The Fourteen Points and the World

IN January, 1918, President Wilson announced to the world his Fourteen Points.

His utterance stirred the hearts of men. It held an inspiration. It was good to see, beyond the horrors of war, a vision of justice, order, and peace in the world. But the President’s manifesto had the same relation to life that pure poetry possesses. When it came to putting into effect the aspirations embodied in the Fourteen Points, the President had to deal with rival claims, covetousness, and all the involved pernicious tangle of bitter political ambitions. In the name of the Fourteen Points gross injustice has been committed. Their narrow or ignorant interpretation has, in certain cases, condemned whole countries to starvation and moral distress so horrible that the world has never seen the like.

One fact was forgotten when the Allied and Associated Powers met in Paris. The civilized world is one great organic whole. The war has laid bare the sinews, nerves, and bones of this living organism which throughout the nineteenth century was forming in blind obedience to the impulse of ever-growing needs. It has been fed by every invention and device that could further the development of industry, and by every social law that could unify the habits and the needs of peoples. Easy means of transportation and communication have interlocked the lives of every civilized country.

President Wilson was the first to recognize and publicly declare the organic unity of the world. But he neglected to say that its future rests, not in the hands of politicians, who are always bound by party and personal ambition, but with the great masses of men, who by ceaseless toil have made the world as we know it.

An Economic League of Nations is what the world is crying for. Economically, the world has outgrown the old order of things, which could live only on the false assumption that each nation could suffice to its own needs. An Economic League of Nations will place common interests before traditional feuds. It will place its hope of peace on the solid foundations of progress and prosperity. In order that the world may be made a safe and fit place to live in, the nations of the world must join hands.

The complexity of political affairs has been infinitely increased during the nineteenth century by the progressive development of industry throughout the world and by the multiplication of means of contact between the civilized countries. European nations are largely interdependent for their means of existence. Europe is an economic whole, and cannot be torn asunder without endangering the life of every European nation. The exchanges, those sensitive tests of economic equipoise, remained stationary between the main European states for nearly twenty years before the war. The Spanish-American War, the Fashoda incident and the Erethrean disasters, marked at the close of the nineteenth century the lowest ebb in the fortunes of Spain, France, and Italy. But the disturbance was temporary and had an ascertainable cause. No political economist had ever had the opportunity to probe the real significance and the probable repercussions of the complexity of the development of modern industrial life.

Prolonged contact, which has been the direct result of the common effort during five years of war, has laid bare inevitably the internal structure of the industrial and economic systems of each European country.

I

Two years and a half have elapsed since the Armistice of November 11, 1918, put a provisional end to the European war. The condition of mind at that time was one of universal tension. Men sought refuge from the horrors of war in great ideas. There was a time when it seemed as if the world stood poised above right and wrong. Two currents of feeling divided the victors: the guilty must be punished, and wars must be made impossible in the future.

In effect, the problem before the Peace Conference was by no means so simple or so strictly ethical.

The fact that German influence was slowly permeating European affairs was not patent to the eyes of European statesmen in 1914. Forty years of peace had bred a comfortable sense of security, and no European cabinet cared to take pointedly into account the risks of war. At any time since 1895, some check might have been placed on the military equipment of Germany, if France and England had been willing to act together and with due foresight: England, however, was involved at the close of the last century in the Boer War. French capital was very largely tied up in South African mining ventures; and the old antagonism between France and England, which flared up suddenly after the Fashoda incident, was fed by the financial inconvenience that resulted from the war forced on the Boers by England. At the close of the nineteenth century the prestige of France stood low; a Germany latently hostile and an England coldly indifferent rose on either side of her. At that moment, the Russian alliance offered to France a possibility of political rehabilitation, and it is no wonder that French statesmen grasped it eagerly. In many respects, the Franco-Russian alliance, while it salved French pride at a critical hour in France’s history, may be said to have been a powerful indirect factor in forming those political currents that brought about the war, because it placed Western Europe potentially within the range of the recoil blows of the Pan-Slav obsession.

