PEACE TREATIES

Evening Star, Issue 23180, 1 February 1939, Page 13

PEACE TREATIES

THE GREAT BETRAYAL VIEW OF MR LLOYD GEORCE It is a magnificent achievement to produce one’s eighth volume of memoirs relating to the War and Peace Treaties at the age of 75. But nothing tires or daunts Mr Lloyd George, writes J. B. Firth, in the ‘ Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.’ Not mere “ fury,” of course; or rage, though that too is not lacking. The furor which still animates Mr Lloyd George is an amalgam of physical energy, ferment of the soul, passion, indignation, wounded pride, crusading zeal, vigour of phrase and feeling, and a grim determination to fire another broadside or two into his foes before the tide carries him or them out of range. . . Such is the fury which supplies Mr Lloyd George with ammunition of varied size and quality—high explosive for choice, and often a drench of gas to follow. Nor does the authority’s armouryshow signs of depletion. A sentence on p, 1,341 holds out the promise of an “ account of the betrayal of the treaties by the Powers that framed them.” The single word “ betrayal ” sufficiently indicates the author’s angle of vision. NEW STATE’S PLEDGES. The principal subjects dealt with here are the Italian claims, the new States created by Versailles, and the Turkish Treaty of Sevres. An important chapter is concerned with minorities and the strenuous made by the conference to provide for their protection. Guarantees, which were readily given, were demanded from all the* succession States. As far as oaths and pledges could bind them, they were bound fast. But. as Mr Lloyd George grimly says, “ No treaty can guarantee humanity against universal perfidy.” - During the recent agony of Czechoslovakia Mr Lloyd George kept strangely silent. But as one of the Council of Four he had very grave misgivings about the composition of the new Czech State which he was asked to sanction. To incorporate territories occupied by overwhelming German and Magyar majorities was inviting trouble and directly contrary to the principle of self-determination. _ The council knew it. yet gave a hesitant consent, partly because it could hardly refuse, and partly because it accepted Dr Benes’s vehement assurances that the one desire of the Czechs was to make a happy and united State out 01 Czechs, Slovaks. Germans, Poles, Hungarians, and Ruthenians. The author says:— “ Had the Czech leaders in time and without waiting for the menacing pressure of Germany redeemed their promise to grant local _ autonomy to the various races in their republic, on the lines of the Swiss Confederation, the present trouble would have been averted. THE CALL OF THE BLOOD. It is easy to say so. But the call of the blood, blared forth by a ceaseless and unscrupulous propaganda, is almost irresistible. ‘Would not the Nazi chiefs have still sent forth their; missioners among the Sudeten Germans even if the latter had enjoyed the fullest possible measure of self-government behind the Czech frontier forts? Mr Lloyd George recalls with just pride the blunt rebukes he administered to the representatives of the Succession States when they appeared before the Council of Four: “We won freedom,” he said, “for nations that had not the slightest hope of it—Czechoslovakia, Poland, and others. . . . And now we have the greatest trouble to keep them from annexing the territory of other _ nations and imposing upon other nations the very tyranny which they themselves have endured for centuries. ... It fills me with despair as a man who has fought all his life for little nations.” The chapter on Italian claims contains a remarkable letter by Lord Milner, dated May 19, 1919, which shows his clear-sighted prescience of Italy’s real ambitions with respect to Abyssina. He wrote: “ The plain and, indeed, the avowed object of the Italians in trying to get hold of all the approaches to Abyssinia from the sea is the ultimate absorption of that country.” (This was written when there was talk of ceding British Somaliland to the Italians “as equitable compensation ” for their receiving no share'of the German colonies.) “ The establishment of »a huge Italian block flanking our main route to India and bringing Italy into close relations both with Arabia and the Sudan would certainly mean trouble for us in the future in both these countries.” AT THE EXPENSE OF TURKEY. Mr Lloyd George himself, it may be noted, was willing to concede both British Somaliland and Jubaland provided that the French conceded an equivalent. The original idea had been to “ compensate ” Italy at the expense of Turkey, and if President Wilson and Mr Lloyd George could have had_ their way there would have been nothing of the old Turkish Empire left for the Turks. Smyrna and the adjacent districts, to-

gether with the Dodecanese, were to go to Greece in full sovereignty, as well as a mandate for another large slice of Asia Minor, Adalia,-and its hinterland, were to be Italian; the Syrian, mandate was .to be French, the Palestine British, etc. A mandate for Constantinople and' Armenia was offered to the United States, and provisionally accepted by President Wilson.

