March 1919

Europe teeters on the verge of anarchy

March 7

Conferees Agree On Big Questions

Agreements, which are expected to be the final work of the Peace Conference, have been reached on all the great questions confronting the Peace Conference, save those of German boundaries, the Adriatic question, and the left bank of the Rhine.

The Polish question has been one of the most perplexing, given that the Poles are striving to obtain ownership of Danzig as that will give them an outlet to the sea, while Germany is claiming that it is a historical German city. The peace delegates have yet to determine if the city will remain under German hands or fall under the control of the League of Nations. It is possible that it may be stipulated that the Czechoslovakians also will be given an outlet through Danzig by agreements with the Polish government.

The Committee on Reparations has estimated that 24 billion pounds is the amount that the enemy countries ought to pay the Allied powers. France is demanding immediate payment of one billion pounds, part in gold, part in materials, and part in foreign securities; the remainder of the amount to be payable in 25 to 35 years.

The eighth week of the Peace Conference opened with increased efforts to bring the conference to conclusion. No one is more anxious for prompt action than the French, who want to hasten the completion of the peace treaty. French apprehension is growing over the danger of Bolshevism and anarchy in Germany, and the French therefore, desire to hasten the conclusion of the peace treaty and incorporate in it measures for the protection which they have expected from the League of Nations.

The provisions for dismantling the fortifications of Germany on its coast and canals have raised concerns with the American delegation, who fear that it might become a precedent - which could then be used to force the United States to remove its own canal and harbor defenses such as those on Cape Cod or along the Panama Canal. The American delegation claims this will be an encroachment on the Monroe Doctrine and said it will not agree to the terms of the League of Nations unless an exemption is made for Americans’ sole control of the Western Hemisphere.

It is thought that the conference may consider amendments, such as may be regarded in America as necessary to remove the ambiguity of clauses that might affect the Monroe Doctrine; the right of succession from the League; and, the methods of using force against recalcitrant nations.

Germany will be bound hand and foot by the imposition of the Allied military terms. The terms are even more severe than recommended by the Allied military leaders. Germany is to disarm down to twenty divisions of 10,000 men each, including fifteen divisions of infantry and five of cavalry. The naval terms now before the Council provide not only for the complete suppression of Germany's submarine force, but also for the termination of all submarine warfare by all nations throughout the world, and in doing so, ends the use of submarines in naval warfare.

This means that Germany, who has already surrendered most of her heavy artillery and is now to be deprived of a fleet and instruments of war, will be reduced to a condition which will make a new German attack upon the Western world unlikely for at least a quarter of a century. Steps have been taken to provide for the creation of Rhenish Republic that when such an attack comes, if it does, its first pain will be born not in the French or Belgian industrial districts, but in the German-speaking regions of the Rhenish Republic.

Lenin Attacks West

Nikolai Lenin's latest utterance is an open letter to European and American labor for publication in the foreign Bolshevik press in commemoration of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution.

The Russian Bolshevik chief says that the Allies are now beginning to quarrel over the sharing of Russia. "Wilson’s hypocritical phrases about democracy and the League of Nations were startlingly revealed when it was shown that Siberia, Archangel, and Baku have been occupied by French, British and American capitalists."

Lennon pays tribute to Eugene Debs and other advancing industrial workers with world ideas. "They are men," he says, "who understand that only the destruction of the middle class, the annihilation of middle-class legislative institutions, and the establishment of a proletariat dictatorship can safeguard the victory of socialism."

Despite frequent attributes to socialism, he draws his thick, black line not between socialism and other political creeds, but between Bolshevism and every other political creed, socialism included.

Hun-Russ-Bolshevik Plot Reported

The greatest concern at the moment is the possible spread of Bolshevism through Germany into England and particularly France. As a consequence, the leaders of all nations assembled in Paris are insisting that some concrete policy be arranged immediately to combat its spread.

Since the apparent breakdown in the plan to bring various Russian elements to combat Bolshevism in the East, other means are now being considered. As a result of these deliberations it is extremely likely that the Allied powers will begin at once to tender concrete aid to all the anti-Bolshevik states in Russia in order that all plots of the Reds to spread westward may be overthrown.

The dangers of the spread of Bolshevism will increase from now until harvest early in the summer, and at no moment will England, France and other countries antagonistic to the Bolsheviks be able to breathe easily until the crisis is past.

Meanwhile, the German National Spartacus League and the greater Berlin Communist League have issued an appeal for immediate general strike and the overthrow of the national assembly and the present German Republic.

The organizations have instructed their followers to assemble at factories to prevent work and directed them to avoid street demonstrations, in order that the government may have no opportunity to crush the movement by force.

The aim of the proposed strike, as called by the Berlin Bolsheviks, included the introduction of factory councils to regulate factory affairs, and ultimately, the taking over of the factories and the formation of a red guard under the control of the Soviets, which would take over all military and police powers. The German Bolsheviks also called for an immediate conclusion of peace with Russia and the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Russian Soviet Republic.

