I. THE GENERAL SITUATION

VERYONE is familiar with the fact that during the years of the recent war each midwinter period was a time of great pessimism and disappointment for the Allies, a season of strain for the publics of the nations in arms against the Germans. Whatever were the failures of the Germans in the major field of operations during each successive campaign, they were able by triumphs over the Serbians, the Rumanians and the Russians, to awaken new hopes among their own masses and sow corresponding

fears in the midst of Allied nations.

At the outset of another year, this time marking the second anniversary of the restoration of peace, it is clear that something of the same condition of disappointment and disillusionment prevails. Recalling the war parallels we may hope for solutions more favorable than present conditions seem to warrant; yet it is equally necessary to recognize that the unsettled problems of 1919 cast a portentous shadow over the year that is at hand.

Above all we have to recognize that the Paris Conference is dissolving, if not officially adjourning, leaving behind it many documents duly formulated and bearing witness to the diligence of the Conference itself. But so far it has failed to put into actual operation any one of the treaties it has imposed upon the enemy and has now confronting it in its declining days a challenge of authority from beaten Germany and faces an incoherence and chaos in the world, intensified by certain well-nigh critical situations in regions in which the recent world tragedy had its inception.

In the present article I mean to discuss four or five of the chief problems, namely, the European effects of America's course in temporarily refusing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles; the meaning of the recent German challenge to the Paris Conference, which still stands as I write these lines, at a moment when Allied press and publics are

discussing new military operations against Germany; the Adriatic situation with its Balkan complications; the Russian problem as it has been transformed by the total collapse of Allied hopes placed in Denikine, Kolchak and Yudenvitch, and finally the ever-darkening outlook in Asia Minor.

As to the American political aspects of the dispute over the Treaty in the Senate, I shall not speak. The clash between ideas, personalities and political parties, all discoverable in the progress of recent domestic history, lies outside the field of one who has sought through more than five years to set forth in the pages of this magazine European conditions and forces as they affect American interests and are themselves affected by American action.

The rights and wrongs of American action or failure to act are matters which will be discussed by others far more competent to deal with them. What I shall try to do, as in the past, is to explain, so far as I am able, the European reactions. The failure to ratify the treaty is an American matter, a question of domestic politics and policy, but once the treaty has failed of ratification, a whole long series of European consequences remains to be noted.

The course of the Senate may be sound or unsound, a defense of legitimate American interests, or an excursion into partisan politics at a moment when world peace is in the balance. On this point the American debate is only beginning and the decision seems indefinitely postponed, but in Europe the consequences have been immediate, considerable, in a sense permanent.

II. EUROPE AND AMERICA

In understanding the present reaction in Europe one has inevitably to go back to the opening days of the Paris Conference, a year ago. Then the view of Europe, of that portion of Europe associated with us in the war with Germany, was clear. America had become the dominating factor in the war. Our troops had supplied the reserves neces

sary to furnish the strategy of Foch with the weight essential to its success. We had prevented a moral collapse in 1917 by entering the conflict. We assured a military triumph in 1918 by supplying that man-power, still but roughly trained, which made German victory impossible and assured the exhaustion of German reserves. On a battlefield long contested, when weariness was present on both sides, we contributed just the force needed to decide the issue. Moreover the numbers which we sent were but an earnest of what we could send and our material reserves were even more considerable than the human.

When President Wilson arrived in Europe a year ago the Continent was unmistakably under the American spell. Still exhausted, suddenly made acutely conscious of the extent of its wounds, by the end of the struggle and the arrival of the first hour available for taking account of stock, France, Britain, Italy, the big states and even more completely the little states newly called into existence, recognized their own appalling weakness and saw in America the sole and sufficient guarantee of their future.

The entrance of America into the war, the coming of the President, the presence of millions of American troops on the Continent all these things were accepted as ultimate evidence of the change in American policy. Europe believed that the United States had broken for all time with its old policy of isolation. And this impression was powerfully fortified by the first words of the President himself, by all the declarations public and private of the Americans who went to Europe to make peace.

Speaking for America the President said in unequivocal language that the United States sought a new ordering of world relations, a new international organization, that if such an organization in accordance with its conceptions were achieved, then all the mighty power of the United States, military as well as financial, would be placed behind the new arrangement. We, the great American nation, at the moment unmistakably the supreme world power, would guarantee the terms of peace and the conditions of settlement.

