Treaty Revision
I
THE main topic in Europe at the moment is the question of the revision of the Treaties of Peace.
It will be remembered that, early in February last, the German Government declared its readiness solemnly to recognize the frontiers of France and Belgium as established by the Treaty of Versailles, and to guarantee those frontiers against all aggression. Simultaneously the German Government offered to undertake not to seek to modify ‘by force’ the eastern frontiers of Germany, but reserved itself the right of negotiating with Poland on the subject and, if necessary, of claiming rights conferred under Article 19 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
This offer on the part of Germany, which raised implicitly, and for the first time in public, the question of a revision of the territorial status quo in Europe, met with instant support from a certain section of the British press, and from public opinion in neutral countries.
The idea of treaty revision is in itself neither new nor abnormal. Despite diplomatic phraseology, there has never been any such thing as an everlasting treaty. But some surprise is permissible that the question should so soon have arisen — after less than five years — of the revision of treaties which were held to constitute a definitive solution of European problems. Treaties have, as a rule, been longer-lived than five years.
The Treaties of Westphalia (1648), which brought the Thirty Years ‘ War to a close, were an epitome of the political wisdom of the seventeenth century. They fixed the frontiers of Germany, established a balance of power between the great Powers of Western Europe, and put an end to the wars of religion which had devastated the Continent for more than a century. These were signal services to Europe. And yet the Treaties of Westphalia lasted no more than fifty years in their original form. Early in the eighteenth century they were thrown once more into the melting pot by the War of the Spanish Succession, and they were finally revised by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.
This new settlementof Europe lasted, despite several severe shocks, until the French Revolution. The wars of the Revolution and the Empire ended in various treaties which had little or no permanent value, since they rested solely on the military power of France. But in 1814 and 1815 the Treaties of Vienna and Paris made a new settlement of Europe which their authors hoped and believed would be final.
The Treaties of Vienna and Paris were based on the assumption that the only aggressive — or, as we now say, the only imperialist — Power in Europe was France, and that every precaution should be taken to protect her peaceful neighbors against her. It was for this reason that the Belgian fortresses were handed over to the Netherlands. In 1830, however, the Belgian Revolution compelled the Powers to relinquish this precaution. Whether they would or no, the Powers who had built up the Treaty of Vienna were compelled to place it anew on the stocks and to grant the Belgian people the freedom which they demanded.
Later the development of Germany, the supremacy of Prussia, and the aggressive principles of Bismarckian policy shattered the very foundations upon which the settlement of 1814-15 rested. Little by little the revolutionary disturbances of 1848, the FrancoPrussian War of 1870, and the RussoTurkish War of 1878 undid the work of Vienna and Paris and, when the World War broke out in 1914, little more than the memory remained of the treaties of 1814 and 1815.
The above summary is an indication of the essential weakness and of the precarious nature of treaties. Time goes by, situations change, and there is nothing stable under the sun. History is no more static than is life. When the Treaty of Vienna was concluded, Napoleon Ill’s pet principle of nationality and President Wilson’s pet principle of self-determination were alike unrecognized The only principle which weighed was that of dynastic rights, as interpreted in the political theories of a Talleyrand or a Metternich. Nevertheless, the idea of the rights of peoples, once launched by the French Revolution, lived on in the world. It was before long destined to reappear on the surface of politics and to provide the lirst shocks to the laboriously erected edifice of 1814-15.
Here we may recognize the first factor in the essential instability of treaties — namely, the moral factor.
But there is also another factor — that of the balance of power at a given moment. Treaties of peace after a war are almost always based, not on justice, but on victory. Now victory, however fair an index it may be of the material superiority of the victor at a given moment, may be fortuitous in character and due to ephemeral causes. France, under Napoleon I, was the greatest Power in Europe; but she succumbed to a coalition. So also the Germany of to-day. She has succumbed to a powerful coalition; but she remains herself powerful, even more powerful than any one of her potential adversaries taken singly. So soon as there is any relaxation of the bonds of union in which the war united the Allies, the problem of material force arises afresh and must be stated in other terms. The effect of this is that, once again, the very foundations of the Peace Treaty are called into question. This is inevitable after any war in which a coalition is engaged.
