HOME AND EDUCATION
Follette, Belle Case La
HOME AND EDUCATION By Belle Case La Toilette: 'Decadence Of Europe'9 Peace Treaties Lay Foundation for Future No L s 3 Threatening to Victors T an to Vanquished. FRANCESCO NTTTT was Premier of...
...In two years, in fact, in 1816 and 1817, France was able to free herself entirely from debt When France asked that the military occupation of five years should be reduced, negotiations were carried out, by which all the armies, the miximum duration of whose occupation had been fixed, left France at the end of 1817...
...After a compromise, France obtained the mineral basin of the Saar in perpetuity, while the administration of the Saar was placed in the hands of the League of Nations...
...The general object of the Conference is to bring together the leaders of thought and action and the representatives of municipally and publicly owned utilities in the United States and Canada for the consideration and a study of the problems involved...
...In all the negotiations Germany was never listened to, but was compelled to sign...
...The workers must realize their responsibility...
...For while Britain favored a just indemnity, France wanted the treaty to be applied in its entirety so as to depress and dismember Germany...
...and all her war preparedness supremacy will not save her from a tragic fate...
...The treaty of Versailles took all Germany's colonies away from her...
...Germany and the conquered nations in 1919 were deprived of national territories which had belonged to them hundreds, even thousands of years...
...Against whom are these war preparations being made ? asks Nitti...
...But when Germany's western frontier had been shorn of the Saar mines, it was still necessary in order to completely disorganize the German iron and steel trade in all its forms to strike at the heart of the great mining center of Upper Silesia...
...But when the referendum was decided in Germany's favor the territory was divided arbitrarily between Germany and Poland in violation of the resolutions of the Treaty of Versailles...
...Ia the territories assigned to Poland, Germany lost one-fourth of her total production m grain and one-sixth af her tote...
...her^armaments were not limited...
...linfleriaj Franca had invaded almost a ies of Europe, had destroyed all n • »>rnment&, expelled ancient dynast !••• used the deaths of millions...
...One finishes reading "Decadence of Europe" with a sense of depression—almost despair...
...the accumulated facts and statistics are important for reference...
...A general invitation has been extended by the Public Ownership League of America to all municipalities, state legislatures, Governors, Mayors, Commissions, Commissioners and City Managers...
...France in 1815 was reduced to her prewar boundaries...
...1 The industrial strength of the Ruhr was the foundation of Germany's re operative power...
...Cancellation of debts and credits, renunciation of all military occupation and of all control, abandonment of the so-called reparations policy—this program satisfies the immediate demands of the life of the world, says the brilliant Italian statesman and student of world economics...
...Knowledge of the contents of the Secret Treaties caused Russia to demand a settlement of the war on the basis of no annexations and no indemnities...
...why should America contribute indirectly to the policy of death which is destroying civilization...
...Good relations between France and the victorious" countries were restored...
...The victorious nations of 1915 did not deprive France of her fleet nor disarm her...
...More was not expected...
...but, in practice, the vanquished nations are excluded from it, because they cannot be admitted until they .have fulfilled the obligations of the treaty—that is, practically never...
...She came n The war with a larger merchant marirr «r* en she entered...
...We are on the verge of war...
...Wilson's Fourteen Points had no mention of reparations or of indemnities, but merely of devastated territories...
...Immediately after the annexation of the Saar, a movement was set on foot for its denationalization...
...Germany Is disarmed...
...The Fourteen Points were the program en "which victors and vanquished war* to meet together on aa equal footing to guarantee the interests of peace...
...A territory arbitrarily declared to be Polish was thrust between one part of Germany and the other, whereby Germany railway, canal, and rive* transportation was completely disorganized aa* the foundation of German economic life received a mortal blow...
...A French garrison of 7,500 men was introduced...
...What Franca may do to Germany, other nations may do to France...
...It was signed by the Allied Nations (twenty-seven in number) on the one hand and Germany on the other...
...John Steele, the London correspondent, in, a recent dispatch to The Chicago Tribune reports that Ben Tillett, a labor leader in the British Parliament, said in a speech a few days ago "Unless the British Premier is backed up by the working classes in resisting war, he will be dragged into it by the diplomacy which has dragged us into all the war in which we have been engaged...
...The Treaty of Versailles left unsolved the question of the total amount of the German indemnity, the calculation of which was entrusted to the Reparations Commission...
...The Reparations Commission has sovereign powers in Germany...
...As a result of the treaty, Germany lost all • her colonies, all her merchant fleets, all her foreign economic organization, her best agricultural and mineral lands, her raw materials, essential to the iron and steel trade, of which she held the primacy...
...It was an integral part of Germany...
...Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, had declared there must be "a peace without victory,'' that there was "no quarrel with the German people"—only with German imperialism...
...The inhabitants cut off from Germany are to hold a referendum in fifteen years to discover whether the Saar is to be a part of Germany or France...
...In 1919, a Reparations Commission was created to impose an indemnity which no one has dared define, which everyone knows cannot be paid...
...It has taken a long time to learn that the collapse of the German mark is a direct consequence of the treaty and reparations policy which deprived Germany of all her resources...
...This forced acknowledgement furnished the pretext for demanding that Germany pay for all the loss and all the damage of* whatever nature caused by the war...
...France has proceeded with hervpolicy of undoing Germany, notwithstanding the effort of Great Britain to check th'e madness...
...The separation from Germany of upper Silesia, a wholly German territory with immense mineral wealth, was submitted to a referendum...
...The Allies have not even thought of reducing France territorially...
...It is" > such indisputable proof that make works like Nitti's "Decadence of Europe" and Eeynes "Economic Consequences of the Peace" epoch-_ making...
...The treaty of Versailles denied Germany an army, other than to maintain internal order, her navy was confiscated1 by the victors and in the meanwhile the victorious countries have enlarged their armies and navies, and defenseless pec- ' pies are placed under military servitude...
...But France was not satisfied...
...Lord Castlereagh, then Foreign Minister of Great Britain, explaining the object of the 1815 treaties in the House of Commons, stated that their sole aim had been to demolish the military despotism which Napoleon had created...
...In the immense folly ¦which invaded the victorious countries after the war, some of them had the notion that, by exaggerating the indemnities, they would have a means of holding Germany in firm control, of degrading and stifling her...
...but this provision is inoperative because the covenant of the League as-—«erts that all decisions of the Council of the League must be unanimous...
...He speaks with authority gained from actual political experience and long observation and close study of European conditions and events...
...French monopolists intend to defend the integrity of the treaties at whatever coat, because they ensure France the hegemony of the Continent and the control of iron, coal, potash, and other raw materials...
...The book has lasting historical and interpretive value...
...the failure to pay made a cover to the crime of reducing the conquered States to a condition of indeterminate vassalage...
...Meeting Of Public Ownership League THERE will be held on September 10th to -13th, 1923, at Toronto, Canada, a Publie-Ownership Conference under the auspices of the Public Ownership League of America, Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission, the City of Toronto, and numerous other municipalities, civic, commercial, labor and farmers' organizations...
...N IN "Decadence of Europe" the entire field of disaster affected by the Versailles treaty is touched upon—Poland, Russia, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Balkans...
...and to consider ways and means for conserving and advancing the interests involved in our great utilities and natural resources, especially with reference to the tremendous opportunities now confronting our civilization in the matter of hydro-electric and super-power development...
...ciples had more to do with reducing the spirfl of resistance in A'u stria-Hungary *« wall aa in Germany than had the armed fore* of Cb* Allies...
...production to potatoes...
...The treaty of Versailles contradicted all previous declarations and pledges...
...If we are to be saved from war, we must save Germany and we must save France...
...For the first time in a thousand years Germans of the...
...It is much larger than the prewar German army...
...Nitti repeatedly commends the United States for not entering the League of Nations as at present constituted,—which he regards as little more than a rubber stamp for the Reparations Commission...
...HP O PROTECT the rights of the victors, and * to give an appearance of legality to every abuse, a League of Nations sits at Geneva, says Nitti...
...If France can maintain the largest army in the world, develop submarines, poison gas, and other insidious weapons of war and devastation to an alarming degree, why, says Nitti* is she not to pay her debts to the United States...
...A series of conferences followed...
...France has a larger army than any country has ever had in modern times...
...In his preface Nitti says: In the interests of France, which has a noble mission in European civilization, we want Frenchmen to know the whole truth.' We want France to return to those ideals which were not only her greatness but her salvation...
...It is true the League of Nations can invite its members to review the treaties if they become inapplicable...
...John Ryan, of Washington, D- C, and many other eminent workers interested in public problems...
...and politicians thought to instill into the masses of the electors the conviction that the vanquished nations could be made to pay all the.expenses of the war...
...to hear of the methods and plans of those who have made a success of public ownership...
...In spite of her bad financial condition, her inability to pay her debts—even the interest, France has an army greater than those of the United States, Great Britain, and Italy combined together with those of the conquered peoples...
...The theme of "Decadence of Europe" is the frightful consequences to European civilization of the impossible "peace" terms imposed by the conquerors upon the conquered at that secret council table...
...On the very morrow of her defeat she was able to conclude alliances with Russia and agreements on Eastern Questions with England...
...This difference of attitude toward Germany became one of the causes of growing discord between France and Great Britain...