I wish I could make it clear to my American readers how explicit this affirmation on behalf of the United States was made and how completely it was accepted by Europe. In the presence of this fact the European nations made a peace which was constructed

around the essential premise that America had come to Europe to stay, that the challenge of the principles or applications of principle established at Paris would be automatically taken up by American armies and naval forces.

Europe did not resign all its aspirations, all its own time-honored or dishonored customs, but again and again at a critical moment the decisive factor was the assertion that America would decline to accept such and such solutions. For example, France agreed to surrender the Rhine barrier solely because she was assured that if she did not the United States would not aid her next time and if she did American millions would as a physical barrier replace the geographic bulwark of the Rhine.

With all its compromises and departures from the Fourteen Points, the Treaty of Versailles was built round the single fact that America had come to Europe to stay. To put the thing negatively, a totally different setlement would have been arrived at had the Europeans conceived that the document which would finally be signed in Paris would not automatically receive American endorsement. The smallest suggestion that there was a question as to the action of the Senate when it should have the treaty in its own hands was repulsed in Paris as a mere evidence of partisan spite on the part of its author.

Europe made peace with the President of the United States in the firm conviction that the President spoke for all of America, for the political opposition as well as for his party associates. America was in Paris the expression of a hundred millions of people, all united in a common demand for a certain kind of settlement and prepared to guarantee such a setlement once it had been accepted in its name by the President.

Exactly this circumstance explains to-day why such dispatches as come to us from Paris and London assert that the United States Senate, by refusing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, has repudiated its obligations. Europe knows that it made a certain kind of an arrangement solely to insure American support, that it was assured of that support by the President, if it made the arrangement, and it reasons that America has repudiated a pledge, after having led Europe to make certain commitments, sacrifices, surrenders, which never would have been made under any other circumstances.

It will not do to assert, as many Americans

now do, that Europe had no right to draw such conclusions. On the side of fact this stands, but it does not help, rather it prevents understanding the present situation. Granted European diplomacy made a supreme blunder, it still made the blunder and finds itself now in the presence of the consequences. It made peace with the President, expecting that this was the same as making peace with the country, and it sees that peace at least temporarily rejected and, what is even more disastrous, assailed by one of the two great American political parties.

III. THE CONSEQUENCES

Now for the consequences of the recent events in the Senate: We see clearly that Europe made a settlement based upon the participation of the United States in the permanent guarantee of that settlement. If we had not participated in the peace negotiations or if we had not assumed a leading rôle and given unmistakable assurances that if our ideas were embodied in the treaty certain results would follow, Europe would have made peace in its own way. It might have been a worse way, it certainly would have been a different way.

Unquestionably the French would have compelled Germany to recognize permanent French military occupation of the Rhine barrier. Great Britain would have been compelled to agree to this, because it is essential to remember that British policy always envisages defending the Straits of Dover against a continental foe and to defend them she must, as the events of 1914 showed, stand with France. Thus British interest demands that the defense of the Straits of Dover shall begin as far away as possible and, since British troops must share with French the burden of the resistance, the British are as interested as the French in having an advantageous and distant line of resistance.

Both the British and the French could agree that American millions were a better guarantee against Germany than the Rhine barrier, provided there was no doubt of having the millions promptly. But a barrier, either geographical or military, there was needed and, with any doubt cast upon the military barrier, constituted by our millions, the reversion to the geographical substitute becomes inevitable.

Again, as to Italy: France and Great Britain could support Mr. Wilson's Fiume policy, absolutely right, in my judgment, on the moral side, because if the United States were committed to European enterprise, to firm

and enduring participation in world affairs, if American troops were certain to come to the aid of British and French, Italian mili tary force was a well-nigh negligible factor. In a word, our armies were so much more considerable an asset that Britain and France could afford to risk losing Italian friendship by supporting Mr. Wilson's Fiume policy.

But if the United States is out of the calculations, or even becomes a doubtful element, Italy becomes a tremendous factorin truth, the future balance of power in Europe depends upon the direction of Italian policy. If Italy turns to Germany, France and Great Britain are at once in a fatally defective position. Thus Italy resumes the position she occupied when in 1915 the Allies sought to enlist her in the war against Germany. She can fix her price and Britain and France must pay.

