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Regicide at Marseille |
STATUS QUO AND REVISION
"There is not one of the peoples or provinces that constituted the Empire of the Habsburgs to whom gaining their independence has not brought the tortures which ancient poets and theologians had reserved for the damned."
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
The Gathering Storm
A survey of the background of the Marseille regicide, a composite of crime and heroism, leaves no doubt as to the inability of the Peace-Makers to create stable conditions in the Balkans, conducive to lasting peace. In the Balkan Peninsula, to strife inherited from the Ottoman Empire, frustration was added by disregard of the insistent demand of the small but dynamic Southern Slav nations for self-determination. The entire European order was debilitated by the reluctance of the war-time Allies to modify the ill-conceived dispositions of the Peace Treaties which prevented the consolidation of the Continent, imperiled by the exorbitant ambitions of the totalitarian dictators. Maintenance of the status quo, as opposed to a growing demand for a revision of the Peace Treaties, became almost from its beginning the leading motive of the era extending between the two World Wars.
Before entering the labryrinth of the League of Nations, I have to elucidate this conflict. For at Geneva, the assassination of King Alexander I. of Yugoslavia, served mainly as a pretext for the achievement of a political goal, the chastisement of Hungary, innocent of the said crime, but guilty of demanding justice through Treaty revision.
Since the beginning of 1918, when President Wilson proclaimed his
fourteen points, there existed a basic difference between him and the European
Allies in the interpretation of his peace program. It was the people of the
hostile Central Powers, not the Allies, who greeted his principles as a promise
of deliverance from evil. Exhausted and mortally sick with the horrors of the
long war, they saw in the American proclamation the blueprint of a better world
which would bring peace, forgiveness and a just order to all. High up, on the
icy slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, I saw the remnants of the gallant
Austro - Hungarian Army raise their eyes heavenward, thankful for what was now
in sight: "peace without victory." The last point in President Wilson's
programme seemed to be of specific interest. It promised "political
independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike"
guaranteed by "a general association of nations."
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The reaction of Allied Europe was vastly different. The fourteen points
were regarded and used at first as a brilliant propaganda gimmick for the
undermining of the Central Powers' protracted resistance. And when this goal
was achieved, irrespective of Wilsonian principles, the victors sought
insurance against the recurrence of a new war and tried to reap the profits of
their hard-won victory. Mockingly, Clemenceau commented that "the American
President has given us four points more than did the good Lord." The League of
Nations, the culmination of President Wilson's dream, "could be nothing more or
less than the perpetuation of the alliance which had won the victory, the
eternal guarantor of that cause of right and justice which, to their mind, was
their own."1
It lies outside the field of the present study to describe the often desperate
efforts of President Wilson to induce the victors to agree to peace treaties
which would satisfy his principles. He failed, mainly, because he adhered to
the belief that the people, as contrasted with their leaders, were always
generous and enlightened. He probably never realized that the masses were
completely unable to comprehend the complex problems of international relations
and the unlikeness of other national existences, so different from their own.
During the period of the Paris peace-making, the victorious governments proved
incapable of moderation because of their vengeful public opinions. Even in
levelheaded England, it was public-opinion-gone-wild, which made Lloyd George
accept such slogans as "Hang the Kaiser!" and make the Germans pay "their last
farthing"! Wilson's influence on the Conference was diminished also by
premature demobilization of the American armed forces, carried out before the
President left for the Paris peace negotiations. In 1945, this blunder was
repeated on a grand scale.
Political leadership is an art, much more than a science. Seemingly
incompatible requirements such as freedom and order, or rights and duties, have
to be satisfied by the leader at the same time. At the Paris Peace Conference,
President Wilson's scientific mind had grasped correctly the inevitable dualism
which fornis the knotty problem for every peacemaker: to restore the stability
of disturbed international relations while providing for the possibility of
peaceful change. President Wilson's brainchild, the Covenant of the League of
Nations, rested on
1 Frank H. Simonds, How Europe Made Peace without America (Garden City
Doubleday, 1927), p. 26.
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two indispensable pillars: Article X, which undertook the defense of the status
quo as defined in the Paris Peace Treaties; and Article XIX which provided the
possibility of reconsidering these Treaties. In his concept, these two
principles held equal weight and were to keep each other in balance. In fact,
in the First Draft of the Covenant, Articles X and XIX were still united and
formed Article XX, which contained, according to David Hunter Miller, "the
guarantees of Article X, subject, however, to territorial changes."2 The power
to revise peace treaties was reserved, by general consent, to the League of
Nations.