II
Are the 1919 Treaties such as to be able to withstand this process of evolution?
It is doubtful whether they are, and that for more than one reason.
1. The Treaty of Versailles was concluded on the morrow of the Armistice, and in all the intoxication of triumph. Germany was crushed and starved. The Allies were, on the whole, united — although they did not see eye to eye on every detail. The war mentality was still uppermost and there were few, if any, limits to what could be done with Germany.
Since 1919 the whole situation and outlook has changed with extraordinary rapidity and to an incredible extent. Germany has passed through a period of indescribable chaos, only to revive once again. She has not recovered her former predominant position, but she has to some extent reëstablished her economic power. On the other hand, the Allies have gone their own way and each one of them has now to deal with Germany singly. America has retired, like Achilles to his tent. Great Britain has returned to her colonial and imperial preoccupations. The various States which once composed the alliance against the Central Powers have not the same interest in compelling the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, and France — which has the greatest interest of all — is by no means the strongest among them.
Thus the whole Peace is the expression of a balance between essentially unstable forces. France has but forty million inhabitants to face Germany’s sixty millions. Poland, crushed between the millstones of Germany and Russia, is in a position of decided military and geographical inferiority, with frontiers open at all points to invasion.
Take now the case of Hungary. Hungary dominated her neighbors for centuries, not so much because of the force of mere tradition as because the Magyar race and the Magyar sense of nationality were among the strongest in Central Europe. Thus the Peace, which has in effect subordinated the wolves to the sheep, is no adequate expression of the real power of the signatory States.
An attempt has been made to balance the comparative weakness of the victors by the disarmament of the vanquished. It has been thought sufficient, in order to secure a lasting peace, to deprive Germany, Hungary, and the other Central Powers of their arms, while leaving the Allied and Associated Powers their full complement of military strength. The first result of this was to compel the new States of Central Europe, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, to establish powerful armies and to saddle themselves with the burden of a heavy debt, entirely disproportionate to their real financial resources.
The energetic pacifism of a statesman like Mr. Benes, for instance, is largely due to his conviction that his country cannot for long bear the crushing burden of her military expenditure.
Nothing can be more certain than that this method of securing equilibrium is futile.
History shows that it is impossible to disarm a nation. For all his power, Napoleon I could not prevent Prussia from reconstructing her army after Jena. Great Britain, in a century of effort, has not succeeded in disarming little Ireland. To imagine that in such circumstances it would be possible, by means of a system of external control, however rigorous and painstaking, to secure the disarmament not only of Hungary, but also of Germany, is a pure illusion, and this fact is being more and more recognized to-day.
It is true that Germany and Hungary are at the moment disarmed as regards war material, and in comparison with those who might in the future be their enemies. But they both remain in possession of their reserves of manpower, and the evolution of military science may one day put them in a position to reconstruct their military power rapidly. Hence the alarm of the victorious nations, who feel that their own strength is inadequate to withstand a counter-offensive on the part of their beaten enemies.
2. It is well known that, in its broad outlines, the Treaty of Versailles was drawn up on the basis of Wilsonian conceptions of policy. It endeavored to secure for all peoples the right of selfdetermination. It was in pursuit of this ideal that the Treaty created new States and dismembered the AustroHungarian Empire.
But President Wilson had to take account of certain insuperable obstacles and of certain inevitable facts. He was unable to delimit the frontiers of the new States as he would have wished. Moreover, the right of self-determination is impossible, in practice, if followed to its logical conclusions, and this for three reasons.
The first reason is that the districts in question were districts in which it was virtually impossible accurately to determine the wishes of the inhabitants. Plebiscites would have been useless. The authors of the Treaty were thus compelled to make up their own minds and to act upon their own decisions.
Being unable to ask the various peoples what they wanted, they proceeded on hypothesis, on the basis of the external factor of language. In practice, the right of self-determination has become the right of States to annex peoples of the same tongue as themselves. In Switzerland, for example, the linguistic frontier has moved two or three times in the course of centuries. If any attempt were made to draw from such movements even the smallest deduction as to the patriotism of the population, the resulting conclusions would be utterly fallacious.