The price is plain. If France will now demand the right to stay at the Rhine, as a concession based upon her new situation created by American action, Italy can with equal determination ask for Allied, British and French recognition of her Adriatic claims, of her Asiatic ambitions as well. To deny them is to immobilize French divisions along the Alps, if there is a new German attack, and it was the release of these divisions, following Italy's promise of neutrality, which saved the Battle of the Marne.

The case of Rumania is not less manifest. Rumania is nothing in the European scale when contrasted with the potential resources of the United States. Wise policy, obvious common sense, demanded support of American wishes as contrasted with Rumanian when the reward was the securing of American assistance and the loss, merely the possible hostility of Rumania. But Rumania, while a pigmy, when compared with the United States, is a very considerable figure in a European situation with the United States left out. She holds the lower Danube, is master of a relatively considerable fraction of Europe's most fertile lands, exceeding Italy in area and with a population of 16,000,000 capable of rapid increase, judging from conWhen she was less temporary statistics. than half as large she was able to demand With her price for entrance into the war. America out she resumes her old value. Does anyone suppose that France or Britain, faced with the solid facts of the situation, of the new situation, will long oppose Rumanian aspirations on the Dneister or even in the angle between the Theiss and the Danube?

Nor is the case of Poland less patent. Despite the French plea, we have made Poland an impossibility by our compromises and calculations at Paris. We have restricted the corridor to the Baltic, denied possession of Danzig, invented plebiscites to meet German objections. We have done all these things in the name of the Fourteen Points and under the guiding impulse of American ideas. But now the situation changes. For France, for Britain, there is no longer a question of the certainty of American millions along the Rhine, if Germany stirs again. Poland like Rumania assumes a totally different value in a European combination in which the United States does not appear.

To satisfy American scruples Poland was refused much territory vital to her military and economic future. Again it was a small price to pay for American aid, but it is a prohibitive price if America disappears and the old danger of Germany remains, as it does. Then the Pole must take the place of the Russian. Then it must be the mission of Polish armies to attack Germany on the east and thus draw off some of the pressure exerted upon France in the west.

And if Poland is to be able to do all this, she must have the best possible frontiers, the largest area she is capable of occupying effectively. Above all she must be assured of the possession of the lower Vistula. The question of Danzig must be reopened and resettled. The plebiscite in Silesia takes on a new significance, because if these lands fall to Germany they can supply the arms and materials necessary for making a new war.

It is not necessary to multiply the examples of the actual effect of the American incidents. The truth stands unmistakable. Europe could make a moderate peace, a peace in accordance with principles of abstract justice, if America were certain to aid in defending it, but if there were a question as to America, then a peace based upon history and military geography was all that could be made. And the action of the Senate has settled the question of certainty, whatever the ultimate result of the debate. Therefore Europe must, and in my judgment will, promptly make its own amendments to the recent treaties-amendments all designed to regain a security lost by American with drawal. We shall have a new alliance, a new association of nations large and small to guarantee mutual security, and to establish this alliance many problems like those of Fiume, the Banat, Danzig will be reopened.

IV. THE GERMAN REACTION

At the moment when this article is written the Germans have openly refused to sign a protocol putting the Treaty of Versailles into operation because it includes a promise to pay indemnity for the sabotage of the German war fleet in British waters.

This act of defiance has two explanations. It is alleged on one side that it is a direct consequence of the course of the Unite l States Senate. Germany feels herself relieved of the menace of American participation in the enforcement of the terms of the peace. She is regaining something of her old feeling of strength.

A second explanation is found in the reaction within Germany, the ever-growing weakness of the present republican régime, the steady increase in enthusiasm manifested for Hindenburg, Mackensen, even for Ludendorff. The old elements of Germ`ny, the Junkers and the military, the Potsd m gang, are manifestly looking up and stretching forth hands to seize power,

Probably each of the explanations contains. a measure of justice. At bottom lies the te rible failure of the victors to put the treaty into actual existence months and months ago. The German is getting out of the mood c despair and hopelessness of last winter. P sees his enemies slowly but surely becomin estranged. American events give him c1us? for satisfaction, but even more does the break between Italy on the one hand and Britain and France on the other.