Yet, from the very beginning of the post - war period, concern for
the maintenance of the status quo became the compelling factor in the nolicy of
the Allied Powers faced on the Continent with revolutions, chaos and the armed
hordes of Lenin and Trotsky. In order to restore stability in Europe, they had
to insist that the territorial and all other dispositions of the Peace Treaties
be generally respected. To see to this, became the duty of the League of
Nations. The first sentence of Article X declared: "The Members of the League
undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the
territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the
League."
In the Paris Commission of the League of Nations, prominent delegates,
among them the British Lord Robert Cecil, "did not like" Article X.3 He wished
to emphasize that the requirements of security and elasticity were of equal
importance and suggested "that there should be a reference in this Article (X)
to Article XIX regarding the reconsideration of Treaties."4 Despite such
criticism, the rigid Article X remained unchanged, and President Wilson
regretfully informed Lord Robert Cecil that this "was the one Article on which
the French relied and he did not see how it could be weakened."5 The decline of
the League thus started before it was born. Very soon, in the hands of the
victorious powers, Article X was to become supreme, while Article XIX was
dropped into the ash can. As the hope of peaceful changes waned, in the minds
of those wronged by the reace Treaties the recurrence of violent methods gained
ground. This inevitable reac -
2 David Hunter Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant (New York and London,
1928), Vol.1., p. 15.
3 Ibid., p.404.
4 1bid., p. 282.
5 Ibid., p. 289.
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tion was to destroy within two decades the entire edifice of peace
painstakingly devised by the American President.
Delegates of the English - speaking Great Powers in Paris were aware of
injustices committed by the Peace Treaties. On January 19, 1919, Lord Robert
Cecil, in submitting the British Draft Convention, went so far in his
insistence on providing for territorial revision of the Peace Treaties as to
deny the League's obligation to protect a territory from forcible aggression,
if the League's recommendation for any modification of its boundaries had been
rejected.6 The British Delegation further proposed, on February 11, 1919, that
provisions be made for "the periodic revision of Treaties which have become
obsolete and of international conditions the continuance of which may endanger
the Peace of the World." This sensible recommendation might have served, if
accepted, as a safety valve through which pressures caused by justified
discontent might have been removed. President Wilson, in a milder wording,
proposed the same day that "from time to time" the reconsideration of such
Treaties be advised.7 The Canadian Delegate, Sir Robert Borden, in line with
Lord Robert Cecil's views, wrote in his Memorandum of March 13, 1919, that "it
is impossible to forecast the future. There may be national aspirations to
which the provisions of the Peace Treaty will not do justice and which cannot
be permanently repressed,"8 It had been foreseen that the world under the
Covenant could not be forced into a straight jacket. The "Holy Alliance" had
tried to freeze the status quo in Europe after the Napoleonic wars, provoking
thereby unrest and revolutions all over the Continent. Were the Peacemakers of
the 20th Century going to commit the same mistake by insistence on the
immutability of the peace treaties?
The conscientious historian of the Paris Peace Conference, David Hunter
Miller, remarks that "it is erroneous to suppose that Article X includes the
idea that 'all existing territorial delimitations are just and expedient.' "
How did President Wilson bring this uneasy knowledge into harmony with his
fierce passion for justice which he regarded as the dominating factor in any
democracy?
The President himself has answered this question. It is set forth
6 lbid., Vol. II, p. 107.
7 Ibid., Vol., pp. 202 - 3
8 Ibid.. p. 358.
9 lbid., p. 354.
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in a statement by Dr. Isaiah Bowman.10 "As for the League of Nations, it
(Wilson's statement) implied political independence and territorial integrity
plus later alteration of terms and alteration of boundaries if it could be
shown that injustice had been done or that conditions had changed. (Italics
mine.) And such alteration would be the easier to make in time as passion
subsided and matters could be viewed in the light of justice, rather than in
the light of a peace conference at the close of a protracted war." In this
statement, President Wilson could not see "how both elasticity and security
could be obtained save under a League of Nations."11 Quasi anticipating
Prague's rigid policy, the Czechoslovak Delegate, Kramar, objected that in this
event the Assembly would become "the judge of all treaties." (Italics mine) To
safeguard these two mainstays of lasting peace, Article XIX was added parallell
to Article X in the vain hope that the former would gain in importance,
gradually, as peace and forgiveness were rekindled in the hearts of the
disturbed nations.
During the Peace Conference there was among the victors, and
particularly in France, hardly any political or popular support for the League
of Nations. Mostly, it was considered as an American hobby. But President
Wilson clung to his belief that the League would develop into an international
seat of reason and justice to which the people of all countries would
inevitably respond. More teacher than statesman, Wilson proved unable to put
his sound theories into practice. Deprived of Wilson's faith, the League became
unprincipled and therefore irresolute. It had its ups and downs; it handled
over forty political disputes with varying degrees of success; it was conducive
to the Pact of Locarno which marked the zenith in the League's career. But it
became timorous when called upon to protect the rights of minorities and failed
completely in its efforts to resolve any conflict between major powers in
accordance with Article XVI of the Covenant.