Western European democracies did not, and do not, realize what a part the Pan-Slav question played in the minds of the Danubian Empire and of the Balkan peoples. The might of Russia, with her one hundred and fifty million souls, stood in the eyes of the Austrian Empire as an ever-present source of danger. France, by allying herself to Russia, came in for a share of the suspicion which her great ally naturally roused. It must be added, that the methods of internal government prevalent in Imperialist. Russia were such as no Western democracy could find compatible with its own standards. The hatred and contempt that those methods rightly roused in the nations which, by their geographical position, were brought into contact with Imperialist Russia were also to a certain extent deflected to France’s ally.

The accession of Edward VII to the throne of Great Britain opened a new page in the history of Europe. Had it taken place ten years earlier, the catastrophe of war might have been averted. Edward the Peacemaker was a great statesman, endowed with exceptional personal authority and prestige. He foresaw that the Pan-Slav peril, acting as a goad in the relations of AustriaHungary with her near neighbors in the Balkans, might in time succeed in inflaming popular feeling, and provide the occasion for testing the worth of that expensive asset, the perfectly equipped German army. In an effort to neutralize the effects of this antagonism, King Edward attempted to detach Austria-Hungary from the Triple Alliance, and include her in the Entente of which England and France formed part. The Triple Alliance was about to expire. There was a chance to induce Austria to join the Entente, allay her natural mistrust of Russia, and place a check on the Balkan intrigues, which fed the Pan-Slav agitation. The subject was broached at Ischl on the King’s last journey to Austria. But an aged monarch sat on the Austro-Hungarian throne; and, on the other hand, no French statesman carried enough personal authority to reverse the policy upon which France had staked for ten years her chances of safety in the event of war. The Triple Alliance was renewed two years later, and the immense catastrophe of war was consummated in the fullness of time.

Men looked upon war either as a necessary, or as a superfluous surgical operation; whereas it has in effect proved itself to be a dastardly, inhuman process of physical and moral torture, the ruthless sacrifice of all the higher instincts and ideals, redeemed only by the mournful splendor of countless instances of self-sacrifice, flung like star-dust across the long night of horror.

II

On December 4, 1917, President Wilson read his address to Congress, recommending the declaration of a state of war between the United States and Austria-Hungary as Germany’s ally. In this message the President, with that lofty utterance which ranged at once on his side all disciplined spirits, pronounced the assurance that, in the fullness of time, the people of the United States would be willing and glad to pay the full price for peace, and pay ungrudgingly. ‘We know,’he said, ‘what that price will be. It will be full, impartial justice — justice done at every point and to every nation that the final settlement must affect, our enemies as well as our friends.’

After defining the success by skill, by industry, by initiative, by enterprise which Germany had won, he proceeded: ‘She had built up for herself a real empire of trade and influence, secured by the peace of the world. We were content to abide the rivalries . . . that were involved for us in her success, and stand or fall as we had or did not have the brains, the initiative to surpass her. But at the moment when she had conspicuously won her triumphs of peace, she threw them away to establish in their stead,— what the world will no longer permit to be established,— military and political domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and Northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must also deliver the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia, from the impudent and alien domination of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy. . . . Our entrance into the war has not altered our attitude towards the settlement that must come when it is over. When I said in January that the nations of the world were entitled, not only to free pathways upon the sea, but also to sure and unmolested access to these pathways, I was thinking, and I am thinking now, not of the smaller and weaker nations alone, which need our countenance and support, but also of the great and powerful nations, and of our present enemies as well as our present associates in the war. I was thinking, and I am thinking now, of Austria herself among the rest, as well as of Serbia and of Poland. Justice and equality of rights can be had only at a great price. We are seeking permanent, not temporary, foundations for the peace of the world, and must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As always, the right will prove to be the expedient.’

In dealing generally with the reconstruction of the economic life of Europe, it is well to choose a pertinent example, and to work outward from a case in point to the general application of those principles, which a natural process of deduction brings to hand. Austria provides the necessary test-case.

The Austrian treaty of peace was drafted when the strain of the Treaty of Versailles was showing its effects among the delegates of the Allies assembled in Paris. It was hastily drafted, and the disruption of the Empire was a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, whatever the reasons may have been that seemed to counsel the political disruption of the Empire, a great and far-reaching error was committed in world-politics when the new political frontiers were allowed to become economic barriers as between the ‘Succession States’ then created.

Yet the determination to visit upon one part only of Austria-Hungary the responsibilities and burdens of the war was accepted wit hout challenge. Seven million men were chosen as scapegoats of the enterprise in which fifty-two millions had an equal share.