Despite all the reports of alarmists I do not believe there is any warrant for believing that Germany is capable of fighting another war in contemporary months. Resistono there might be, a sort of pale repetition of the events of the Napoleonic Hundred Days, but not with the Kaiser in the lending rôle. This is possible, but under the conditions of modern war Germany can raise armies but not equipment. She lacks all the things that make even a brief defense possible-heavy artillery, arsenals, airplanes. Her ports are open, her submarines gone, while her French foes have at least in equipment an advantage beyond compare.

Yet it is not impossible that a Junker cabal, coming to power by overthrowing the present republic, may be forced to seek to repeat the great events of 1813, which ended in the deliverance of Germany and the downfall of France. Such an attempt means swift ruin, unless the French troops refuse to fight and

the British abandon their allies-things totally beyond any reasonable expectation. reasonable expectation. Foch will moreover begin his action on the east bank of the Rhine and Frankfurt will be his first hostage and Southern Germany an immediate victim.

Probably before this article is in the readers' hands Germany will have bowed again, but this very capitulation may seal the doom of the republican régime. Its single chance lies in getting the war settled and peace restored in the briefest possible time and events have delayed this solution for a year. Meantime the Germans have passed from one humiliation to another and the contrast between the achievement of the old régime before the war and of the new since the defeat stands forth in all German eyes.

Therefore it seems to me entirely likely

that we shall see in the next few months a real German reaction, the return of the old gang to control, not impossibly followed by a desperate gamble recalling the Napoleonic epilogue. This is the more likely because the policy of the nations who have fought Germany, a policy imposed by American events, more and more tends to take measures to achieve material and physical guarantees against fresh German attack.

Lacking effective leadership, Germany is drifting back into the hands of her old mas

ters.

Such leadership as she has is daily growing more completely discredited by the postponement of peace and the multiplication of humiliations. A coup d'etat becomes daily more possible and out of a coup d'etat there would emerge new defiance to the Allies, inevitable military operations, and a total remaking of the terms of peace with Germany.

On the Allied side this would not be an unmixed evil. It would supply the warrant for establishing French garrisons permanently upon the Rhine and remaking the Polish frontier. It would give justification It would give justification for abolishing League of Nations restrictions and applying purely European principles. In the end, I believe the Germans would play into the hands of their enemies, but in the meantime, the prospect of real peace and orderly adjustment would be mightily hindered. Germany has no Napoleon to come back from Elba. Even recent events have not clothed the Kaiser with dignity nor restored his lost popularity. She lacks the resources to turn out such an army, as Napoleon took to Waterloo, to defeat, as it turned out. But there are many circumstances in 1919 which recall 1815.

Above all else there is in Germany much the same mood as existed in 1815 in France. An army used to victory which does not feel itself defeated, and by army I mean officers and non-commissioned officers, has been thrown out of work, evicted forever, if the treaty of peace prevails. A vast horde of functionaries has similarly been deprived of livelihood and dignities, while the public which welcomed peace a year ago as a relief, after thirteen months finds its condition still difficult. Set over against this is an unmistakable breaking up of the victorious enemy alliance, recalling the situation at Vienna after the defeat and first abdication of Napoleon.

A prompt restoration of actual peace conditions, the ending of all delays, the beginning of commercial exchange, the extension of Allied credits to the Germans, the opening of a prospect of some degree of prosperity attained through industry, may still avail to save Germany from reaction and even revolution, followed by a further Allied occupation and a new set of peace terms, such as were served upon France after Waterloo.

But it seems to me the element of time is running heavily against such a desirable solution.

I do not believe in a restored Germany suddenly leaping to arms and repeating the achievements of Prussia in 1813. To me the military aspects of the German problem are fairly plain, but the chances of success or failure will not necessarily restrain the old gang if it regains control. Just as the same men deliberately ignored certain very obvious and fundamental considerations when they were in supreme control and thus precipitated defeat, they are likely to take equal and greater risks, if they regain control, because no one can read their present utterances without feeling that, like the Bourbons, "they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Moreover, for all of them it is a question of life or death and perhaps of now or never, for if Germany ever gets started on a new basis their day is over.

Thus at the turn of the year the situation in Germany seems to me more critical than at any time since the Armistice. One may exaggerate the peril, but one cannot mistake the fact that the country is in full reaction and the success of the reactionaries carries with it almost inevitably the certainty of some military operations and of the upsetting of the Treaty of Versailles, as the Napoleonic return upset the terms of the First Treaty of Paris, a little more than a century ago.