard to tell if Macmillan writes with the benefit of Hitler’s actual history or if the sentiment of the time in 1919 was only perfectly brought back to life in 1932. Macmillan provides enough actual quotations for a convincing argument, that all of Germany felt a stab in the back with the signing of the armistice. The Treaty of Versailles represents the culmination of six months of intense work put forward by three very much less than capable human beings. I am still at the end of the book perplexed at how the world allowed this to happen. I can only resign to the notion that our world was so desperate at that time that surrendering to leadership without question was its only default.

At that time the world became German. It took WWII to fix not a second German mistake but the mistakes made in 1919. We see today German goals now met through a German dominated European Union. What was the (were the) root cause(s) of German mistake(s). Beyond following a leader in uniform as brought out in Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, here is now a second view of the German mind. When the armistice came up for renewal, which it did at monthly intervals, Foch ( a French general) tried to insert new provisions. “it was not sportsmanlike”, said Wilson. Clemenceau’s response backing Foch, “he new the German people well. They become ferocious when anyone retires before them.” Perhaps once one breaks the shackles of oppression through revenge for the centuries of domination by the French, one lashes out? And in my view it is clear that greed was at the center of the German mind and that war was means to their end. Since WWII German determination found a new means to their same end.

Historically: Almost everyone in Paris in 1919 believed Germany had started the war only later did doubts arise. Germany had invaded neutral Belgium, and German troops, to the horror of Allied and American opinion behaved badly. Germany had also done itself great damage in Allied eyes by two punitive treaties, often forgotten today, which it imposed in 1918. The Treaty of Bucharest turned Rumania into a German dependency. And with the Treaty of Brest-Litvsk the new Bolshevik government of Russia gave Germany control of a huge swath of Russian territory stretching from the Baltic down the Caucasus Mountains and Russia agreed to pay over a million gold rubles in reparations. Two decades later Hitler set his sights on the same goal. Russia lost over 55 million people, almost a third of its agricultural land and the greater part of its heavy industry and iron and coal “Germans may talk of peace”, said Wilson in April 1918, “but their actions showed their real intentions.

A twisted parallel?: Almost everyone in Paris in 2003 believed Iraq/Iran had weapons of mass destruction and terrorism had roots in Iraq. Only later doubts arose. America had invaded Iraq and American troops, to the horror found in American pundit opinion our troops behaved badly. We were humiliated by allowing a few renegade guards to embarrass, not torture but embarrass, prisoners of war. The conflicted virtues of our international purpose were compromised. I call it conflicted because, treatment of POWs was put at a higher standard and given more visibility than that of our inmates of US prisons. America had also done itself great damage in pundits eyes by insisting on democracy. An armistice settled the conflict. Two decades later some Islamic leader set his sights on the same goal. The world lost over 155 million people; land and natural resources were laid to waste. “Muslims may talk of peace”, said an American president in April 2028, “but their actions showed their real intentions.

The cause of WWI was nationalism and greed. At the conclusion it remained. We continue to see a world striving for an equal opportunity at a national level. It seems that when a group of people call for liberty at the expense of another there is a problem. There is one country that led the way. That leading country still demonstrates domestic liberty better than any other, albeit with imperfection. Should the world now take an honest look at Wilson’s self-determination and Bush’s democracy? Will history continue to call these two presidents failures until they do? Each president had striking parallels in their relations with their respective Congress’s and general public. Those parallels appear to have root in the American people’s own sense of nationalism.

It is amazing that Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists and all others can get along in this great country of ours. Somehow they are given the choice. In my opinion Iraq was given the liberty to make a choice at the ballot box, thanx to America. If they want to take their cause to a civil war, America in principle should stand aside. With exception, the agendas of Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and to a lesser degree the Imperial Countries who wrongly drew the boarders in that region should follow suit. Could Iraq survive a civil war with out igniting WWIII? Would democracy and theocracy be allowed to co-exist in the wake? Or did theocracy replace Bolshevism and is nationalism still stronger than individual liberty? Have we learned anything?

Movies that may add to your mood while reading this book:

· Reds
· The Illusionanist
· Fly Boys

Below is a poem by 19-year-old Wilfred Owen who died a couple of months before the wars end. It happens to be my favorite poem. We lost this great mind amongst many to the travesty of WWI. Looking to bring the mentality of war to an end is worth a thought or two.

