DISCOVERY 



17 



The Conference of Paris 



By J. W. Headlam-Morley 



By the time that these words appear in print, it is 

 probable that the Treaty of Peace with Germany will 

 have been ratified, and within a few weeks the Con- 

 gress of Paris will have come to an end. It will take its 

 place in the historj' books, with the Congress of Utrecht 

 and the Congress of Vienna, as one of the great land- 

 marks in European historj', and it may be interesting 

 to take this opportunity of considering its work and 

 its achievement from the point of view of the student 

 and teacher of history. 



It is natural to compare the Congress of Paris with 

 the Congress of Vienna, and I fear that, in the minds 

 of many, the result of the comparison has been, as it 

 was expressed to me by a great scholar : " I think we 

 are all beginning to think better of the Congress of 

 Vienna." I am quite sure that those historians who 

 took part in the Conference of Paris — and there were 

 several — A\ill be, shall we say, a little less severe when 

 they have brought practical experience to the criticism 

 of the deeds of our predecessors. But if we are to 

 make the comparison, let us recognize at once that 

 Paris had difficulties to meet from which Vienna was 

 freed. 



In the first place let us note that, as compared with 

 the Congress of Vienna, that of Paris had imposed 

 upon it a double task. In 1S14 there were two things 

 to be done, first to settle the terms of peace between 

 the Great Alliance and France, and secondlj' to settle 

 the numerous questions which arose as to the assig- 

 nation of that territory which, after being surrendered 

 by France, was left dereUct. These two stages were 

 clearly separated. Peace was made with France at 

 Paris within a few weeks of the termination of the 

 war, and it was possible, therefore, for the Powers of 

 Europe to apply themselves in comparative leisure to 

 the other problems. In 1919 a different procedure 

 was adopted ; the whole settlement of Europe had to 

 be made under the form of Treaties of Peace, and the 

 settlement between the Alhes themselves, a settlement 

 in which inevitably strong differences of opinion must 

 appear, had to be made while the state of war still 

 continued. It is curious to note that this was prob- 

 ably not the original intention ; at any rate, through- 

 out a every large part of the Congress, all the papers 

 were headed " PreUminaries of Peace," a style which 

 seemed to indicate that the original intention had been 

 first of all to make general preUminaries of Peace with 

 Germany, and afterwards to proceed to more detailed 

 regulation of minor and secondary points. 



Another difficulty arose from this procedure — viz.. 



that direct communication with the enemy Govern- 

 ments was excluded. A study of the text of the 

 treaties will show that they deal, often in great detail, 

 with matters of great complexity ; this is especially the 

 case in the chapters dealing with financial and com- 

 mercial matters. Merely as a matter of procedure, 

 the work would have been much facilitated had it 

 been possible to discuss these matters around the 

 table with the German Delegates ; the possibility of 

 this was, however, excluded. 



Another result was that there was thrown upon the 

 Conference, not only the task of making peace, but the 

 even more serious task of controlhng the affairs of 

 Europe during tlie process. What had to be done for 

 the temporary administration of those districts whose 

 ultimate fate had to be determined ? Many of these 

 were the subject of acute controversy between our own 

 Allies, and tliis threw upon the Conference the responsi- 

 bility of keeping order in these disputed territories, 

 and at times even preventing open hostilities between 

 the Allied States themselves. Let us add to this that 

 the very progress of civilization has added immensely 

 to the complexity of the problems which had to be 

 dealt with. In 1814 there were no railways ; in 1914 

 the problem of transport forced itself upon the 

 attention in two different ways. First of all the daily 

 life of millions of people in Europe depended upon 

 the provision of adequate means of transport, and, 

 secondly, it was impossible to determine the frontiers 

 without taking into consideration the hues of com- 

 munication. If the frontier had to be drawn between 

 Poland and Germany, or Czecho-Slovakia and Poland, 

 or Italy and Yugo-Slavia, it was necessary so to 

 arrange it, as not only to comply approximately with 

 the nationality of the population, but also so as to 

 insure that there should be no undue interference with 

 the control of the main lines of railroad. 



It is therefore little to be wondered that the work 

 thrown upon the Congress was almost beyond human 

 capacity. It was on the Council of Four that the 

 stress of the labours rested, and I wonder sometimes 

 whether those who criticize the result have ever tried 

 to imagine what the extent of the labours and the 

 measure of the responsibility was, which attached to 

 these men. Day by day, and week by week, they had 

 two meetings, one in the morning and one in the 

 afternoon, at which there would be brought up to 

 them for their final decision, now the question of the 

 frontiers between Poland and Germany, or Czecho- 

 slovakia and Hungary, and the future of the Banat, 

 or Teschen, or Klagenfurt, or Danzig, and then, with 

 scarcely a moment's pause, complicated questions as 

 to the treatment of enemy debts, with the determina- 

 tion as to the rate of exchange at which they would 

 be fixed, what was the extent of the reparation which 