This is what happened with the postwar settlement. Wherever plebiscites took place, they supplied irrefutable proof that the argument from language is false. In East Prussia, for instance, a Polish-speaking population voted 97 per cent in favor of Germany. In Upper Silesia, although the majority of the inhabitants are Polish-speaking, the vote went in favor of Germany. The same thing happened in Central Schleswig, where the prevailing language is Danish. If the peoples of Austria-Hungary had been asked to express an opinion, it is certain that the map of Europe would now be very different from what it actually is.
In the second place, it is impossible to carry out to the full in practice the principle of the right of peoples to selfdetermination. Many districts in Central Europe are inhabited by an inextricably confused tangle of races. The Treaty, therefore, — and it could hardly do otherwise, — created new nations; and these new nations were composite entities. It is not too much to say that the number of irreconeilables in Europe from the racial point of view is no less great than before 1914. The inevitable result has been the creation of new irredentist movements.
Thirdly, the authors of the Treaty were compelled — or thought they were compelled — to take account of certain factors alien to the principle of self-determination; thus economic, strategic, historical, and diplomatic considerations all contributed to hinder the full application of the principle.
Take, first, the example of Hungary. Before the war that country was composed of a central plain surrounded by mountains. The plain was inhabited by the Magyars, the mountains by other races. At the foot of the mountains runs a circular line of railway on which stands a series of large and purely Magyar towns, which serve as outlets for the mountain valleys. Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and the Serb-CroatSlovene Kingdom represented that, without the railway and the outlets, the mountain districts granted to them could not exist, economically speaking, and could not be defended. This point of view was adopted, and thus districts with a total population of several million Magyars were added to the territories of three States. For the same reason three and a half million Germans have been given to Czechoslovakia — since it was represented that it was impossible to cut the country in two and to take away its main industrial resources.
Poland pleaded that she needed an outlet on the open sea and, as no portion of the Polish race touches the sea, there has been created, between Germany and her Province of East Prussia, the famous ‘ Polish Corridor,’ inhabited by Germans, which is a geographical monstrosity and a prime cause of the present political instability of Europe.
In order to allow Poland to play the part assigned to her in the new balance of European power, and to replace Russia as a counterpoise to Germany on Germany’s eastern flank, Poland has been given Russian and Ukrainian populations to the east, which accessions of territory have made her nearly twice as large as she would have been had she been constituted on a purely linguistic or ethnological basis.
Finally, President Wilson himself was so absorbed by the problem of Fiume that he allowed the Germaninhabited South Tyrol to be handed over to Italy. This annexation had been one of the provisions of the Treaty of London, and was based on purely strategic grounds.
But the decisions which were most disastrous for the peace of Europe were not taken during the Peace Conference, or in the presence of President Wilson. After his departure, on the very morrow of the Peace, at a moment when no one would have accepted the responsibility of renewing the war, there took place certain sudden and violent seizures of territory. The Italians occupied Fiume, which President Wilson had refused them. The Poles took Vilna in the same manner, and induced the Conference of Ambassadors to grant them the whole of Eastern Galicia, which is inhabited by a population of Ruthenians, who hate them. Finally, Bessarabia was allotted to Rumania for historic reasons; but Russia has never recognized this decision, in which she is directly interested.
It is thus easy to indict the Peace settlement from the territorial point of view. These mistakes, however, were inevitable, because of the inextricable tangle of conflicting interests and because of the complexity and immensity of the problem and the sheer inadequacy of human understanding to grapple with it. Is it certain that those who most severely criticize the Peace could have done better?