Impromptu
Wilfred Owen

Now, let me feel the feeling of thy hand-
For it is softer than the breast of girls,
And warmer than the pillows of their cheeks,
And richer than the fullness of their eyes,
And stronger than the ardour of their hearts.

Its shape is subtler than a dancer’s limbs;
Its skin is coloured like the twilight Alp;
And odoured like the pale, night scented flowers,
And fresh with early love, as the earth the dawn.

Yield me thy hand, a little while, fair love;
That I may feel it, and so feel thy life,
And kiss across it, as the sea the sand,
And love it, with the love of Sun for Earth.

Ah! Let me look a long while in thine eyes,
For they are deeper than the depths of thought,
And clearer than the either after rain,
And suaver than the moving of the moon,
And vaster than the void of all desire.

Child, let me fully see and know those eyes,
Their fire is like the wrath of shaken rubies;
Their shade is like the peaceful forest-heart.

They hold me as the great star holds the less.
I see them as lights beyond this life.
They reach me by a sense not found in man,
And bless me with a bliss unguessed of God.





Endnotes

1. p.11: Of all the ideas Wilson brought to Europe, this concept of self-determination was, and has remained one of the most controversial and opaque…. What as Lansing asked, made a nation? Was it a shared citizenship, as in the United States, or shared ethnicity, as in Ireland? If a nation was not self governing ought it to be? And in that case, how much self-government was enough? Could a nation, however defined, exist unhappily within a larger multinational state?
2. p. 23: quote of Clemancaeu: Where Wilson believed that the use of force ultimately failed, Clemenceau had seen it succeed too often. “ I have come to the conclusion that force is right, “ he said over lunch one day to Lloyd George’s mistress Frances Stevenson. “Why is this chicken here? Because is was not strong enough to resist those who wanted to kill it. And a very good thing too!” Clemenceau was not opposed to the League; he simply did not put much trust in it. (especially Germany, my comment)
3. p 27: it may be only legend the Clemenceau asked to be buried upright, facing Germany. It was certainly true that he had been on guard against France’s great neighbor for most his life. He was only twenty-eight when the Franco-Prussian War started. … he did not actively seek war after 1871; he simply accepted it as inevitable. The problem he said was not with France. Germany believes that logic of her victory means domination, while we do not believe that logic of our defeat is serfdom.
4. p 32: Clemenceau told his government: The French people must remember, he told his closest advisors, “that without America and England, France would perhaps no longer exist. … Clemenceau’s policy was one thing; persuading the rank and file of French officials to follow was another. “I find them full of intrigue and chicanery of all kinds.
5. p. 33: Clemenceau did not like either Wilson or Lloyd George, ”I find myself “ he said, “between Jesus Christ on the one hand, and Napoleon Bonaparte on the other. Wilson puzzled him…he found him priggish and arrogant.
6. p. 43: So much of prewar British policy had been devoted to protecting the routes to India across the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and down the Red Sea, either by taking control, as in the case of Egypt, or by propping up shaky old Ottoman Empire. That empire was finished, but thanks to a secret agreement with France, Britain was poised to take the choice bits it wanted.
7. p. 54: the Supreme Council were also racing, or so they believed, against another sort of enemy. Hunger, disease – typhoid, cholera and the dreadful influenza – revolutionary insurrections in one city after another, and small wars, some dozen of them in 1919 alone, all threatened to finish off what was left of European society.
8. p. 58: with regard to Yugoslavia: “The task of the Parisian Treaty-makers”, Lloyd George commented, “was not to decide what in fairness should be given to the liberated nationalities, but what in common honesty should be freed from their clutches when they have overstepped the bounds of self-determination. …But be aware of those bounds? There was no clear answer – or rather, every competing nationality had a different answer…. We are now engaged in self-determination, and God knows what and when the end will be.
9. p. 97: In concentration on the League of Nations, Wilson allowed much else to go by at the Peace Conference. He did not fight decisions that by his lights, were wrong: the award of the German speaking Tyrol to Italy, or the placing of millions of Germans under Czechoslovak or Polish rule. Such settlements once made were surprisingly durable, at least until the next war. It would have been difficult in any case for the League to act, because its rules insisted on unanimity in virtually all decisions.
10. p. 100: Clemenceau exclaimed to Poincare: “The League of Nations guaranteeing peace, so be it, but the League of Nations proprietor of colonies, no!
11. p. 103/104: There were three types of mandates: “A” for nations, such as those in the Middle East, which were nearly ready to run their own affairs; “B” where the mandatory power would run them; and “C” for territories that were contiguous or close to the mandatory power. The awkward question of who got what was put to one side.
