Peaceless Europe Part 10

IV

THE CONQUERORS AND THE CONQUERED

How many are the States of Europe? Before the War the political geography of Europe was almost tradition. To-day every part of Europe is in a state of flux. The only absolute certainty is that in Continental Europe conquerors and conquered are in a condition of spiritual, as well as economic, unrest. It is difficult indeed to say how many political unities there are and how many are lasting, and what new wars are being prepared, if a way of salvation is not found by some common endeavour to install peace, which the peace of Paris has not done. How many thinking men can, without perplexity, remember how many States there are and what they are: arbitrary creations of the treaties, creations of the moment, territorial limitations imposed by the necessities of international agreements. The situation of Russia is so uncertain that no one knows whether new States will arise as a result of her continuous disintegration, or if she will be reconstructed in a solid, unified form, and other States amongst those which have arisen will fall.

Without taking into account those traditional little States which are merely historical curiosities, as Monaco, San Marino, Andorra, Monte Santo, not counting Iceland as a State apart, not including the Saar, which as a result of one of the absurdities of the Treaty of Versailles is an actual State outside Germany, but considering Montenegro as an existing State, Europe probably comprises thirty States. Some of them are, however, in such a condition that they do not give promise of the slightest guarantee of life or security.

Europe has rather Balkanized herself: not only the War came from the Balkans, but also many ideas, which have been largely exploited in parliamentary and newspaper circles. Listening to many speeches and being present at many events to-day leaves the sensation of being in Belgrade or at Sarajevo.

Europe, including Russia and including also the Polar archipelagos, covers an area of a little more than ten million square kilometres.

Canada is of almost the same size; the United States of America has about the same territory.

The historical procedure before the War was towards the formation of large territorial unities; the _post-bellum_ procedure is entirely towards a process of dissolution, and the fractionizing, resulting a little from necessity and a little also from the desire to dismember the old Empires and to weaken Germany, has a.s.sumed proportions almost impossible to foresee.

In the relations between the various States good and evil are not abstract ideas: political actions can only be judged by their results.

If the treaties of peace which have been imposed on the conquered would be capable of application, we could, from an ethnical point of view, regret some or many of the decisions; but we should only have to wait for the results of time for a definite judgment.

The evil is that the treaties which have been signed are not applicable or cannot be applied without the rapid dissolution of Europe.

So the balance-sheet of the peace, after three years from the armistice--that is, three years from the War--shows on the whole a worsening of the situation. The spirit of violence has not died out, and perhaps in some countries not even diminished; on the other hand the causes of material disagreement have increased, the inequality has augmented, the division between the two groups has grown, and the causes of hatred have been consolidated. An a.n.a.lysis of the foreign exchanges indicated a process of undoing and not a tendency to reconstruction.

We have referred in a general manner to the conditions of Germany as a result of the Treaty of Versailles; even worse is the situation of the other conquered countries in so far that either they have not been treated with due regard, or they have lost so much territory that they have no possibility of reconstructing their national existence. Such is the case with Austria, with Turkey and with Hungary. Bulgaria, which has a tenacious and compact population composed of small agriculturists, has less difficult conditions of reconstruction.

Germany has fulfilled loyally all the conditions of the disarmament.

After she had handed over her fleet she destroyed her fortifications, she destroyed all the material up to the extreme limit imposed by the treaties, she disbanded her enormous armies. If in any one of the works of destruction she had proceeded with a bad will, if she had tried to delay them, it would be perfectly understandable. A different step carries one to a dance or to a funeral. At the actual moment Germany has no fleet, no army, no artillery, and is in a condition in which she could not reply to any act of violence. This is why all the violence of the Poles against Germany has found hardly any opposition.

All this is so evident that no one can raise doubts on the question.

Everyone remembers, said Hindenburg, the difficult task that the United States had to put in the field an army of a million men.

Nevertheless they had the protection of the ocean during the period when they were preparing their artillery and their aerial material.

Germany for her aviation, for her heavy artillery, for her armaments, is not even separated by the ocean from her Allies, and, on the contrary, they are firmly established in German territory; it would require many months to prepare a new war, during which France and her Allies would not be resting quietly.

General Ludendorff recently made certain declarations which have a capital importance, since they fit the facts exactly. He declared that a war of reconquest by Germany against the Allies and especially against France is for an indefinite time completely impossible from the technical and military point of view. France has an army largely supplied with all the means of battle, ready to march at any time, which could smash any German military organization hostile to France.

The more so since by the destruction of the German war industries Germany has lost every possibility of arming herself afresh. It is absurd to believe that a German army ready for modern warfare can be organized and put on a war footing secretly. A German army which could fight with the least possible hope of success against an enemy army armed and equipped in the most modern manner would first of all have to be based on a huge German war industry, which naturally could not be improvised or built up in secret. Even if a third power wished to arm Germany, it would not be possible to arm her so quickly and mobilize her in sufficient time to prevent the enemy army from obtaining an immediate and decisive victory.