Moreover, the consequences of these errors would not have been so serious if they had not been accompanied by a deplorable spirit of nationalism and protectionism. The Peace drew new frontiers across old-established economic units, and artificially segregated populations which had been for centuries accustomed to live together, to work in common, and mutually to supply one another’s requirements. A change of this nature could clearly not be accomplished ‘in a night’ without a considerable shock. The least that should have been done was to maintain so far as possible the old economic relations between the populations thus severed. What happened was exactly the contrary. The new States thought, rightly or wrongly, that the best means of ensuring their national unity was to surround themselves with customs barriers. They sought to destroy the old complexities which were due to the natural play of economic forces, in order to transform themselves into complete and self-sufficing national units. In a word, their object was to establish their economic, as well as their political, sovereignty as completely and rapidly as possible. So far from imitating certain frec-zone systems, which are a heritage from the past, and of which several examples are to be found in Europe, they preferred to shut themselves behind a barrier of protective tariffs and import and export prohibitions. Communications were suddenly interrupted. Traditional currents of trade were turned aside, and all this naturally aggravated the sufferings, regrets, and hatreds arising out of the separation.
Such is now the situation of Central Europe. Mr. Benes, the Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, recently summarized it as follows in a speech before the Council of the League of Nations: —
‘From Finland in the North through the Baltic Republics, Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, down the valley of the Danube to Constantinople and Southern Greece, there are regions where thousands of conflicts may break out, beginning to-day by the murder of a frontier guard or the desecration of a Hag, and easily ending to-morrow in a terrible war.'
3. To causes arising out of territorial and military instability there must now be added a third cause, the consequences of which are no less serious — namely the problem of Reparations.
At the moment when the Treaty of Versailles was concluded there was a general idea that, after a war like the Great War, the world would need economic reconstruction and would require to replenish its exhausted stocks. Thus a period of great prosperity had been foreseen. It was thought that industry would not be able to meet the demand for goods, that it would be able to make unlimited profits, and that the volume of trade would grow steadily. This was an historical error. All great wars, and in particular those at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were followed by long periods of economic depression. But the error was a general one at the time, and on it was based the whole system of Reparations. No figure was high enough to frighten the authors of the Treaty, because they thought that Germany should be in a position to export everything she could manufacture and to manufacture everything she wished.
It will be remembered how, during the spring of 1921, the situation, which had until then seemed to justify this optimistic prediction, suddenly changed. A complicated series of economic reactions suddenly arrested exports and imports in all countries, and it seemed impossible to ask Germany to pay what had been expected of her, or even considerably lower sums.
The conviction of this impossibility did not immediately take root in people’s minds. It was thought that with good-will it would be possible to carry out the Treaty. It was thought also — and this was the most serious mistake of all — that the prosperity of one nation could be founded upon the ruin of another. This was the guiding idea of Interallied reparation policy until the London Conference of 1924.
But at last the inadequacy of the results obtained, the gradual but ever more catastrophic depreciation of the German exchange, the disastrous reactions which this depreciation threatened to exercise on the internal economy of other nations, and, finally, France’s urgent need of receiving something, however small, led the Governments to a proper appreciation of the facts. Thus began, so far as the Reparations chapter is concerned, the real revision of the Treaty of Peace.
III
It is somewhat surprising to note the agitation of a certain section of European opinion, above all in France, whenever the words ‘treaty revision’ are pronounced. As a matter of fact, treaty revision has already begun and has been going on for a long time in various ways.
In the first place, the two texts of the Treaty, — English and French, — both of which are authentic, were not identical on various points, and each has had to be revised to suit the other.
Secondly, certain Articles have been shown to be inapplicable and have had to be, at least tacitly, abandoned.
Thirdly, certain Articles have proved to be contrary to the interests of the Allies, who have therefore let them lapse.
Fourthly, other Articles have been violated or tendenciously interpreted, and this is equivalent to revision.
Finally, certain Articles have been formally modified, either by the Allies themselves or by the Allies in agreement with Germany.
This is not the place in which to undertake a complete study of all these amendments, whether they are de jure or de facto. In 1922 the Reparation Commission published a synoptic table of the Treaty and of the jurisprudence which has interpreted or amended it. This work is contained in a large volume, and there is no Article in Parts VIII and IX of the Treaty which has not been appreciably modified.
It will be sufficient here to recall one or two facts.
