The Truth About the Treaty/What Really Happened at Paris
by . Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. 1921. 8vo, xx+473 pp. $4.00.
by , edited by . New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1921. 8vo, xiii+528 pp. $4.50.
M. TARDIEU’S book is prefaced by a thirteen-page introduction by M. Clemenceau, and both volumes bear short forewords by Colonel House. What Really Happened at Paris has an excellent index, The Truth about the Treaty has none. This observation is not intended to be invidious, but in a way it characterizes the two books. M. Tardieu has written a very able brief for Clemenceau and France, reviewing the evidence, but always with an eye to his argument. At times he is oratorical and almost impassioned; but he misses that, let us say, academic balance which distinguishes the contributions of the American delegates. The latter have given us a matter-offact account of the treaty, which escapes suggesting an official compendium mainly by being cast in the form of public addresses. Both are very valuable contributions to the history of the Peace Conference. They have no quality of finality, because the history of the Conference is still in the making, both in Europe and in the whole world; and what is happening now, and will happen hereafter, is destined to modify the interpretation of almost every act performed at Paris and Versailles. But it is well for our present guidance, and for the cause of truth in times to come, that these books should appear; and it is fortunate that they have been published almost simultaneously, for they check and offset each other.
Since M. Tardieu writes as much under the sway of emotion as of logic, and needs every aid of literary style and shading, it is unfortunate that what he has to say is not set forth quite so perfectly in English as in his native tongue. Much of his argument is already more or less familiar through his articles in L’Illustration and elsewhere. The editing — at least, the proofreading — is not impeccable. Furthermore, ever since M. Clemenceau’s retirement, M. Tardieu has been in the dust of the arena, defending his former chief against French political adversaries. For him the relative importance of issues is somewhat different from what it is for those who have stood aloof from this combat. Especially is the argument often a trifle out of focus for Americans unfamiliar with recent French politics, in spite of many pages addressed expressly to them.
Notwithstanding these disadvantages, M. Tardieu has done several things in this book better than any other man could do them. He has told his story as an eye-witness who fought in the war, who shared the most intimate experiences and confidences of the Paris Conference, and who, since the Conference, has been constantly in active public life, dealing with the conditions and problems which the war created. He does not treat us to sensations, but he has put things that we might learn from other sources in a setting possible only for a man who has a complete background of knowledge from which to work. He describes in three introductory chapters pre-war conditions in Europe, the war and the Armistice, and the incidents of the Peace conference. Then he discusses through ten chapters — nearly three fourths of his book — the continuing issues in Europe proper which affect France. Everything that does not relate directly to France and Germany is omitted. Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, Turkey, the Balkans, freedom of the seas, colonies and mandates, and, for the most part, the League of Nations, enter only incidentally.
In view of a recent remark by our ambassador to England, M. Tardieu’s declaration that the United States entered the war ‘For purely American reasons’ will invite attention. He says, ‘Without the United States the Allies could not have conquered.’ He disputes the assertion of Otto Kahn and others, that the help we can give Europe is mainly economic, and insists that it must be primarily political.
Turning to the volume of Philadelphia addresses, — for what the American delegates tell has already been given to the public as a course of lectures in that city and as a series of syndicated press articles, — we are in a different atmosphere. The reader is conscious of a release of tension in changing from one book to the other. It is slightly like leaving a court-room, during a dramatic murder trial, for a board-room during a directors’ meeting.
The American volume covers a much wider range of topics, though a briefer period of time. It opens with Professor Mezes’s account of the organization of the ‘Inquiry’ to gather information for our peace negotiators, in the autumn of 1917, and concludes with ‘ The Versailles Peace in Retrospect,’ by Colonel House. In addition to the eighteen chapters there are seventeen appendices, consisting of stenographic notes of the questions and answers at the end of each lecture.
Though such a collection of papers has some unavoidable defects, in respect to unity and completeness, it possesses the advantage of giving several different personal impressions of the work of the Conference. Each chapter is by a specialist. It is impossible in our space even to enumerate titles and authors. All have done their work respectably, and some even brilliantly. There are several refreshing criticisms, showing reasonable independence of judgment, but no petulant assertions of private opinion. Mr. Lamont’s appraisal of President Wilson at Paris has lasting value: ‘I never saw a man more considerate of those of his coadjutors who were working with him, or more ready to give them credit. . . . The failure to delegate more of his work was not due to any inherent distrust that he has of men, — and certainly not to any desire to “run the whole show" himself, — but simply to his lack of facility in knowing how to delegate work on a large scale.’
Mr. Hoover, whose account of economic administration during the Armistice is a model of clearness and conciseness, makes the only adequate reference in the two volumes to the continuance of the blockade against Germany after the Armistice. Tn attributing this to the military authorities, he does not mention that Marshal Foch, according to recent French disclosures, asked for a blockade of only twenty-five days — the time required for the German evacuation,— and that its extension was due to the political Supreme War Council at Versailles.
Already a veil of unreality draws over the labors of the Paris conferences. The current of events sweeps the world irresistibly beyond many of its settlements and solutions. M. Tardieu still believes France will hold the Rhine frontier. He exclaims, ‘No treaties of guaranty, no evacuation in 1935.’ General Bliss says that, unless we discover a better safeguard for nations than military force, we shall have killed the giant of Prussian militarism ‘only to set up five more in its place.’
We are still in the midst of the debate. Nothing is settled. These volumes are Hansards of the last session, still pertinent and indispensable, but rapidly becoming records of history, though written as reports of current business.
VICTOR. S. CLARK.
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