12. p. 104: In all the discussions, there had been much talk of how the colonies were to get away from German rule. Yet although the fifth of Wilson’s Fourteen Points had talked about taking the interests of the indigenous population into account, no one actually bothered to consult the Africans, or the Pacific islanders.
13. p. 114: As Austria- Hungary stumbled from one military disaster to the next, its South Slavs turned, many with reluctance, toward independence. Serbia, temporarily chastened by defeat and by the collapse of their great proctor, Russia, were more receptive to the idea of a Yugoslav state.
14. p. 131: And so the future of the Banat, along with other prize peaces of territory in the south-central Europe, was shipped off to a special territorial commission, the first of many, which was to have no more success in bringing the different sides together. In time the Commission on Rumanian and Yugoslavian Affairs dealt with all the Yugoslavian boundaries except for the ones with Italy, which on Italian insistence, were reserved for the Supreme Council. … The Supreme Council did not explain what made a just settlement. Did it mean providing defensible boarders? Railway networks? Trade routes? In the end the experts agreed only that they would try to draw boundaries along lines of nationalities. … The Banat, the piece of land that triggered the process, also gave warning as to the difficulties. It held a rich mix of Serbs, Hungarians, Germans, Russians, Slovaks, Gypsies, Jews and even scattered French and Italians. (much like the USA, my comment).
15. p. 137: Would Bulgaria go communist? What if it refused to sign a peace treaty? As the British military representative pointed out in the summer of 191,”the Allies had no troops, and, if a national uprising were provoked (Bolshevism), it would be impossible to stop it.”
16. p.161: Even Wilson, who had insisted during the war that his only quarrel was with the German ruling classes, now seemed to blame the whole of the German people. “They should be shunned and avoided like lepers for generations to come” he told his intimates in Paris.
17. p.161: Almost everyone in Paris in 191 believed Germany had started the war (only later did doubts arise. Quite the opposite in my mind). Germany had invaded neutral Belgium, and German troops, to the horror of Allied and American opinion behaved badly. Germany had also done itself great damage in Allied eyes by two punitive treaties, often forgotten today, which it imposed in 1918. The Treaty of Bucharest turned Rumania into a German dependency. And with the Treaty of Brest-Litvsk the new Bolshevik government of Russia gave Germany control of a huge swath of Russian territory stretching from the Baltic down the Caucasus Mountains and agreed to pay over a million gold rubles in reparations. Two decades later Hitler set his sights on the same goal. Russia lost over 55 million people, almost a third of its agricultural land and the greater part of its heavy industry and iron and coal. The Bolsheviks were also obliged to pay over a million in gold rubles. “Germans may talk of peace”, said Wilson in April 1918, “but their actions showed their real intentions”.
18. p. 162: with regard to punishment & prevention: What made these questions even more complicated was that there were no clear principles to go on. It had been more straightforward in the past. The spoils of war…went to the victor.
19. p. 162: Public opinion, that new and troubling element, was no help. There was a widespread feeling that someone must pay for such a dreadful war; but there was an equally stringing for peace.
20. p. 163: Wilhelm had never grown up; the unloved, restless child had turned into a man who loved dressing up and playing cruel practical jokes. Queen Victoria had other difficult grandchildren; none, perhaps did so much damage as he did. …King George V: “As a shattered world looked for someone to blame, who better than the Kaiser, together with his weak womanizing son and his military leaders? (and the German people prone to follow anyone wearing a uniform, my thoughts)… said Clemenceau: There were no precedents for Germany’s crimes – “ for the systematic destruction of wealth in order to end competition, for the torture of prisoners, for submarine piracy, for the abominable treatment of women in occupied countries”
21. p. 168: When the armistice came up for renewal, which it did at monthly intervals, Foch tried to inset new provisions. “it was not sportsmanlike”, said Wilson. Clemenceau’s response backing Foch, “he new the German people well. They become ferocious when anyone retires before them”
22. p. 169: quoting French General Foch regarding a larger conscript army: “The Germans, “flocks of sheep” would end up with lots of officers to drive them.
23. p.172: with regard to France’s argument over the Rhineland: The Americans were unmoved. The League, not the Rhineland, would solve Frances security problems. As House put it, “ If after establishing the League, we are so stupid as to let Germany train and arm a large army and again become a menace to the world, we would deserve the fate which such folly would bring upon us.
24. p. 173: “To assure a durable peace for Europe” said the French Foreign Ministry, “it is necessary to destroy Bismarck’s work, which created A Germany without scruples, militarized, bureaucratic, methodical, a formidable machine for war, which bloomed out of Prussia, which has been defined as an army with a nation.