Take first of all the territorial clauses, which are the easiest to carry out and to supervise. What has become of Article 34 of the Treaty of Versailles concerning the views of the inhabitants of Eupen and Malmedy? Article 42 was modified by the Allies when they requested Germany to maintain certain fortifications on the right bank of the Rhine. Article 43 was violated when Germany sent her troops into the Ruhr to put down a Communist revolt. So also the occupation of the Ruhr by France has been considered, although for other reasons, a violation of the Treaty. The whole chapter concerning the Saar Basin and its government by the League of Nations has been modified in various ways. Poland has complained on more than one occasion that the provisions of the Treaty concerning the status of the Free City of Danzig have not been interpreted in their proper spirit. Article 88, concerning the plebiscite in Upper Silesia, has given rise to acute controversy. Germany unceasingly complains that Article 89, concerning traffic facilities through the Polish Corridor, has not been applied. Article 99, concerning the Memel territory, was not applied for several years, and still gives rise to discussion.
Part V of the Treaty (military, naval, and air clauses) was modified in 1922, when the Allies stated that they would be satisfied if Germany carried out certain conditions considerably less severe than those contained in the Treaty itself. So also the Allies authorized Germany for internal reasons to increase the numbers of her ‘Security Police.’ Finally, Article 213 has been interpreted by the League of Nations in a way which has profoundly modified its sense.
Part VIII of the Treaty, concerning penalties for the authors of the war and for war criminals, has not been carried out.
As regards Reparations (Part VIII), modifications may be noted in Articles 233, 235, 236, and 239; in Paragraphs 12, 16, 17, and 18 of Annex 2; and in Paragraphs 1, 2, and 3 of Annex 3. Annex 4, concerning deliveries in kind, Annex 5, concerning coal deliveries, and Articles 249 to 270 have been revised. Article 297 has been modified by the renunciation on the part of Great Britain of certain rights which were hers under the Treaty. Finally, the Dawes Plan has introduced general ideas and obligations of an entirely different nature into the whole of the chapter.
Article 386, which submits all disputes concerning the regulation of international transport to the League of Nations, has been violated by France, and Germany has not protested under it.
Article 393 has been amended by legal methods, and many other Articles of Part XIII, in particular the important Article 405 on the ratification of Labor Conventions, have not been exactly applied. So, too, Article 435, on the question of the free zones of HauteSavoie, has given rise to long discussions and is at the moment under Franco-Swiss arbitration.
This summary enumeration shows that it would be a grave mistake to suppose that the Treaties of 1919 are inviolable, that they have not been in any way modified, and that they cannot be touched without collapsing. On the contrary, the truth is that revision is only one of the various methods by which treaties evolve. It is the most apparent and obvious, and the least frequent; and the Treaties, although they have not been officially revised, no longer exist in the form in which they were conceived.
It may be presumed that, as time goes on and according as situations change, the process of diplomatic revision will be hastened and accentuated.
Take a concrete case as an example. It will be remembered that Germany, in expressing her desire to become a Member of the League of Nations, pointed out that her disarmament under the Treaty of Peace would prevent her from assuming all the obligations of Members of the League such as are contained in Article 16 of the Covenant. The Council of the League of Nations gave the correct legal reply that it was impossible to make differences between Members and to create privileges within the League.
If, therefore, Germany enters the League it will be on an equal footing, with the same rights and duties as the other States. But is it not clear that, in this case, the reasoning may be turned round and that, when she can no longer invoke her disarmament in order not to be forced to carry out Article 16, Germany can at least invoke the application of Article 16 as a reason for not executing the disarmament clauses, so as to obtain some revision of them? It must be admitted that the argument is very strong. If there are equal duties, there should, it seems, be equal rights and equal resources; and any supplementary arrangements which Germany may make for the security of her former enemies, and any proofs which she gives of her will to peace and her good faith, must necessarily lead toward a revision of the military clauses of the Treaty, which are based on the hypothesis of German aggressiveness and bad faith.
This is what alarms those people in France who have no confidence in Germany.