March 14

Republicans Go On Record Opposing League of Nations

The Republican National Committee has declared to have placed the national organization of the Republican party on record as opposing the League of Nations. "While we seek earnestly for methods lessening future wars and will go far indeed an honest effort to that end, we will not accept indefinite internationalization as a substitute for American nationalism."

This statement conforms closely in spirit to the declarations of leading Republicans in the Senate. It runs on all fours with Sen. Borah’s demand for specific exemption of the Monroe Doctrine from the League's expectations.

Republican politicians say that it is quite probable that profoundly important changes in party affiliations in this country may grow out of the agitation of this question. They said that the Republican National Committee and the Republicans in Congress continue to keep clearly before the people their idea of the League of Nations with pretensions of full American rights, differentiating between that and the president's plan charged with carrying a yielding of American rights, and the taking on of internationalism as against nationalism, they may attract Democratic and independent support.

In New York, a new organization is being formed, known as the League for the Preservation of American Independence. Its purpose is to support those senators who have taken a stand against the President's plan. According to its leaders: "We are fighting a League that is wrong in order to get a League that is right, and one that does not impair the sovereignty of the United States, infringe upon the Monroe Doctrine, nor require us to participate in European wars or administer the affairs of foreign peoples."

President Wilson, however, made it clear that he is opposed to any radical changes in the proposed organization of the League of Nations. The President said he wants the people of the United States to have mass meetings to discuss the League of Nations. President Wilson asked all the Democratic committeemen to get together with all the Republican committeemen throughout the country and cooperate with holding mass meetings to bring out public opinion on the League of Nations.

Germans To Lose 7 Million People, 30,000 Square Miles

The Allies have settled on Germany's new frontiers. Germany will henceforth stop at the Rhine on the Western frontier, and on the East, the new border with Poland will be that which existed prior to the first partition of that state in 1772. In addition, Germany will lose the Danish-speaking population of Schleswig and the Polish-speaking population of upper Silesa. By contrast, she will probably acquire German-speaking regions of Austria, the provinces which were victims of the Habsburg Empire when it began this process of expansion many centuries ago.

Conceivably the Rhenish Republic, which is to be created on the left bank of the Rhine may alternately be returned to Germany, but even with this addition, Germany will be smaller in area than Spain.

However, the measure of Germany’s loss is not expressed in square miles, but in the reduction of industrial resources. She would lose the iron deposits of Lorraine and the coal districts of the Saar outright to France. She will also lose her highly industrialized districts in Silesia to Poland.

Clearly defined and still approaching settlement is the vexing question what restitution Germany must make. Calculations as to the utmost Germany can pay vary widely from 10 billion to 40 billion pounds, and even such payments will have to be stretched out over the years.

Following the precedent of the German occupation of France in 1879, and thereafter until the payment of the indemnity, Allied troops will occupy the left bank of the Rhine as a guarantee against payments. Moreover, the dependence of Germany upon the outside world for food supplies will leave her completely at the mercy of the Allied blockade.

In addition to dealing with Germany, the delegates to the peace conference have before them the gigantic task of erecting on the ruins of the Austrian and Hungarian Empire and on the western frontiers of Russia, new states based upon ethnic division.

The map of the new Europe now shows the new states of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the new boundaries of Romania and German-speaking provinces of Austria, which would join Germany. In constructing these new states, Europe is following in the east the policy the Congress of Vienna in 1815, where an effort was made to put barriers along the eastern and northern frontiers of France to make new French wars of conquest impossible. Europe is seeking to establish states along the highway of German expansion to the East, and upon the success, the failure of these obstacles will depend on the future peace of the world.

March 21

Germans Stand Ready To Oppose Treaty

The present feeling in Peace Conference circles is that after the Allied and associated powers have reached a complete understanding regarding the conditions to be imposed on Germany, the German delegates will be called to table, but they will not be allowed to discuss the conditions. The intention of the Allied and associated powers is to dictate peace, not negotiate it. The German delegates must accept the terms and sign, or the state of war will continue.

However, if the Allies load the peace treaty with conditions going beyond President Wilson's fourteen points, the German National Assembly said it would refuse its consent to the treaty.

"Germany is prepared to sign peace, but is not prepared to commit Hari-kari," said the President of the new German Republic. "Rather than political and economic death, Germany will choose political and economical madness. If the Allies offer us, instead of a peace based on Mr. Wilson's fourteen points, which is nothing more than a knife with which to commit Hari-kari, Germany will embrace Bolshevism and join Russia and become an outlaw nation."

"We are holding Germany together almost by political magic. There is hunger, idleness, starvation, war neurasthenia and fanaticism in our land. We are executing our own people and holding the demoralization of the hordes in check. We have one hope against Bolshevism - a peace that will not strip us of industrial and commercial power. If this peace is not given to us, the present government must refuse to sign it, and with the refusal the present government will fall into the abyss and Germany will turn its back upon the world and flee into the arms of the Russian monster. Nothing can prevent it."