25. p. 197: “Above all, they must not drive Germany into a corner.” said Lloyd George “the greatest danger that I see in the present situation is that Germany may throw in her lot with Bolshevism and place her resources, her brains, her vast organizing power at the disposal of the revolutionary fanatics whose dream it is to conquer the world for Bolshevism by force of arms”
26. p. 198: Clemenceau now appeared to hardening his position on Germany. Britain and the United States, he pointed out were protected by the sea. “We must have an equivalent on land.” He demanded the Saar and held out for military occupation of the Rhineland. “The Germans are a servile people who need force to support an argument,” he said.
27. p. 215: said Wilson about Poland: “If Paderewski falls and we cut off food supplies to Poland, won’t Poland her self become Bolshevik? Paderewski’s government is like a dike against disorder, and perhaps the only one possible.”
28. p. 229: Where the Poles tended to bring exasperated sighs, even from their supporters, the Czechs basked in general approval. While the poles were dashing and brave, but quite unreasonable; the Rumanians charming and clever, but sadly the Yugoslavs well, rather Balkan. The Czechs were refreshingly Western.
29. p. 240: said Benes of Czechoslovakia: The Allies had created a state, according to the leader of the Austrian socialists, out of several nations, all filled with hatred one against the other, arrested in their whole economic and social development and in the progress of their civilization by hate and national strife, nourished by tyranny and poising their whole public life.”
30. p. 245: On September 15, 1918, his armies collapsing, Karl defied his German ally and issued a public appeal for a peace conference. The Allies, seeing victory at hand, rejected the offer. Two weeks later after Bulgaria had dropped out of the war, Germany agreed that the Dual Alliance should ask for an armistice.
31. p. 262: Karolyi’s successor was as he predicted, a revolutionary. Bela Kun came from a village in Transylvania, and was the son of a drunken shiftless notary. (His father was a non practicing Jew, a fact that later seized upon by anti-Semite as proof of widespread Jewish-Marxist conspiracy)
32. p. 264: In Hungary the communist-controlled newspapers claimed that Smuts’s mission meant Allies had recognized their regime. They did not report his sudden departure, but versions of what had taken place leaked out, adding public unease. It was rumored that the Allies were sending in an army to occupy Budapest, or that Trotsky and the Red Army were approaching the northeast to support the Hungarian revolution and the one which had just occurred in Bavaria.
33. p. 267: “If the three great powers had been able to keep armies,” the American military representative in Budapest wrote in his diary, “ and could have sent them immediately to any place where trouble was brewing, it would have been entirely different, but the Supreme Council’s prestige went aglimmering when a steady stream of ultimata had no affect whatever upon the miserable little nation of Rumania.
34. p. 282: Sonnino’s view of international relations was Bismarckian: he believed that nations were motivated by what another Italian foreign minister had called “sacred egoism” and that politics was above all about power.
35. p. 285: Sonnino, like Orlando, thought Wilson’s ideas foolish. “Is it possible to change the world from a room, through the actions of diplomats? Go to the Balkans and try an experiment with the Fourteen Points.”
36. p. 289: Lloyd George on Italy: “ I found that their n policy was largely influenced by a compound mixture of jealousy, rivalry, resentment, but more particularly France.”
37. p 318: Makino recognized that racial prejudice ran deep, but the important thing was to get the principle accepted and then let individual nations work out their own policies…The racial equality clause, however, was staring to catch public attention. In Japan there were public meetings and demands to end the “badge of shame”. Along the West Coast of the United States political leaders warned of the serious consequences to the white race if the clause passed.
38. p. 320: The Japanese delegate insisted on a vote. When the majority voted for the amendment, Wilson, ( a southerner) with the dexterity he had no doubt learned as a university president, announced that because there were strong objections to the amendment it would not carry. The Japanese chose not to challenge the dubious ruling and so the racial equality clause did not become part of the covenant….The failure to get the racial equality clause was an important factor in the interwar years in turning Japan away from cooperation with the West, and toward more aggressively nationalistic policies.
39. p. 338: With regard to Wilson selling out the Chinese to the Japanese: The Chinese were shattered. Lu sent Wilson a dignified note. China had put its faith in the Fourteen Points and on the promise of a new way of conducting international relations. “She has relied, above all, on the justice and equity of her case. The result has been, to her, a grievous disappointment. … Wilson’s advisors threatened to resign and not sign the treaty over Wilson’s decision.
40. p. 341: Coincidence counts for more in history than some may care to think, and in 1919 an alternative presented itself to the Chinese. Not the alternative of returning to China’s traditional way, but the new order in Russia.

