THE EDITOR RESERVES THE LAST COLUMN
The Editor Reserves . . . The Last Column COL. STEPHEN BONSAL'S new book, Unfinished Business, is the secret diary he kept at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I. He performs a...
...Basic Problems Ignored Defeated on fundamentals, Wilson became absorbed in the form of enforcement rather than the substance of the Treaty—a perilous practice much in vogue again today...
...There was no lack of power at Geneva...
...Reparation was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of politics, of electoral chicane, from every point of view except that of the economic future of the states whose destiny they were building...
...This led inevitably to a disastrous avoidance of the basic problems which, if left unsolved, could and did lead only to a new and more terrible explosion...
...nor does it promote in any way a compact of economic solidarity among the Allies themselves...
...in fact, they approved Fascism and praised the words of the Duce...
...From Bonsai's on-the-spot observations we learn how Lloyd George sneered at the concept of "Freedom of the Seas" and growled, "We shall have none of that" when the nations were asked to "abjure our inalienable right of waging war...
...Edward House and was President Wilson's aide and interpreter at Versailles...
...STEPHEN BONSAL'S new book, Unfinished Business, is the secret diary he kept at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I. He performs a notable public service, as I pointed out last week, in throwing new light on a tragic phase of the struggle over ratification of the Treaty—the completeness with which the invalid President Wilson cut himself off from Congress and the country at the critical moment when honorable compromise seemed possible...
...As one follows the day-to-day unfolding of events at the Conference, one sees clearly how a weary Wilson came to sacrifice principle after principle because he felt that his League of Nations would set things right in the future...
...In short, as the New Statesman and Nation makes clear, it was not more power or the support of America, that Britain and France needed, but a common, democratic purpose to stop Fascism dead in its tracks...
...From Bonsai, too, we learn again how the fretful French resisted measures which would have strengthened German democracy and would have struck straight at the heart of the very causes of war...
...Although they agree with Keynes' judgment on the failure of Versailles to settle any of the basic economic problems of Europe, some Wilsonian disciples insist that we could have rectified all that by joining the League of Nations...
...Until Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936, the combined Powers of the League could have kept Germany disarmed without adding a gun to their own armaments...
...No one doubts today that in 1935 they could have upset the ramshackle empire of Mussolini if they had desired...
...The Council of Four paid no attention to these issues, being preoccupied with others—Clemenceau to crush the economic life of his enemy, Lloyd George to do a deal and bring home something which would pass muster for a week, the President to do nothing that was not just and right...
...An excellent summary of the actual situation appeared recently in the liberal New Statesman and Nation of London, and I think it is peculiarly appropriate here: "The power of Britain and France in European affairs after the withdrawal of America at the end of the last war was almost as absolute as that of the three Great Powers will be at the end of this war...
...they failed to do so, not for lack of arms, but because they preferred a strong Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union...
...Wilson's weapon of moral righteousness was no match for the cunning, the power, and the selfishness of some of the other delegates, so he yielded again and again...
...John Maynard Keynes summed it up in the thoughtful book he wrote shortly after Versailles, The Economic Consequences of the Peace: "The Treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe—nothing to make the defeated Central Empires into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new states of Europe...
...This school of thought, which blames everything that has gone wrong in the world since 1920 on the failure of the United States to join the League of Nations, is fond of picturing the League as battered, bled, and betrayed by Uncle Sam...
...Democratic Purpose Lacking The facts, of course, do not confirm such a "blame everything on America" theory...
...It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic problems of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of the Four...
...Is there anything to indicate that the despised "Uncle Shylock" sitting as a member of the League, could have had any more influence over his headstrong allies than we do today, with all our enormous potential bargaining power in the form of Lend-Lease billions and manpower millions...
...M.H.R...
...nothing to reclaim Russia...
...An even more tragic development—and one that is full of meaning and warning to us today—emerges in the pages of this book written by the man who was a close associate of Col...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 16