If the Austrian government, face to face with utter paralysis and actual physical starvation, were at the present moment to refuse to carry on the business of government, two possibilities would have to be considered: the partition of the Austrian Republic among the Succession States, and its absorption by Germany.

The Succession States, which would presumably benefit immediately by territorial aggrandizement, are Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Jugo-Slavia, and Italy; in the last resort, the country that would benefit is Germany.

Let us take the states in the order of enumeration.

Czecho-Slovakia has already absorbed two very indigestible elements — the Slovaks, who are alien to the Czechs and kindred to Hungary, and who speak a national dialect of their own, and four million German-speaking Austrians, who already very nearly balance the purely Czech element in the republic. The addition of further Germanic elements would rob the Czech Nationalist party, now governing the country, of its majority, and would revive in a much more acute form the latent rivalries that were the ground for the claim of Czecho-Slovakia to independent autonomous existence. If, therefore, it was necessary for the peace and welfare of the world to separate Czechs from Austrians, the only logical conclusion of a provisional encroachment by Czecho-Slovakia on a German-speaking population, would be a further splitting of the country into Germanic and Czech people, and a consequent increased threat to the peace and welfare of Europe.

The new political entities created by the Treaty of St. Germain are in effect rendered absolutely interdependent economically by the system of railways and waterways, and by commercially intercommutable assets, which have been developed to feed and serve, not small artificially created states, but a complete economic organism. The result to the world of this parceling-out of countries built to be the component parts of an economic whole, is a very great waste in productive power, both directly and indirectly. Directly, because the sum of the productive powers of a number of small states must inevitably remain inferior to the productive power of the former whole; and indirectly, because the political rivalries thus created will keep alive countless centres of unrest, and extend right up to the borders of central Europe the dangerous undisciplined spirit of the Balkans.

The same criticism as to the effects of racial rivalry is true with regard to the forced union of Austria, or any part of Austria, with Hungary. The result of the plebiscite taken at Klagenfürth on November 10, 1920, which, in spite of the prevailing economic distress, declared the determination of the inhabitants of the country to remain united to Austria, sufficiently proves that, when absolute domination threatens to pass into the hands of an alien people, the racial differences, which, under the general rule of a prosperous and enlightened government, were but latent, break out into flame.

Any proposed addition of territory to Jugo-Slavia would be an inevitable source of strife with Italy. Moreover, in spite of their qualities of bravery, dignity, and endurance, no one who knows the countries we are now considering can maintain for a moment that socially, intellectually, or politically, the Serbian is the equal of his brethren formerly under Austrian rule. The influence of Austria made of Bosnia and Herzegovina a civilized and prosperous community. It was not the actual annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909 that roused the patriotic passions of Serbia; many Serbians had viewed the infinitely superior condition of the Serbians under Austrian rule with sadness and envy; it was rather the brutal form given by Count Aerenthal to the public consummation of an accomplished fact, which seemed to the Serbian people to throw a contemptuous challenge to their national self-respect.

Finally, we have to consider the results of the further addition of Germanspeaking people to Italy.

The annexation of new territories and more German-speaking peoples would create for Italy a reversed irredentism of Germans against Italians, which would militate against Italy, even as the Italian irredentism of the borderlands was a disruptive force against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The hypothetical solution of a further dismemberment of Austrian in favor of the other Succession States should, therefore, be set aside as dangerous to the peace of Europe and harmful to the economic settlement on which alone can be built a lasting hope of peace.

The further question remains, whether the absorption by Germany of that part of the German-speaking people of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire now known as the Austrian Republic would tend to restore and maintain the prosperity and peace of Europe.

Germany was mulcted by the Treaty of Versailles of the provinces of AlsaceLorraine, wrested by her from France in the War of 1870. The whole history of the development of German influence, as it has manifested itself during the last fifty years, is the history of Prussian hegemony, and of the strong welding of purely Germanic interests as a weapon against non-German nations. The war of 1866 against Austria, although ostensibly fought on the question of a Danish province, was really a struggle between the liberal, humane interpretation of a federal organization of the Empire, which was the Austrian programme, against the harsh, aggressive, intransigent policy which Bismarck succeeded in establishing on the foundation of two military successes — against Austria in 1866, against France in 1870.