41. p. 361: on the Greece question of expanded territory: Religion was not an indicator, Christian or Muslim, all Albanians were united in love with their homeland, and had been for centuries…. This region was undeniably a part of the greater Serbian Empire in the thirteenth” said House’s assistant Bonsal. “Should it be restored to Belgrade now? Should California and New Mexico be restored to Spain or Mexico? I don’t know. One solution might be a simple exchange of populations. “All would be well if friendly relations could be established between disputants, but unfortunately all the experts say this is impossible; on this point at least they are all in full agreement.”
42. p 373: The other important ting Lloyd George argued, was to keep all the various groups within the empire from attacking each other. This was not what Britain wanted. As Lloyd George pointed out, the Allies had over a million troops scattered across the Ottoman Empire and Britain was paying for the lot.
43. p. 377: The Armenians, many were simple farmers, had become Russian, Turkish or Persian, but as ideas of nationalism and self-determination swept eastward, the vision of a reborn Armenian nation took shape….there was no coherent agreement as to what Armenian might be but it was increasingly powerful.
44. p. 378: Whether the Ottoman government’s real goal was genocide is still much in dispute; so is the number of dead, anywhere from 300,000 to 1.5 million.
45. p. 378: House assured Lloyd George and Clemenceau that the United States would undoubtedly take a mandate. Lloyd George was delighted at eh prospect of Americans taking on this notable duty, and relieved that the French were not taking on the mandate. House as he often did was exaggerating. Wilson warned the Supreme Council that “he could think of nothing the people of the United States would be less inclined to accept than a military responsibility in Asia.
46. p. 381: One day during the Peace Conference, Arnold Toynbee, an advisor to the British delegation, had to deliver some papers to the prime minister. “Lloyd George, to my delight, had forgotten my presence and began to think out loud. ‘Mesopotamia…yes…oil…irrigation…we must have Mesopotamia; Palestine…yes…the Holy Land…Zionism…we must have Palestine; Syria…h’m…what is there in Syria? Let the French have that.”
47. p 382: In the British-French horse trading over land in the Middle East: Lloyd George gave Clemenceau promises in return: that Britain would support France, even against the Americans, in its demand for control over the Lebanese coast and the interior of Syria, and that France would have its share of what ever turned up on Mosul (oil)…It was an ill-omened start for an issue that was to poison French-British relations during the Peace Conference and for many years to come.
48. p. 383: on Sykes-Picot: The two negotiators were both Catholic, and both knew the Middle East at first hand. … Picot was born into French upper middle class which produced so many of France’s diplomats…Sykes, by contrast, was one of those wealthy aristocratic dilettantes who fluttered around the fringes of British diplomacy. He admired French culture but thought France did not deserve its empire. “The French” he said after visiting French North Africa, “are incapable of commanding respect, they are not sahibs, they have no gentlemen, the officers have no horses or guns or dogs.
49. p. 390: The French who suspected that the British hoped to use Feisal to weaken their own case for Syria, did not want him or Sir Lawrence of Arabia in France at all and would have stopped them in Beirut if they had known at the time…When he went to London, Feisal found a warmer welcome but with under currents that unsettled him.
50. p. 391: While he was prepared to respect the exemptions of the Lebanon and Palestine, the rest of the Arab world should have its independence. He invited Britain and France to live up to its promises they had made. While Lloyd George posed questions designed to show the contribution the Arabs had made to the Allied victory, Wilson asked only whether the Arabs would prefer to be part of one mandate or several. Feisal tried to dodge what was an awkward question, stressing that Arabs preferred unity and independence. If the powers decided on mandates, then, he hinted his people would prefer the Americans to anyone else.
51. p.397: Wilson had firm ideas about how the area should be ruled. “Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul should be regarded as a single unit for administrative purpose and under British control.” It never seems to have occurred to him that a single unit did not make much sense in other ways. In 1919 Iraq there was no Iraq people; history religion, geography pulled people apart, not together. Basra looked south, toward India and the Gulf; Baghdad had strong links with Persia, and Mosul had closer ties with Turkey and Syria.