IV
On an important point the Treaty of Versailles has introduced an innovation. Whereas in the past all political treaties were supposed to be perpetual, and it was left to time or force to make the necessary readjustments in them, the Treaties of 1919 have expressly provided for a procedure for revision, and even for more than one procedure.
Article 26 of the Covenant runs as follows: —
Amendments to this Covenant will take effect when ratified by the Members of the league whose Representatives compose the Council and by a majority of the Members of the League whose Representatives compose the Assembly.
No such Amendment shall bind any Member of the League which signifies its dissent therefrom, but in that case it shall cease to be a Member of the League.
This procedure applies only to the Covenant of the League of Nations, and has already been put in practice on several occasions. Article 4 of the Covenant, concerning the election of nonpermanent Members of the Council; Article 6, concerning the allocation of expenses; Articles 12, 13, and 15, concerning the judicial procedure for the settlement of disputes; Article 16, concerning collective sanctions in the case of a violation of the Covenant; and Article 25, on the procedure for amendment, have been successively modified, although the amendment of Article 6 has alone come into force, since the other amendments have not been ratified by all the Members of the Council of the League of Nations.
Article 422 of the Treaty of Versailles provides for a similar procedure for the revision of Part XIII of the Treaty concerning the International Labor Organization. An amendment to Article 393, which was adopted by the International Labor Conference, has not yet been ratified.
But, apart from these particular provisions, Article 19 contains an entirely new and very important principle in international law. ‘The Assembly,’ says this Article, ‘may from time to time advise the reconsideration by Members of the League of treaties which have become inapplicable and the consideration of international conditions whose continuance might endanger the peace of the world.’
This Article, the great merit of which is that it applies without distinction to all treaties, including the treaty of which it is a part, was due to a suggestion originally made by the Fabian Society in London.
There has as yet been no occasion to apply Article 19. It is, therefore, impossible at the moment to attempt any appreciation of it from the legal point of view.
All that can be said is that the Article lays down three principles. The first is that the Assembly alone, to the exclusion of the Council, is competent to apply Article 19. The second is that the decisions of the Assembly are not compulsory upon members of the League of Nations. The third principle is that, like all the recommendations of the Assembly, these decisions may be taken by a simple majority vote, the representatives of the parties concerned not taking part.
It would be premature to go beyond the affirmation of these principles. The procedure is not fixed, and it has often been asked whether Article 19 could work in practice.
Once only, hitherto, the question was raised in the League of Nations — by Peru and Bolivia. These States asked the Assembly to recommend the revision of the Treaty of Ancon which they concluded in 1883 with Chile and which had since been submitted to the arbitration of President Coolidge. The question was considered by a Committee composed of Mr. Scialoja (Italy), Mr. Urrutia (Colombia), and Mr. de Peralta (Costa Rica).
In giving its opinion, the Committee stated that the Assembly of the League of Nations could not by itself modify any treaty, since the amendment of treaties remained the exclusive competence of the contracting States. The Assembly could therefore only request the Members of the League of Nations to proceed to a further consideration of certain international situations. The Committee then continued in the following terms: —
Such advice can only be given in cases where treaties have become inapplicable — that is to say, when the state of affairs existing at the moment of their conclusion has subsequently undergone, either materially or morally, such radical changes that their application has ceased to be reasonably possible, or in cases of the existence of international conditions whose continuance might endanger the peace of the world.
It will be seen that this interpretation is restrictive; but it has no legal force. It would, however, be an exaggeration to think that Article 19, even though limited, has no value. It might in some future crisis afford the ideal solution of a dispute. It is not easy to use and it is not desirable that it should be frequently invoked; but it is none the less a great triumph for the most modern conceptions of international law, and an essential part of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
Speaking generally, the tenor of the Covenant is conservative. Article 10, in particular, gives countries which possess a given territory a guaranty that such territory may in no case be taken from them by force. Strictly interpreted it means that the existing frontiers of Europe cannot be modified by war. Article 16, which is the sanction and support of Article 10, has a similar meaning. Taken separately, therefore, the object of these Articles may be said to be to crystallize Europe in the situation in which she has been placed by the Treaties of Peace. The Geneva Protocol further strengthens these provisions by declaring all war illegal and by substituting for force in all cases an arbitration which can rest only upon existing law and existing treaties. If, therefore, Article 19 of the Covenant did not exist, no modification of the present territorial arrangement of Europe would be possible, since the status quo could not be changed either by force or by law.