The annexation of Austria would add seven million people and a great manufacturing country to Germany; would give over to her almost exclusively the Balkan market, and would inevitably set smouldering the latent commercial rivalries between Great Britain and Germany, which partly accounted for the war; while the political rivalry between Germany and France would flare up inevitably. By allowing Austria to founder, the Balkans are closed to European trade, and turned over to Germany as her uncontested field; and one of the richest markets is lost to Europe and to the world.

Now, labor-troubles and acute political anxiety with regard to Germany’s expansion are not favorable conditions for the peace of the world. The real interests of nations have become interlocked; and the urgent need for a permanent international economic council is felt more and more, as time reveals the nature of the mutual bonds that hold fast the life of nations. These bonds have grown unconsciously, in obedience to the pressure of economic needs, created and strengthened by international finance, international means of transport, and facilities of communication, which are the props of modern tradeconditions.

III

We are now witnessing the birth of a new era. The commercial interdependence of nations, created by the expansion of trade and by the linking-up of thought, resources, and activities, has made one organic whole of the civilized world. Europe is no longer an assemblage of independent rival states: she stands revealed, economically, as the United States of Europe.

These conditions have come about as the natural inevitable result of international trade, fed by international finance, served by international means of transport. This fact was unsuspected in any real and precise sense until the war revealed its tremendous import for the future of the world. The powerful tentacles of this commercial organism reach out to every part of the civilized world. It encloses all that we hold precious in the domain of the spirit, as well as all the material achievements of modern life.

Ignorance and fear brought about the catastrophe of war. Slowly and unconsciously, men who had no precise vision of its real meaning and its consequences laid the train for the great cataclysm. The appetite for domination by sheer brute force already rears its head once more. This is in the tradition of narrow national policies pursued for the advantage of party, and against the real interests of the people.

We can bring peace and prosperity to the world by furthering international constructive action, and by substituting it for the methods of cutthroat policies. No European government could take the initiative which falls to us. We are the creditors of the world, and must take the chair at the board where nations must meet to frame a policy of reconstruction. Our conditional abstention so far has proved disastrous to the world and harmful to our interests. No settlement can be reached if the chief creditor is absent from the board. If we evade what is our duty, we fail, as a nation, at a crucial moment in the world’s history. Our power and our prestige lay this obligation upon us.

Once before in the history of the world America led the way. The democratic constitutions of Europe were inspired by the principles we proclaimed as the foundation of our national independence. Those principles of liberty which, from the French Revolution onward, France carried throughout Europe with her victorious armies, marked the decline of the old system of government by privilege, and set free the spirit of a new world. The English Reform Bill of 1832 embodied the principle of ‘no taxation without representation,’on which we had fought the War of Independence.

Once more, in the history of the freedom of mankind, America must lead the way.

Let us consider the position from the point of view of pure common sense. As a creditor-nation, two courses are open to us: either to remit wholly the indebtedness of Europe, or to fulfill the task that falls on our shoulders as chief creditor of the whole civilized world. Common sense and common justice demand that the financial debts incurred toward America should be paid off. Europe is in a state of relative insolvency.

We demand that the world shall be made safe and fit to live in; and we demand that the world shall be secured once and for all against the recurrence of violations of right. The programme of the world’s peace must be our programme. We alone as a nation can frame it and carry it through. We have the right, and the duty to make ourselves heard in the world’s councils; and these are the guiding thoughts that should determine our actions.

Right, prosperity, and the liberty of governments and of nations are the three fundamental ideas on which the hope of peace can be built. In order that peace may reign in the world, a fair chance of self-development and economic progress must be granted to all nations equally. Meanwhile, it is incumbent upon the civilized nations of the world to watch over and further the material existence of certain weaker states, whose existence is not the outcome of the slow progress of natural events, but of artificial creation in a spirit of compromise, or in obedience to certain real or illusory requirements. These states, known as the Succession States, were created by the disruption of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Economic paralysis, with its consequent dangers, now threatens with varying degrees of imminence, all and each of these states. The consequent distress and unrest are a source of danger to the peace of Europe, and call for immediate action. The peculiar position of the Republic of Austria, and the fact that, by an error of justice, she alone is being held responsible for the share of the whole Empire in the war, make her needs more imperative.