Yet, the League was cherished up to its demise by naive, good
people, mainly in the English - speaking world. In mid - August, 1939, two
weeks before the outbreak of the second World War, I tried to impress the
honest Lord Robert Cecil with the imminence of that catastrophe. Desperately,
he still believed in the ability of the League to order Hitler to desist from
aggression. The illusion of security attainable
10 Ibid., p.42.
11 Ibid., p.42.
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through the instrumentality of the existing international organization rather
than by increased and concerted national efforts proved quite helpful at that
time to the aggressors.
The fate of the world did not depend on the functioning of the League of
Nations, for it served mainly as a thermometer between the two World Wars,
registering the degrees of fever annoying our sick world. These Paris
deliberations of 1919 became significant because the nations of Europe -
between the two World Wars - instinctively lined up, as President Wilson had
forecast, either in the defense of the status quo, (as established by the Paris
Peace Treaties) or against it. The League's handling of the Marseille regicide
revealed this basic rift among the Powers. The accusation against Hungary was
shifted from the legal to the political level. Due to collusion between Laval
and the Little Entente, Hungary was persecuted, not because of the Marseille
regicide, of which she was not guilty, but because of her policy - admittedly
aimed at the revision of the Trianon Treaty - which policy, according to the
Covenant, she was fully entitled to pursue.
There can be no progress, not even life, unless there exists a possibility of
change. Attempts to revise the Versailles Peace Treaty began almost before the
ink had dried on that ill - fated document. It was not a spokesman of prostrate
Germany, but an unconventional Englishman John Maynard Keynes, who launched the
first effective attack against the Treaty's reparation clauses. "Non obstante",
the Allied Conference held in Paris in January, 1921, established twenty-one
billion dollars as the permanent total of German payments, more than four times
the figure regarded as possible by Keynes. Then, in March, Allied troops
marched into the Ruhr to break the passive resistance of the German people
against impossible demands. Following this Allied action, the amount of German
reparations, was not lowered but raised to thirty-three billion dollars.
Placed under irrestistible pressures, threatened by inflation and
Communist upheavals, a "policy of fulfillment" was proclaimed by the German
Government. Chancellor Wirth, a member of the Catholic Center, aided by Walter
Rathenau, a Liberal industrialist, paid and paid but mainly by dumping German
goods on Britain's markets. These two Germans also ruined the grandiose plan of
Lloyd George for the
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restoration of a European balance of power, when in the spring of 1922, at
Rapallo, they turned their backs on Europe and signed a German Treaty of
Alliance with the Soviets. Ruined and stigmatized in the so-called "War Guilt
Clause" of the Versailles Peace Treaty (Article 231), not only extremists, but
moderate Germans also began breaking away from soildarity with Europe placed
under French guidance. Secretly, but methodically, the brilliant German
organizer, General von Seeckt, went to work in Russia on the rearmament of
Germany, which in two decades was to subject the Continent to Hitler's rule.
France consistently misinterpreted the sinister portent of German
reactions. In 1923, the uncompromising Poincare' took over the government. He
repeated the excursion into the Ruhr on an even larger scale. He drove the
German economy into a runaway inflation. French victory and the collapse of
Germany became complete. The most vital nation situated in the center of
Europe, was deprived of even the hope of an amelioration of its fate by
peaceful means. Psychologically, the point was reached when the exasperated
German masses would turn toward anybody - to an Adolf Hitler, the product and
symbol of German frustration, who promised them redemption from the depths to
which they had sunk.
During a stay in Munich in the early spring of 1923, I questioned
Hitler about his views concerning the occupation of the Ruhr. He was enraged
against Chancellor Kuno, a mild businessman, because he would not go beyond
passive resistance. "The only answer to this supreme humiliation is armed
resistance against the French invaders" the morbid slogan ranted Hitler.
"Nothing will end this disgrace except the rearming and general mobilization of
the German youth!" "But you are unarmed and defenseless," I objected. "Tanks
would mow down the German youth and your lovely towns would be destroyed from
the air." There followed long harangue, but no reasonable argument - a mixture
of demagoguery and moralization, as if he were addressing a primitive crowd.
"The dead will be replaced, the German mothers will continue to bear children,
our towns will be rebuilt from their ruins finer than they had ever been, if
only the morale of our people is not broken! We cannot accept a policy of
fulfillment," he continued, voicing in this respect the true opinion of the
German people, "for the moment that we capitulate, new and ever more burdensome
demands are being raised." And it was then that I heard for the first time
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which later was often used by Nazis as an excuse for their abominable
adventures: "Rather a frightful end, than endless fright!"