52. p. 398: There was no Iraq nationalism. When the war ended, several (young officers) of these, including Nuri Said, a future prime minister of Iraq, had gathered around Feisal. Their interest was in a greater Arabia, not separate states.
53. p. 398: And indirect rule did at least bow in the direction of self-determination and liberal opinion.. “what we want” said a senior official at the Indian Office (British at this time), is some administration with Arab institutions which we can safely leave while pulling on the strings ourselves; something that won’t cost very much, which Labour can swallow consistent with its principles, but which our economic and political interests will be secure.
54. p. 422: Later in the year, after the war had ended, they met again, this time in London. Again all went well. Weizmann assured Feisal that Zionists could use their influence to get American support for the Arabs, and Feisal in return indicated that he did not foresee any trouble over Palestine.
55. p. 422 Wilson himself was sympathetic to Zionism. “to think” he told a leading New York rabbi, “that I the son of the manse (clergy mans house) should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people.
56. p. 423: The Palestinian Arabs were not represented in San Remo but they had made their feelings clear in the riots against Jews that had broken out in Palestine two weeks earlier.
57. p. 424: Zionism had produced what not previously existed and organized Palestinian Arab opinion, which learned rapidly to use letters of protest, petitions, and the langrage of self-determination.
58. p. 425: When the awkward issue of Zionist gunrunning into Palestine came up, Churchill winked: “We won’t mind it, but don’t speak of it” All present agreed that the Palestinian Arab delegation was a nuisance.
59. p. 430: With regard to Ottoman Turkey, the Greek Veniselous said: But as rulers they were insupportable and a disgrace to civilization, as was proved by their having exterminated over a million Armenians and 300,000 Greeks during the last four years. (note the extermination was carried out at the order of Turks but by Kurds)
60. p. 434: From June 1919 onward, the fate of the remainder of the Ottoman Empire depended less on what was happening in Paris and more and more on Ataturks Moves. Two different worlds – one of international conferences, lines on maps, peoples moving obediently into this country or that, and the other people shaking off their Ottoman past and awakening as a Turkish nation.
61. p. 435/436: Balfour’s words as the three convened over Turkey: “I have all three powerful (Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Wilson), all-ignorant men sitting there and partitioning countries with only a child taking notes for them.” He sent a strong memorandum to Lloyd George saying how dangerous it would be to partition Turkey…. Lloyd George also heard from his military advisors, who were almost unanimously opposed. So were Churchill and Montagu, who rushed over from London to warn again that cutting up Turkey meant “eternal war” with the Muslim world, including that of India. Lloyd George reversed his position stating “it is impossible to divide Turkey proper. We would run too great a risk of throwing disorder into the Mohannedan world.”…The infuriated Clemenceau stated “You say that France mustn’t be in Asia Minor because that would displease Italy: do you think there is no public opinion in France? France is, moreover, of all Europe, the country with the greatest economic and financial interests in Turkey- and here she is thrown out to please first Mohammedans, and then Italy”…Wilson said “Perhaps we have the impression today of a greater disagreement than actually exists” But he had little to offer by way of solution.
62. p. 447: In the peace terms drawn up for Turkey; the status of Kurdistan was left up in the air: perhaps autonomy within Turkey, a mandate under a power, or complete independence. Also undecided were Kurdistan’s boarders, to be settled by a fact finding mission. The British made sure that the territories the wanted (Mosul’s oil region) were firmly placed in the new state of Iraq (under British mandate)
63. p. 459: in the House of Mirrors regarding the first reading of terms: “So” wrote Henry Wilson in his diary, we are going to hand out terms to the Boches without reading them ourselves first. I don’t think in all of history this can be matched.”
64. p. 460: Woodrow Wilson looked at the printed treaty with pride” “I hope that during the rest of my life I will have enough time to read this whole volume. We have completed in the least time possible the greatest work that four men have ever done.”
