A great task simply begun: conference scenes

From our special correspondent

20 January 1919

The great conference was formally opened at the Quai d’Orsay, yesterday on the 48th anniversary of that scene, so calamitous to Europe, when the German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles on the eve of the capitulation of Paris.

If anyone had chanced to be present at both ceremonies, he would have been struck by a sense of contrast. The meeting in the Galerie des Glaces gave birth to a new order which has been a fatal burden to Europe. The meeting at the Quai d’Orsay is to give birth to a new order to which all mankind is looking for freedom and peace. At the first scene, when a new empire was created, nothing was omitted that pomp and ceremony could contribute to make the spectacle impressive. At the second, when a new world was to be created, men acted as if the event itself were so solemn that appearances were of little moment. Those who looked into the future felt that the expectations of mankind at this crisis would have needed for their full expression a religious leader rather than a statesman – an inspired fanatic rather than a self-possessed and eloquent speaker.

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Round the horseshoe table

The simplicity of the scene was its most striking feature. There were not half a dozen uniforms round the table. Indeed this indifference to state was carried to excess, for, while one could admire the deliberate disregard of display, it was impossible not to regret that (owing to a mistake in the official programme supplied) the British Prime Minister’s place at M. Poincaré’s left hand was empty when the conference opened, and the presence of officials and secretaries scattered through the room gave a look almost of confusion to the scene.

The several delegates were received by M. Pichon, and then they passed into the great Clock Room, where they gradually found their way to their places at this horseshoe table. On the right hand off M. Poincaré sat the United States delegates, on the left the British. Next to the United States representatives, round the corner of the table on the outside, came in order the French, Italian, and Belgian representatives. On either side of that end of the horseshoe were seated the Brazilian delegates, and on the inside, from the end up to the centre, came the delegates from Cuba, Greece, Haiti, Peru, Portugal, Serbia, Czecho-Slovakia, and Uruguay. On the other side of the horseshoe, to the left of M. Poincaré, next to the British delegation, sat the delegates from Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and India; and lastly the Japanese representatives. On the inner side of the table facing them, starting from the bottom, sat the delegates from Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, the King of the Hedjaz, Liberia, Panama, Poland, Rumania and Siam.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Guardian, 20 January 1919.

Peace Conference opened

First questions: punishment of the Kaiser

20 January 1919

The Inter-Allied peace conference was formally opened on Saturday afternoon at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris with a plenary meeting of all the 32 Allied and associated nations (including the British dominions and India) that have been allotted delegates. It was, in accordance with Friday’s decision, an “open” meeting, held in the presence of journalists of many countries, who, however, could only see and hear with difficulty.

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The speech in which President Poincaré declared the conference open set before it its task of creating a new order in the world on the unanimously accepted principles of President Wilson, including the establishment of a general League of Nations.

M. Clemenceau, the French prime minister, was elected president of the conference. Proceeding at once to business, M. Clemenceau stated that the question ordered for the day were:

1) Responsibility for the war.

2) Penalties on crimes committed during the war.

3) International legislation in regard to labour.

M. Clemenceau asked the delegates to begin by examining into the question of the responsibility of the authors of the war, which, he said, would be facilitated by a report to be sent them on the criminal responsibility of the ex-Kaiser. Both Frenchmen also referred to the reparation and guarantees of security needed, particularly by France.

Read the full article.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Prime Ministers, left to right, Lloyd George (GB), Orlando (Italy), Clemenceau (France) and President Woodrow Wilson (USA) in Paris, 1919. Photograph: UIG/Getty Images

Editorial: The Conference of Paris

20 January 1919

As M. Poincaré reminded the delegates, the conference at Paris opened 48 years to the day after the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles. The coincidence was probably designed, one of those strokes in which the historical and the aesthetic sense of France delights. The coincidence is one well worth meditating upon.