No single European country can at the present moment assume the task of reconstruction in Eastern Europe. This task should devolve on an active international commission, in the formation of which America should take the lead. Vienna should be its centre, being placed at the very heart of a once self-sufficient economic organism, at the centre of a perfect system of railways and waterways. The available resources that once rendered the former Austro-Hungarian Empire an independent economic organism should again be freely used, to the immediate advantage of the states concerned, and the indirect advantage of Europe. The national legislative bodies of Austria, and of Hungary, Poland, Roumania, the Serbo-Croate-Slovene state, and the Czecho-Slovak state, would be invited to accept certain principles, based on their economic interdependence, which might be laid down as follows: — Constant and regular transit on all lines of communication between the designated states, without hindrance or interruption of any kind, shall be guaranteed in future. Regular communication by rail and navigable waterways shall be assured, and the points of junction at the frontiers organized in such a manner as to unify, facilitate, and accelerate the passage of goods and prevent all blocking and stoppage — more especially with regard to the transportation of food-stuffs and fuel.

The importation and exportation of raw material and manufactured articles originating in the designated states shall be entirely free within these states. No difficulty shall be placed in the way of the free transit of goods to any of the designated states. The products of each designated state shall be free of all charges, restrictions, procedure, or impositions, other than those that may be in vigor within the state itself, with regard to its own natural products.

The currency of each designated state shall be accepted as legal tender by the treasuries, from a convenient time; and as legal tender within the territories of all the designated states in the ordinary practice of trade; and for all commercial transactions, at a rate of exchange to be fixed by the International Economic Council for defined periods, and subject to revision from time to time.

No conditions or restrictions, other than those that are recpiired for the maintenance of order and the safety of international traffic, shall be laid upon travel between the designated states. No obstacle shall be placed in the way of labor contracts between subjects of the designated states, except in such cases as may constitute a breach of the principles established by the Council of the League of Nations. Organized authority for carrying out these principles might be vested in an International Commission of Communications, an International Commission of Customs, and the International Economic Council.

The International Commission of Communications shall have the control and direction of railways and waterways, and shall be responsible for the proper usage, according to the public need, of all rolling-stock and shipping. The decisions of the Commission shall be carried out by the administrative departments to which the execution of the principles laid down concerning transit is entrusted.

The International Commission of Customs shall regulate and direct the trade in raw materials and manufactured articles of the designated states, and more especially with regard to food-stuffs and fuel. The decisions of this Commission shall be carried out by the administrative departments to which the execution of the principles laid down concerning customs is entrusted.

The International Economic Council shall organize the financial control of any among the designated states whose currency, in consequence of inflation or of other circumstances, may have suffered a depreciation, and it may, in consequence, during the period defined above, exercise a repercussion on the exchange of the other designated states.

The International Economic Council shall nominate a Commission of Financial Control for each of the designated states, in whose hands shall be concentrated all legislative and administrative powers within the states in question, for all questions concerning the exchange and the budget of the state; and its decisions shall be subject to the approval of the International Economic Council before they have the authority of law.

This International Economic Council shall be nominated for five years unless, its task being accomplished within a shorter period, it is deemed advisable to allow it to depute to the governments of the individual Succession States the continuance of the task primarily assumed by it.

The primary task of the International Economic Council shall be to apportion the output of the Silesian coalfields in such quantities as may be necessary for the resumption of the industrial life of the Succession States, on a basis of pre-war consumption. The quantity of Silesian coal required by Germany, and provided for in the Treaty of Versailles, shall continue to be supplied.

Italy shall be reckoned among the Succession States. The surplus output of the Silesian coalfields, when the claims of the Succession States shall have been met, shall be disposed of in the open market.

The initiative for the promotion of the International Economic Council should be assumed by the government of the United States. The precise task of the Council should be definitely defined. The Council should consist of one national representative for each European country whose interests would be directly involved in the issues under consideration. Only those persons who possess direct active experience of economic and financial questions should be nominated, in preference to men, however eminent, whose training has fitted them for control rather than for action in the economic or financial field.

In this manner, Europe and the world might set their faces at last toward a lasting hope of fruitful endeavor. A systematic record of achievement would save the world from the hazards of undisciplined experiment. The deep scars of a fratricidal war might be in time healed and obliterated.