"The confiscation by France of the Saar region, the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine, the demand for indemnification exceeding the income of the nation, the reduction of the Army in the face of the growing Bolshevik danger and the looting of the German colonies in Africa, all lead to one outcome - a second world war."

"It is not a matter of national vanity. Germany is no longer concerned with the fine points of nationalistic honor. It is a matter of life and death for us. If we give the Saar region, Danzig, Alsace-Lorraine, the southern frontier, and the African colonies away, Germany will be unable to support itself, let alone pay her war debts."

The German minister said the German people had unlimited confidence in President Wilson, and hope that the League of Nations covenant as promulgated, would not be adopted, as he declared, it was a compromise of the ideals of President Wilson with the imperialistic aspirations of some of the Allies.

The minister accepted that Germany was prepared to accept the vote of Alsace-Lorraine as to its future, but he referred to reported aspiration of France respecting the Rhineland, and Poland's claim to Danzig, as crimes. He demanded that what is German will remain German.

March 28

League Of Nations Charter Amended

The League of Nations commission has accepted various amendments to the League's covenant. The text of the amendment proposed by the Swiss Delegation that: "This covenant shall not be interpreted as containing anything contrary to the sovereignty of the states except in so far as to state itself by adhering to the covenant shall consent, and the covenant itself should not interfere with the internal affairs of any of its members," was warmly received.

While the amendment does not mention the Monroe Doctrine, it is tactfully understood to apply to it. Some of the members of the American delegation are inclined to accept an amendment of such lines, feeling that it would meet the demands of the United States for some declaration in the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine.

Meanwhile, it is reported that the German government is disinclined to send a mission to Paris for a meeting with the members of the Allied Peace Conference if reports are correct that the Allied powers will not permit a discussion of the draft of the peace treaty.

The German delegates consider that if they are not to be given a hearing they can spare themselves the trouble of a trip and instead send a messenger to bring the draft of the peace treaty to Weinmar.

Bolshevik Control Of Hungary Stirs Peace Body To Action

A Bolshevik army of 70,000 men has crossed the river Dniester, south of Lemberg. The army is composed mainly of Hungarians and Bulgarians who were prisoners of war in Russia.

Upon hearing of the invasion, the Hungarian President and his cabinet resigned, resulting in a reign of terror throughout the country as it plunges into the control of Bolshevik gangs.

The question on the barrier, which the peace conference intends to erect against the spread of Bolshevism into the former Central Powers, has come sharply to the front as a result of the situation in Hungary, where Bolshevik elements have seized power and declared that a state of war exists between Hungary and the Allied powers.

Rioting is reported to have occurred in Budapest. The extremist elements in Hungary are said to be in absolute control, and has been in wireless communication with Premier Lennon at Moscow. In addition, it has called on the workers of adjoining countries to rise against their capitalist governments.

Extremists are also active in Czechoslovakia, where the Bolsheviks’ movement is reported to be strong. Meanwhile, it is reported that German Bolsheviks are studying the methods of the Soviets. They have sent one of their senior secretaries in the Foreign Ministry to Moscow to see the chiefs of the Soviet government and to furnish an accurate report on the situation, which will allow the German foreign minister to study methods as to the bringing about of closer political and economic relations with the Russian Bolshevik government.

The conditions in Hungary seem to have affected German Austria. Reports have been received that there is a transformation of the existing government in Austria into a Bolshevik-style government that will cooperate or merge for the government of the Hungarian Soviet.

Diplomats Fear Red Menace

Satisfied that Bolshevism in central Europe has now assumed the proportion of an actual menace, Allied officials and diplomats had no hesitancy today in saying that the time has come for the powers at the Peace Conference to immediately take some definitive action against the spread of this sentiment.

The Allies should lose no time in adopting a program, which would mean the exertion of all possible force in checking the menace, which is looming so formidably. That a strong military offensive is now imperative no one will deny. Considering the present military situation of the Red Armies since the acquisition of Hungry, and triumphs in Ukraine and elsewhere, the future is said to be anything but bright for the powers engaged at the Peace Conference.

Actual warfare looms as the only means of stopping the Reds. There are those in Washington who fear that the Allied powers have paid too little attention to this growing menace in the East. They blamed the French and the British for their indifference. They contend that they should have taken drastic steps many weeks ago. They should have quickly responded to the appeals of the moderate in Russia as well as those from the Republican governments in Poland.

What is looked upon as one of the most serious aspects of the present radical grip of Central Europe, is the strong possibility of Germany's position becoming strengthened, probably to such an extent that the final terms of peace may be a mild and generous nature.

Many who are watching the developments closely believe the Allies, in their late efforts to cope with a red advance, may be forced to turn to Germany in this crisis. In that event, Germany may have the opportunity to prove themselves the savior of civilization in central and Western Europe, and they would be in a position to bargain about terms of peace, if not actually suggest the final price.

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