Happily, however, the authors of the Covenant foresaw this. They saw that there must be a corollary to Articles 10 and 16 and that, in order that the Articles could be applied in the spirit and in the letter, there should be some means of modifying legally and peacefully international situations which became intolerable. This is the meaning of Article 19.
V
It has been seen that, politically speaking, the revision of the Treaties would appear to be inevitable. Legally it is possible; but is it desirable in existing circumstances?
It is understood that Article 19 remains. It would be impossible at the moment, when Germany is of her own initiative making a great effort to enter the League of Nations, to forbid her to appeal to one of the only Articles in the Treaty of Peace which is favorable to her. But the question arises, is the present a favorable moment for appealing to the Article?
In such a matter nothing could be more disastrous than overhaste. Europe is just recovering from a long and painful crisis, and could not at the moment bear a further operation. She must be left the time, first to get rid of her fever, and then to recover her health. It is only later that account can be taken, in the light of experience, of her real requirements. What the peoples of Europe chiefly lack to-day is the feeling of security. They are living in constant apprehension of another war, and this anxiety is exercising a paralyzing effect upon them. It is preventing them from coming together and from working in common for the reconstruction of the Continent. A premature revision of the territorial clauses of the Treaties, or merely a campaign in favor of such revision, would still further diminish the feeling of security, would increase the instability of public opinion, and would ultimately have an effect the very opposite of the one intended.
This danger may be prevented by the Five Power Pact proposed by Herr Stresemann. In itself the idea of this Pact is undoubtedly good. It affords a welcome solution of the problem of French security, and nothing could be more imprudent than peremptorily to reject it.
But it would seem, from the speeches of certain German statesmen, that the offer is accompanied by certain implicit reservations with regard to the Polish frontiers. There is nothing surprising in this. Germany is solemnly and voluntarily recognizing the inviolability of her western frontiers. She is offering to conclude with Poland an arbitration treaty which can rest only on the basis of existing international law, and she promises not to seek to modify her eastern frontier by force. It may easily be understood that in these circumstances she wishes to appeal to Article 19 of the Covenant, and German statesmen do not think that they can wait any longer to say so. They arc pursuing a twofold end: in the first place, they wish to reassure their own public opinion, which might accuse them of weakness or even of treason; secondly, they wish to create in Anglo-Saxon countries a state of opinion which is favorable to their claims.
But, for these very reasons, Polish opinion has been profoundly disturbed. Poland, which has just achieved financial reconstruction and which is still at grips with all the most serious questions raised by the creation of a new State made out of portions which have been divided for more than a century, cannot certainly, without serious dangers for her internal life, tolerate the prospect of a further mutilation. It may easily be understood that the fear of a new partition is an ever-present nightmare with her. There is no question here at issue whether the frontiers given to Poland are or are not wise. In the opinion of the writer, they might, on certain points at least, have been drawn with greater prudence. But to have made them different at the outset is one thing, and to remake them to-day is quite another thing. It is too soon. Time alone will make the situation clearer.
What do we know of the future? In a few years a better appreciation of the economic interests of countries may lead them to collaborate. They may even succeed, on certain disputed frontiers, in establishing free economic zones. They may even come to reduce the inconveniences of those artificial frontiers, which hitherto they have endeavored to augment. In a word, when men’s minds grow calmer these questions may solve themselves.
That is why two ideas which are only apparently in contradiction should not be forgotten. The first is that any revision of the territorial status of Europe is premature at the moment. The second is that revision of the Treaties of Peace is both possible and necessary; but it should not begin with frontier modification. That would be to put the cart before the horse. When certain economic or military clauses of the Treaties have been revised, and when collaboration between those who were formerly enemies has been shown to be workable, it will be much easier to deal with the great questions the solution of which is at the moment impossible.