In 1914 the German Empire had every air of being as solidly founded a political fabric as any in the world. At its head stood a Royal house which enjoyed popular esteem. It was governed by a bureaucracy which was a byword for patience and for skill. Its army was the strongest in the world. Its people one of the most laborious races in Europe. Its commerce was flourishing and expanding all over the globe. All this magnificent structure has collapsed. The German Empire has had not one of the longest, but one of the shortest lives among the empires in the history.

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What is the reason? Here is a fine subject for the historian, and the moralist. Yet the central reason is plain. We can accept Bismarck’s own teaching that the German Empire was made by blood and iron. It was fashioned by violence and by a wholly amoral ruthlessness. In the deliberate philosophy of the makers of the German Empire it was a monument to the virtue of pure force and pure calculation, and its success was the vindication of pure force and pure calculation as sovereign remedies in politics. Up to the very eve of the war the German Empire and German statecraft were quoted as convincing rebukes to democracy. The German people sold liberty for the success of German Imperialism. Bismarck undertook to destroy the liberal movement in Germany by demonstrating that Biskmarckian statesmanship was the way to glory. No doubt in his case force was tempered by prudence, and we may well believe that he would not have made the mistake of provoking universal distrust and enmity and launching Germany into a war with whole world. But just as it is in the nature of great men to be succeeded by small men, so it was in the nature of his philosophy that in the hands of small men it should lead Germany to this disaster.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A scene during the Versailles peace conference, June 1919. Photograph: ENA

The essence of his gospel was force, and force intoxicated, except with those rare individuals who can coldly calculate the limits of bayonets. The fall of the German Empire is not in despite of Bismarck, but in consequence of Bismarck. It has collapsed because of his foundations.

Two other great Empires – the Russian and the Austrian – passed out of history along with the German Empire. They were fit companions. So dulled is our imagination when actually living through great events that we fail to grasp their magnitude. We look upon the destruction of Austria and of Russia as inevitable, commonplace. Nevertheless, a few years ago what serious student would have foretold it?

The search for morals in history requires much faith. We might conclude from the fall of three great Empires the old and not too comforting lesson of the mortality of human things. Even that would have its value if it served to tame the arrogance of political architects and to lend something of moderation and of tolerance, along with a dash of melancholy, to political speculation and political conflict. It is not without use to look at things from the standpoint of eternity. But in the tremendous events through which we are passing we may discover at least two other lessons of value to the world in the work of reconstruction upon which it is engaged.

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The first is that force and amorality are a rotten foundation for states. M. Poincaré tells us that justice must rule the deliberations of the peace conference. It is fine saying, and the Allied statesmen must be true to it in spirit and in word. They are under every sort of temptation to be false to it. They are the heirs of a bad tradition – the tradition of secrecy, the tradition of power, the tradition of barter. Again, there is nobody to resist them. The whole world is spread before them; they have but to stretch out their hands and take. To fortify them in resisting these temptations they have the moral spectacle of the destruction of three empires which acted as though force were the highest law. If the passionate desire of the peoples of the world for peace and justice should fail to convert the Allied statesmen, there is the powerful argument of Germany, Austria, and Russia that the way of violence and rapacious appetite does not prosper.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Treaty of Versailles. BBC via YouTube.

The second moral is that the fond belief that politics abhors the small state is erroneous. Whatever the ultimate aspect of Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, it is certain that they will slough off many states. The peace conference will sanctify the birth or revival of a dozen new states in two continents. We need not enter into the rather sterile debate as to the rival merits of great states and little states. The world never was constituted entirely of the one or the other. The tide which for 50 years seemed to be running strongly towards the great state has definitely turned. The world of the future will see a balance between the great states and the little states. Both have their place in scheme of things. The Allied statesmen in conference would make a profound error if they thought the function of the small state was merely to adorn their triumphs or to be the instrument for their purposes. To create them in that spirit and with that object would be merely to establish the rule of force under a plausible mask. The old school of diplomacy, a school which is very far from dead, knew no other way of working, but if the peace conference were to follow it its work would lack stability and permanence. The small states and the small peoples must come into their rights for their own sakes.

This is an edited extract. Read the full article.

The treaty was signed on 28 June 1919 and took force on 10 January 1920.