It would be necessary, as everyone realizes even in France, that Germany should wish to commit suicide. In consequence of the treaty there is the "maximum of obstacles which mind can conceive" to guard against any German peril; and against Germany there have been acc.u.mulated "_such guarantees that never before has history recorded the like_" (Tardieu), and Germany cannot do anything for many years.

Mobilization requires years and years for preparation and the greatest publicity for its execution.

Wilson spoke of guarantees _given and received_ for the reduction of armaments. Instead, after the treaties had been concluded, if the conquered were completely disarmed, the conquering nations have continued to arm. Almost all the conquering nations have not only high expenses but more numerous armies. If the conditions of peace imposed by the treaties were considered supportable, remembering the fact that the late enemies were harmless, against whom are these continuous increase of armaments?

We have already seen the military conditions imposed on Germany--a small mercenary army, no obligatory conscription, no military instruction, no aviation, no artillery except a minimum and insignificant quant.i.ty required by the necessities of interior order.

Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary can only have insignificant armies.

Austria may maintain under arms 30,000 men, but her ruined finances only permit her, according to the latest reports, to keep 21,700; Bulgaria has 20,000 men plus 3,082 gendarmes; Hungary, according to the Treaty of Trianon, has 35,000. Turkey in Europe, which hardly exists any more as a territorial State, except for the city of Constantinople, where the sovereignty of the Sultan is more apparent than real, has not an actual army.

Taken all together the States which formed the powerful nucleus of war of Germany as they are now reduced territorially have under arms fewer than 180,000 men, not including, naturally, those new States risen on the ruins of the old Central Empires, and which arm themselves by the request and sometimes in the interest of some State of the Entente.

The old enemies, therefore, are not in a condition to make war, and are placed under all manner of controls. Sometimes the controls are even of a very singular nature. All have been occupied in giving the sea to the victors. Poland has obtained the absurd paradox of the State of Danzig because it has the sea. The constant aim of the Allies, even in opposition to Italy, has been to give free and safe outlets on the sea coast to the Serb-Croat-Slovene State.

At the Conference of London and San Remo I repeatedly referred to the expenses of these military missions of control and often their outrageous imposition on the conquered who are suffering from hunger.

There are generals who are a.s.signed as indemnity and expenses of all sorts, salaries which are much superior to that of the President of the United States of America. It is necessary to look at Vienna and Budapest, where the people are dying of hunger, to see the carnival of the Danube Commission. For the rest it is only necessary to look at the expense accounts of the Reparations Commissions to be convinced that this sad spectacle of greed and luxury humiliates the victors more than the conquered.

German-Austria has lost every access to the sea. She cannot live on her resources with her enormous capital in ruins. She cannot unite with Germany, though she is a purely German country, because the treaty requires the unanimous consent of the League of Nations, and France having refused, it is therefore impossible. She cannot unite with Czeko-Slovakia, with Hungary and other countries which have been formed from the Austrian Empire, because that is against the aspirations of the German populations, and it would be the formation anew of that Danube State which, with its numerous contrasts, was one of the essential causes of the War. Austria has lost every access to the sea, has consigned her fleet and her merchant marine, but in return has had the advantage of numerous inter-allied commissions of control to safeguard the military, naval and aeronautic clauses. But there are clauses which can no longer be justified, as, for instance, when Austria no longer has a sea coast. (Art. 140 of the Treaty of St.

Germain, which forbids the construction or acquisition of: any sort of submersible vessel, even commercial.) It is impossible to understand why (Art. 143) the wireless high-power station of Vienna is not allowed to transmit other than commercial telegrams under the surveillance of the Allied and a.s.sociated Powers, who take the trouble to determine even the length of the wave to be used.

Before the War, in 1914, France desired to bring her army to the maximum of efficiency; opposite a great German army was to be found a great French army.

Germany had in 1913, according to the Budget presented to the Reichstag, a standing army of 647,000 soldiers of all arms, of which 105,000 were non-commissioned officers and 30,000 officers. It was the greatest army of Europe and of the world, taking into account its real efficiency.

Whilst Germany has no longer an army, France on July 1, 1921, had under arms 810,000 men, of which 38,473 were officers, therefore many more than Germany had before the War. Given its demographic character, it is the greatest military force which has been seen in modern times, and can only have two reasons--either military domination or ruin. The military budget proposed for the present year in the ordinary section is for 2,782 millions of francs, besides that portion paid by Germany for the army of occupation; the extraordinary section of the same budget is for 1,712 millions of francs, besides 635 millions for expenses repayable for the maintenance of troops of occupation in foreign countries.