It is neither decent nor expedient to demand from a people a
signed confession of their own collective guilt, as did the Versailles Peace
Treaty. For no people will ever believe in the moral depravity of their own
race. To treat the Germans internationally as morally inferior, gave rise to
Hitler's most absurd reaction: he proclaimed that the Germans were the
"Herrenvolk," the master race, entitled to oppress all the non - Aryans and
take their lands for "living space" of the German masters. The more miserable a
German felt at that time, the louder he cheered this Nazi abnormality. He
imagined in his stupor that it would compensate him for his actual disgrace.
Nothing will conciliate the masses once their emotional reactions
have been roused. Hatred thereafter, will grow irrationally, often in
geometrical proportions, until vengeance is completed or the nation itself
destroyed. Following Poincare's abdication, the subtle genius of Aristide
Briand combined with Gustav Stresemann s sanity brought about a radical
improvement in official relations between France and Germany. The London
Conference (1924) alleviated the burden of German reparations; the Pact of
Locarno was concluded (1925) and the humiliating moral assumptions of the
Versailles Peace Treaty were amended. In 1926, Germany was even admitted to the
League of Nations as a Great Power, with a permanent seat in the Council. In
1922, when Briand first launched in Cannes his visionary plan of a United
Europe, with inclusion of Germany on equal terms, peace in Europe might perhaps
have been saved. This move came in 1926, but, alas, too late.
After the brutal trampling of Germany in 1923, in spite of later
relaxation of the European tension, joint leadership of the Continent through
sincere Franco - German collaboration remained an illusion. Not only had the
resentment and indignation of the German people been roused violently, but also
they were now being organized by the Nazis on a pattern copied from the
handbook of the Communist Party. Later, Hitler explained to me that he chose
"red" as the color of his Party's flag to catch the eye of the down - trodden
people, most of whom were then Socialists. "But I have set in the red flag an
insignificant white circle and, as a symbol, the Swastika in its middle, to
indicate the difference from Communism. By now," said Hitler gloatingly, "the
'red'
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has lost all its meaning, it is only the Swastika that counts." Hitler had long
- range plans from the very beginning and, unfortunately, they were
effective.
Another reason for the evaporation of the "Spirit of Locarno" was the well -
intended agreement between Britain and France to lead the way to German
recovery through the League of Nations. Yet, in the minds of the defeated
nations, squeezed by the stipulations of the Paris Peace Treaties, the League,
whose Covenant formed part of those hated Treaties, remained an agency of the
victorious powers for the continuous oppression of the defeated. This feeling
was not quite unjustified. The League, at first neglected by the Great Powers,
appealed suddenly to France, after Locarno, as the best instrument for the
maintenance of the status quo she ardently coveted. Allied with Poland,
Belgium and the three states of the Little Entente, France had a safe lead in
the League. Even if not assisted by the United Kingdom she could prevent any
attempt at revision of the Peace Treaties, the main objective of French foreign
policy, however negative that goal may have been.
Legal - minded France never considered the concessions made in the Pact
of Locarno as a revision of the Versailles Peace Treaty, nor did the Germans
regard them as such. Governments came and went in Paris, but Poincare's dictum
remained unaltered: "Treaties have to be applied, not modified." In 1934, when
the Marseille case came before the League, Germany, the strongest power in
favor of treaty revision, was no longer a Member. So it seemed opportune at
that time for France and the Little Entente to debase Hungary so low as to
render hopeless her revisionist aspirations. There was no bias in France
against Hungary, but France would not tolerate any clause of the sacrosanct
Trianon Peace Treaty, concluded with Hungary, being abrogated. No precedent was
to be created which the Germans might exploit.
Bruning, the last German Chancellor who might have halted the Nazis'
ascent to power, withdrew for lack of support by the West. So Hitler came along
in a fury. He broke every political, economic, military and moral stipulation
of the Versailles Peace Treaty with impunity - yet always under French protest.
But revision, the best way to bring about peaceful changes, remained taboo.
On August 31, 1939, the day the second World War broke out to
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tear down the entire edifice based on the Versailles Peace Treaty, Count
Ciano, Mussolini's Minister of Foreign Affairs, noted in his Diary12 that he
proposed to France and Great Britain the holding of a conference "for the
purpose of reviewing those clauses of the Treaty of Versailles which disturb
European life." Ciano remarked - with tongue in cheek - that the French
Ambassador, "Francois - Poncet welcomes the proposal with satisfaction but with
some skepticism. Percy Lorain (the British Ambassador) welcomes it with
enthusiasm. Halifax receives it favorably. . . ." Problems left unsolved by
unimaginative leaders will accompany them obstinately to their graves.
A. THE COVENANT
B. REACTION TO THE VERSAILLES TREATY
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Regicide at Marseille |