What the Council of Four left entirely out of their calculations and vision was the emergence of a great Turkish patriot in Mustapha Kemal, of whom they knew little except that ho had proved himself a skilful and stubborn soldier in Gallipoli and was then collecting the remnants of the routed Turkish armies.

Mr Lloyd George- was fanatacilly anti-Turk in 1919, and' so remains today. It is still gall and wormwood to him that the Allies allowed Kemal to tear up the Sevres Treaty and conduct them to the cowardly humiliation of Lausanne. “ From Sevres to Mudania,” wrote Mr Lloyd George, in 1923, “ was a retreat. From Mudania to Lausanne was a rout.” CHANAK NOT A BLUFF. Looking back, Mr Lloyd George sees this particularly unhappy episode in hues of his own- creation. He says:— “It (Chanak) was not a bluff. I certainly meant to, fight;, and 1 was certain we should win. The Greek army, had not been annihilated. The veterans of. the Balkan War and the Great War had 1 not been annihilated. They could have been reformed and reequipped. With British troops behind them this resusciated ariny could have swept back Kemal’s tired and illequipped forces. But the average Briton had had enough of fighting, and he was not .prepared to fire another; shot for any. cause. “ The negotiators of the Lausanne Treaty and their successors share with. King Alexander’s.; monkey the calamity thus wrought by the policy which gradually' disintegrated andl rotted" the structure that had been built up by the heroism of millions.” That is biting invective,- but it will not pass as sober in history. -The notion of an enduring American mandate foe Armenia was fantastic. Not less fantastic was the belief that the Greeks could by themselves hold the hinterland of Smyrna against the Turks if the latter were led by a soldier of genius.Mr Lloyd George should not have been in such haste to disband the British armies if he had contemplated further military adventures. Yet e another war would ' have been hated by Great Britain and the dominions.. It would also have_ disrupted what remained of the Alliance, and, even if it had been successful, the terms imposed could not have been enforced except by continuous threat of arms.

CjLEMENCEAU’S VIEW. In his concluding chapter, Mr Lloyd! George indulges a pleasing fancy. He speculates as to what his colleagues of the Peace Conference would say if they could speak their minds freely now on the treaties and their execution.

“ I think Clemenceau’s view of things would be more inexorable than it was in 1919. He would jerk out in his fierce staccato that Germany had! behaved exactly as he had anticipated, that she had shammed paralysis in order to deceive the Allies—until she was ready to spring to arms once more, that she was more powerful, more, domineering,. more, dangerous, more ravenous than ever, v. • As for the League of Nations, he would express no surprise at its failure. He would tell us that in hoping it would succeed we were expecting too much, of human nature. He had no faith in it, no hope for- it, no charity towards it.” Then when .each had said his say they would all agree that ; the . treaties “ were never, given a chance-by the miscellaneous-- and unimpressive array of second-rate' statesmen who have handled them for the past 15 years.” That represents Mr Lloyd George’s innermost and abiding ..conviction —that when his hands were wrenched front the helm the ship at once' lost direction and began to labour heavily in the trough of the angry seas. U.S. BLOW TO LEAGUE. If things had been going well up to that crucial point the. author might hope in time'to establish a legend so flattering to his pride. But, in fact, things never went w r ell from the very start. The immediate downfall of Clemenceau and the long domination of Poincare —a “ rather sinister little man ’’—converted the League, as Mr, Lloyd George insists, from being an instrument of peace and goodwill into “ an. organisation for establishing on a permanent footing the military and thereby the diplomatic supremacy of France.” Maybe that is somewhat overstated, but in the main it is a true charge. And then, of course, the defection of the United States was a “ reeling blow to the Covenant and to Disarmament.” Say, rather, a knock-out blow. Even if the “ second-rate statesmen ” w'hom Mr Lloyd George disdains had all been first-raters, could they have spared the w'orld. the deadly rivalry of irreconcilable ideologies? Mr Lloyd George believes that some day “ the world will throw up men whose wisdom, courage, and inspiration will lead the nations to another and more sustained effort for rebuilding the toppling and fissured temple of peace.” Some day, perhaps. But the interval may prove to last a dfecadc or a century.