...France has the largest military force In En-rope...
...The indemnity was fixed at an amount France could pay without very serious difficulty...
...NITTI contrasts t* '1919 following the Work...
...exacting indemnities impossible of payment...
...Germany was forced to acknowledge entire responsibility for all the losses and all the injuries of the war, something heretofore unknown in the history of treaties...
...It is a dark and foreboding picture that Nitti paints...
...she was bound by no restrictions or control...
...The devastated territories of France could already have been reconstructed from money spent on the armies of occupation, In spite of having lost a'l her movable property, of being subjected ,rery kind of ill treatment.and under all so :¦¦ of pretexts being deprived of her territorie , industries and raw materials, Germany had r ' the terms of the treaty in a far greater- <l gree than it was reasonable to expect., While France sustain- ' g-eat losses and incurred enormous war ises, she acquired as a result of the we ^h territories, new colonies...
...The restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to France has been one of the conditions of peace settlement named by President Wilson...
...While France has not been able to pay even interest on her debts, she has loaned great turns to Poland and Roumania, fostering their armies which are under the French leash...
...Even under the enslaving terms of the "peace" treaty which Germany was forced to accept, the occupation of the Ruhr was not permissible...
...But none of the proposals could be put into practice...
...she had forced them all into lengthy wars, and had threatened the very existence of England...
...LJ ARDLY anyone in Europe, including the * * politicians and bankers, knew the real nature of the Treaty of Versailles and therefore did not know the inevitable economic ruin which it was causing Germany...
...It can invade all administrative affairs, modify laws, dispose of Germany's resources...
...Common knowledge of the meaning of the Versailles treaty, the truth about Reparations and the Ruhr Occupations is proving today a more powerful preventive of war than anything that has yet happened...
...Saar can not communicate freely with the rest of Germany...
...He believes the United States can make intervention effective and qave Europe by placing the debts of the victors and the reparations of the vanquished in the same category and by proclaiming that no economic or financial assistance or credit will be accorded so long as the vanquished nations are under control of any kind and are prevented from producing freely and from expanding according as their conditions and national temperament suggest...
...In the peace negotiations of 1815 France was represented first by Talleyrand, and then by the Due de Richelieu...
...It "is the strategem of reparations that is dragging Europe into the abyss, says Nitti...
...In 1815 when France was vanquished she underwent no internal subjugation...
...War of 1815 following the Napoleonic W, - Under the rule of...
...The summary has been made for the most part in the author's own language, though not always in the same sequence as the book...
...She received enormof .ies of coal and four-fifths of the pre of German iron mines...
...Throughout, even of Italy, whose vacillating policy he condemns, Nitti speaks the truth unsparingly as he sees it...
...The only question," he said, "is to decide whether a civilizing and moral principle shall govern the world, or whether it is to be ruled ' by military despotism...
...The vote of a single country hostile to .Germany is sufficient to prevent any change and the League of Nations has no other function than that of guaranteeing the rights of the victors...
...Government by the invisible money power may in reality be more potent and more tyrannical than that of monarchs...
...Carl Vrooman, formerly Assistant Secretary of Agriculture...
...But it is disguised imperialism that Nitti arraigns,—internal greed clothed in external idealism...
...Germany is no longer a sovereign state and cannot be, so long as the occupation of the Rhine and the...
...Nitti declares the proclamation of these pr£a...
...All States are included in this League...
...Yet the inhabitants have been more -harshly treated than as if the territory was occupied as a war measure...
...N Yet France has not ' a single franc of the interest she owes sited States...
...How can Germany pay 'h usihle1 indemnities demanded of her, as...
...The changes brought about by the formation of a Polish corridor on German territory and the' separation of Danzig and cession of large portions of Prussia and even of Pomeranla to Poland, resulted not only in the demoralization of industry and transportation, bat also to toe loss of most important agrarian resources...
...The inevitable corollary to France's imperialistic ambitions is increasing armaments...
...The only salvation of Europe is a revision of the treaties...
...If in time of peace France may seize and hold German territory by armed force under the pretence of compelling payment of impossible indemnities fixed by the conquerors, then Indeed there la no hope for Europe...
...But he" does implore America to intervene and intervene quickly—before it is too late...
...For the first two years after the war particularly, it was believed that the depreciation of the mark was a consequence of the war...
...That would only create a spirit of revenge...
...For the France, which, in the hour of danger in 1914 invoked the rights of humanity and declared war was being fought for the liberty of peoples is now in the clutches of the plutocrats, says Nitti...
...Further, the League of Nations acts only on the initiative of the victors...
...Speaking of the occupation of the Ruhr, he says, it was undertaken without any idea of forcing Germany to pay reparations and its effect is to make impossible the payment of any reparations whatever...
