THE REMODELLING OF EUROPE

The Treaty of Versailles, 1919.

As in 1815 at Vienna, so in 1919 at Versailles, the victors of the Great War met to reconstruct the map of Europe, and to exact what was possible by way of reparation for the ruin brought about by the Germanic powers. Unlike the Vienna Conference, the vast assembly at Versailles was representative not merely of European powers and interests, but of all the twenty-seven states which had declared war on Germany. It was a World Conference, although the ultimate decision of all important business lay in the hands of five powers :-

Great Britain, France, the United States, Italy and Japan.

The enemy states were not represented. Broadly speaking, the treaty with Germany, as drafted at the Conference, agrees in principle with the Fourteen Points enunciated by President Wilson in January, 1918.

In his speech President Wilson had outlined what he declared to be "a program of the world's peace." Perhaps the most important of his Fourteen Points were:

(I) Open covenants of peace openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
(IV) Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point compatible with domestic safety.
(VIII) All French territory should be freed, and the invaded portions restored, and all the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
(XI) Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro should be evacuated, occupied territories restored, Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea, and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another be determined by friendly counsel along historically-established lines of allegiance and nationality, and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan States should be entered into.
(XIII) An independent Polish State should be created, which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free access to the sea.
(XIV) A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

What, then, was the general result of the Treaty and its subsequent modifications? Territorially the treaties attempted) so far as was practicable and reasonable, to re-divide Europe on the basis of self-determination, of allowing peoples with a distinct culture, language or historical tradition to compose independent states. In the south-east the territory of Turkey in Europe was reduced to Constantinople and a small strip of land outside it, whilst the League of Nations was given control of the Straits and the land on either side. On the other hand the territory of Rumania was more than doubled and that of Greece greatly increased. The kingdom of Jugo-Slavia was created to include Serbia, Montenegro and the Slav provinces that belonged, before the war, to Austria-Hungary.

Germany, besides giving up part of Poland which the Hohenzollerns had seized in the eighteenth century, gave up Alsace-Lorraine and the northern half of Schlesvig, which she had taken from Denmark in 1864. She had to allow the Saar Valley coalfield area to be worked by the French for fifteen years in reparation for the wanton destruction which she had inflicted on the French coal-mining area. Her colonies were disposed of to the Allies while she had also to pay a huge indemnity, the left bank of the Rhine being put in Allied occupation by way of security. The twin claims of nationality and democracy which the Congress of Vienna had failed to satisfy, were not ignored in the New Settlement.