65. p.460: The hotel itself was where the French leaders had stayed in 1871 while they negotiated with Bismarck. It was now surrounded by a stockade – for the Germans’ safety the French claimed. The Germans grumbles that they were being treated “like the inhabitants of a Negro village in an exposition.
66. p.461: Their country, most Germans believed, had surrendered on the understanding that the Fourteen Points would be the basis of the peace treaty. “The people” reported Ellis Dresel, an American diplomat sent to Berlin, “had been led to believe that Germany had been unluckily beaten after a fine and clean fight, owing to the ruinous effect of the blockade on her home moral…but that happily President Wilson could appeal tom and would arrange a compromise peace satisfactory to Germany”
67. p. 462: Brockdrof-Rantsau a German leading voice claimed in the face of the terms” “Under no circumstances would I sign the peace treaty”. He added what was by now a familiar warning: If Entante insisted on these conditions, in my opinion Bolshevism would be unavoidable in Germany.”
68. p. 462/463 What the German delegation did take very seriously were preparations for the expect peace conference with the Allies….When the special train rolled off toward Versailles, the carried packing crates of material for negotiations the Germans were never to have.
69. p. 465: The shock was echoed in Germany. Why should Germany lose 13 percent of its territory and 10 percent of its population? After all had Germany lost the war? Since the armistice, the military and its sympathizers has been busily laying the foundations of the stab-in-the back theory
70. p. 466: Said Brockdoff-Rantsau to the Allies; “The German people did not will the war and would never have undertaken a war of aggression”…wrote Lloyd George in his memoirs, “I could not accept the German point of view, without giving away our whole case for entering the war…Wilson said sharply “it is enough to reply that we don’t believe a word of what the German government says”
71. p. 467: We agreed” Hoover recalled years later, “that the consequences of many parts of the proposed Treaty would ultimately bring destruction.
72. p. 467: Nicolson of the British delegation caught the mood. “we came to Paris confident that the new order was about to be established; we left it convinced that the new order had merely fouled the old. We arrived as fervent apprentices in the school of President Wilson; we left as renegades.”
73. p.468: The French reaction, of course quite different. Critiques complained that the treaty was much too weak.
74. p. 468: The deputy prime minister of England, Bonar Law, found the German objections ‘In many particulars very difficult to answer. Lloyd George agreed.
75. p. 469: Churchill said, ”far too much of the French demands in that settlement” “The hatred of France for Germany was something more than human”.
76. p. 470 said Wilson in reaction “it makes me tired for people to come and now say that they are afraid the Germans wont sign, and their fear is based upon things that they insisted upon at the time of the writing of the treaty”
77. p. 473: After another lengthy debate, the German National Assembly voted in favor of signing, with reservation that Germany did not recognize the articles dealing with surrender and trial of those responsible for the war and the “war guilt” clause. The response from Paris was swift. “The German government must accept or refuse, without any possible equivocation, to sign the treaty within a fixed period of time.”
78. p. 475: the Anglo-American guarantee to come to France’s defense if she were attacked by Germany was given formal shape…How much the guarantee was worth was another matter. House doubted that it would get Senate approval.
79. p. 479: In 1924 a cabinet minister in the Labour government in Britain referred to the treaty as “a treaty of blood and iron which betrayed every principle for which our soldiers thought they were fighting.”
80. p. 486: Nationalism, far from burning itself was still gathering momentum. …In 191 the world shrank from expulsion of minorities and frowned on forcible assimilation. That left, it seemed, only toleration of the minority by the majority, a quality that was in short supply in many countries.
81. p. 487: Self determination, that noble ideal, produced a dreadful offspring when it was wedded to ethnic nationalism.
82. p. 492: Wilson’s efforts, and those of many other peacemakers who shared his ideals, were not completely wasted. The Treaty of Versailles, and the other treaties with which the defeated used it as a model, certainly contained provisions about territory and reparations that could have been written in earlier centuries, but were also imbued with a new spirit.