Austria-Hungary had in 1913 a total of 34,000 officers and 390,249 men; the States which have arisen from her ruins have a good many more. Whilst German-Austria has, as a matter of fact, only 21,700 men and Hungary has only 35,000, Czeko-Slovakia has 150,000 men, of which 10,000 are officers; Jugo-Slavia has about 120,000, of which 8,000 to 10,000 are officers.

But the two allies of France--Belgium and Poland, Belgium no longer neutral, Poland always in disorder and in a state of continual provocation abroad and of increasing anarchy at home--have in their turn armies which previous to the War could have been maintained only by a first-cla.s.s power. Belgium has doubled her peace effectives, which now amount to 113,500 men, an enormous army for a population which is about equal to that of the city of New York or London.

Poland, whose economic conditions are completely disastrous, and may be described as having neither money nor credit any more, but which maintains more employees than any other country on earth, has under arms not fewer than 430,000 men, and often many more, and possibly has to-day many more--about 600,000. Her treaty with France imposes on her military obligations the extension of which cannot be compatible with the policy of a country desiring peace. Poland has, besides, vast dreams of greatness abroad, and growing ruin in the interior. She enslaves herself in order to enslave others, and pretends in her disorder to control and dominate much more intelligent and cultured peoples.

Rumania has under arms 160,000 men besides 80,000 carabineers and 16,000 frontier guards. Greece has, particularly on account of her undertakings in Asia Minor, which only the lesser intelligence of her national exaltations can explain, more than 400,000 men under arms.

She is suffocating under the weight of heavy armaments and can move only with difficulty.

The two pupils of the Entente, Greece and Poland, exactly like naughty children, have a policy of greed and capriciousness. Poland was not the outcome of her own strength, but of the strength of the Entente.

Greece never found the way to contribute heavily to the War with a strong army, and after the War has the most numerous army which she has ever had in her history.

Great Britain and Italy are the only two countries which have largely demobilized; Great Britain in the much greater measure. It is calculated that Great Britain has under arms 201,000 men, of which 15,030 are officers. In this number, however, are not included 75,896 men in India and the personnel of the Air Force.

In Italy, on July 31, 1921, there were under arms 351,076 soldiers and 18,138 officers, in all 369,214, of which, however, 56,529 were carabineers carrying out duties almost exclusively of public order.

Under the pressure and as a result of the example of the States which have come through the War, those States which did not take part have also largely augmented their armies.

So, whilst the conquered have ceased every preoccupation, the neutrals of the War have developed their armaments, and the conquerors have developed theirs beyond measure.

No one can say what may be the position of Bolshevik Russia; probably she has not much less than a million of men under arms, also because in a communist regime the vagabonds and the violent find the easiest occupation in the army.

The conquerors, having disarmed the conquered, have imposed their economic conditions, their absurd moralities and territorial humiliations, as those imposed on Bulgaria, Turkey and Hungary, conditions which are sufficiently difficult to be maintained. And as the ferment of hate develops, the conquerors do not disarm. Above all, the little States do not disarm, who have wanted too much, have obtained too much, and now do not know how to maintain what they have. In many countries for certain social reasons war has become an industry; they live by the state of war. What would they do without a state of war?

In general, then, Europe has considerably more men under arms than in 1913. Not only has it not disarmed, as the Entente always declared would be the consequence of the victory of the principles of democracy, but the victors are always leaning toward further armament.

The more difficult it becomes to maintain the conditions of the peace, because of their severity and their absurdity, the more necessary it is to maintain armies. The conquered have not armies; the conquerors are, or, perhaps, up to a short time ago, were sure that the big armies would serve to enforce the payment of the indemnities. Now, in fact, they would not serve for anything else.

At the Conference of London, after a long discussion in February, 1920, the economic manifesto was drawn up which warned Europe of the perils of the economic situation. Lloyd George and myself were easily agreed in denouncing it as the gravest danger, as the princ.i.p.al cause of high prices and of economic disorder, both as to the maintenance of large armies and in the continuation of the state of war.

A Europe divided distinctly into two parts cannot be pacific even after the conquered have yielded up their arms. The conquerors are bound to arm themselves because of their own inquietude, from the conviction that the only salvation is in force, which allows, if not a true peace, at least an armed peace; if not the development of production and exchange, at least the possibility of cutting off from the markets the very fountains of riches.

Violence begets new violence. If the conditions of the peace cannot be fulfilled, other heavier conditions can be imposed. In France irresponsible people are supporting already the necessity of occupying permanently the Ruhr, that is to say, the greatest German centre for the production of coal, and of not respecting the plebiscite of Upper Silesia.

What has been said about the armies is true also about the fleets.

There is a race towards the increase of naval armaments. If first that was the preoccupation of the conquered, now it is the preoccupation of the conquerors in the exchange of doubts into which they have fallen after the War.