...One maat go back to ft* Middle Ages, tad jb> the meat f^UHtkCtttJ forms of fencIaBauv •ays KEiti, to drearer anything which, in violence, ffltnfirfff TrT% flbe a*sr torts* «f soc-Hation and plundering which have been introduced since the World War...
...She is expanding bar navy...
...to get the ideas of the most careful and competent utility experts in America...
...Immediately the rush began and soon the waterway* leading to Happy Creek were filled with row-boats, canoes and launches carrying eager prospectors...
...THE occupation of the Ruhr or any German territory not definitely designated in • the terms of peace, is a violation of the rights of nations, says Nitti...
...a large num-' ber of natives were banished...
...Prance's policy to~ enslave, dismember, and destroy Germany is the darkest picture in the annals 01 history, says Nitti, not even the barbarities of the Middle Ages approaching the viol-'nee, humiliation, and insult- now being heaped upon Germany by France...
...Though republics in name, modern governments are still far from being altogether for and by the people...
...But to ensure payment of these impossible indemnities Germany has been compelled to support a foreign army in whose ranks are representatives of barbarian races...
...The analysis and contrast of the terms of peace following the downfall of Napoleon with the terms following the World War are made to clinch Nitti's arraignment of the selfishness, greed, spoliation, and violence that characterized Versailles...
...Germany must be dismembered...
...The main motive of the review like that of the book has been to vivify the fundamental principles of liberty and rights of nations which under the guise of Reparations are being violated by the occupation of the Ruhr...
...We must say in unmistakable terms that there must be no more war, and we must call on the French and German -workmen to cooperate...
...At first France demanded annexation of the Saar, a completely German territory, out of whose 8,000,000 inhabitants there are scarcely a hundred French...
...Nitti says, by no flight of fancy, even the boldest, before or during the war, could any attention have been paid'to Polish claims to Upper Silesia...
...AS KrJFAKAXIOMS have been made the instrument of the moral debasement and economic and political ruin of Europe, the first step toward salvation and reconstruction is to settle the question of reparations...
...AT MIDNIGHT, in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, as the celebration of Empire Day was at its height, tidings were brought to the dance halls and gambling places of the discovery of a silver ledge at Happy Creek, forty miles south of Yukon...
...Yet the victors inflicted on her no greater penalty than the restoration of her prewar boundaries, a moderate indemnity, and a brief military occupation...
...special passports were made necessary for travelers between the Saar and the rest of Germany...
...any more than it saved Germany...
...Again and again Nitti reiterates the facts to prove that the treaty of Versailles has wrought more terrible havoc than the war itself...
...Hence the dominating determination of France to preserve the treaties intact to the last comma, and to make reparations the instrument for exacting the last pound of German flesh, is the supreme obstacle to the reconstruction of Europe...
...Purposely all reference to the woes of outraged womanhood land to those acts of violence and humiliation which are sowing the seeds of resentment and revenge, have been omitted...
...the French language was made compulsory in the schools...
...She had been compelled to endure an army of occupation, which has cost more than any other army in the world...
...Speakers of national reputation will appear on the program, including Charles P. Stein-metz of Schenectady...
...when France admits she can not pay e he interest on her debts...
...In 1815 the victors never even thought of compelling France to declare herself guilty of all the wars and all the damage...
...when herself, so much in need of them, Germany had been compelled to hand over enormous quantities of rolling stock, cattle, and finished articles—the necessities of life...
...Nitti's book went to press three months ago...
...Nitti says all the crimes attributed to Germans in their colonization of the Polish terri-tory which they once ruled, remain a very small matter compared with what is happening in the Saar, which has been taken away from Germany economically with the idea of taking it from her in a few years politically...
...The Victors over France in 1815 gave back her colonies with few exceptions...
...Reparations Commission continue to exist...
...Even Lloyd George, who, with his great intelligence, had no faith in the illusions about indemnities, was, in the interest of political expediency, led to make declarations favoring the belief in Germany's unlimited ability to pay and so lift the burden of taxes and war debts off the Allies...
...but most of all it should be widely read now for the light it sheds on the outstanding crisis in the Ruhr...
...The casual reader might infer from his contrast of the ruthlessness, greed, and violence of the Versailles treaty with the more equitable terms of the treaty- of Vienna a hundred years before, that Nitti distrusts government by the people...
...The men who are now directing, her policy are not the heirs of the great French tradition, but rather its destroyers...
...and she quickly recovered her great position in international politics...
...FRANCESCO NTTTT was Premier of Italy and served at the head of the Italian delegation at the V^ailles Peace Conference...
Vol. 15 • July 1923 • No. 7
