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poses, striving to retard the domestic reforms which the democratic spirit is calling for. In her judgment the moral fiber of some of her adversaries has lost its resiliency, and they are prepared to listen to peace offers specially shaped to allure them. Significant of much is the circumstance that after three years' tremendous fighting, during which Great Britain raised five and a half million men for the Army, and half a million for the Fleet, the one absorbing topic in the Press is the prospect of peace. And the new and vigorous offensive just begun in Flanders has not caused the center of interest to shift. For events are enlarging the vision of the belligerents, and the urge of necessity is drawing them to new standpoints.

One thing seems certain: the upshot of this struggle will decide whether or no Germany shall hold sway over the white races. And there will be no "next time." For if the Teutons realize their Central Europe, a federal The Fortnightly Review.

State will be created with a population of 170-180 millions and an army of 15 million men. The will of that Federation will prevail without actual war. For nothing in the Europe that remained could withstand it, and a powerful fleet of super-U-boats would cut off Europe from America. To hinder that, the only means at present conceivable is the dismemberment of the Central Empires, and, so far as one can now judge, this would prolong the war for years, necessitate the re-establishment of harmony between the Government and Labor and a radical change in the conduct of the struggle. To my thinking there is no third solution. "Moral guarantees" are not obtainable between this and the close of the campaign, and would be worthless if they were. Unless, then, the Allies are able and willing to carry on the war to this consummation, the sacrifices already made and still to be made will have been offered up in vain.

E. J. Dillon.

THE THREE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS.

I hesitate to add to the many proposals as to the settlement after the war. So much must depend upon events now unforeseen; upon the completeness or incompleteness of the victory of the Allies; upon their internal affairs and financial state; upon their wishes, which may not be in all respects the same; in short, upon a multitude of conditions today incalculable. One probability ought not to be forgotten. To judge by the experience of conferences or congresses at which treaties of peace involving complicated arrangements as to territory have been discussed, there will be attempts to break up or impair the unity existing during war; to stir up jealousy; and to profit by

the dissensions created by special favors offered to some Powers. There will be efforts to play off one set of claims against another; to bring the Slav into conflict with the Italian and the Finn; to raise controversies as to the possession of Constantinople, or the control of the Dardanelles; to make the most of Irish discontent, if the claims of the Polish subjects of Prussia and Austria are pressed. Socialists in all countries will desire to be heard, and very likely may have no warmer supporters than some who, in their hearts detesting them, see in them, for the moment, useful auxiliaries. "The freedom of the sea," the ambiguous phrase and catchword used by Napoleon to create

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prejudice against England and to alienate her Allies, will be revived with the like intent. What intrigues and what manoeuvres there were with the object of dividing the victors at Paris and Vienna in 1814-1815, what divisions spontaneously took place among the victors themselves, the memoirs of Talleyrand, Castlereagh, Hardenberg, Stein, and Gneisenau reveal. And there were the same secret mining and countermining at Paris in 1856, and in some degree at Berlin in 1878. These tactics peated, generally with a certain degree of success, at all peace conferences in which several States participate, will doubtless be followed, at the close of the war, to the detriment, it may be, of the cause for which it was waged. There is no foreseeing the effect of old forces working in new directions and of new forces hitherto unfelt and still only dimly seen. Voices before unheard will be raised and will not be silenced. The spirit of 1848, it is sometimes said, has returned, but with demands then unheard of. In that year of turmoil the cry of those who shook thrones was for a constitution. There are now demands for the subversion or recasting of constitutions.

A further circumstance obscuring the future is to be noted. In the settlements here described only European States, and not all of them, took part; everything was done by some four or five Powers, or rather certain small inner circles at London, Vienna, Berlin, Petrograd, and Paris. Now for the first time the United States will share in the settlement of a war waged in Europe; and at some stage in the negotiations Neutrals, whose trade has been disorganized, and who have suffered cruelty at the hands of Germany, will insist upon being heard. New problems; new actors upon the stage; impatience and profound dissatisfaction with a system which

LIVING AGE, VOL. VIII, No. 386.

has permitted an unparalleled catastrophe-all that will necessitate lines of conduct for which precedents are no guides. Political prediction is generally only the unconscious reading of the past into the future, an act of memory rather than true divination; and in this case, with so much that is novel and incalculable, it may be that some of the dreamers of dreams and the seers of visions will be more justified by events than practical statesmen guided by experience cast in normal times.

One thing may be learned by the examination of past settlementsthey may help to prevent the repetition of some of the chief mistakes committed in all of them. They show how opportunities for effecting permanent improvements may be missed. They prove the necessity of entering into the Congress with a clear conception of the supreme desiderata. Being the masterpieces of the old diplomacy as practised by its proficients, they show its incapacity and unsuitability to the needs of today and tomorrow. I should not have attempted to retell their story, if I did not believe that they had present significance, to be ignored at our peril.

The first great settlement of European affairs was the Peace of Westphalia; the foundation of the European system which subsisted for at least a century and a half; the first of the great constructive political treaties of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Other treaties such as those of the Pyrenees, Ryswick, Nymeguen, Utrecht, and Aix-la-Chapelle-were diplomatically important. So, too, were the arrangements under the treaty of Campo Formio. But the first of the modern political settlements-in the sense of arrangements which recast boundaries and redistribute territory and modify the political condition of a large part of Europe and the relations of several

States to each other-is that of 1815, as expressed in the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna; a document, or series of documents, of wide scope, remodeling a large part of Europe, and changing the sovereignty of colonies; the most comprehensive settlement, the treaties of Munster and Osnabruck excepted, to which European statesmen have ever set their hands. fewer than seven States were parties to the treaties. Thirty-six sovereign States of Germany were represented. "Altogether there were present 216 chefs de mission.”* Besides the General Act, consisting of more than a hundred articles, there were a number of conventions between individual

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groups of States. The Congress had also not merely to determine large political issues but to settle intricate questions of title, succession, and claims for indemnity. No one can study the Final Act or read the Declaration-the work of the Congress's scribe and apologist, Gentz-in which its achievements are reviewed, without acknowledging the vastness of the work and the difficulties overcome.

The scope of the labors of the Congress was comprehensive; the principles upon which it proceeded were narrow. It was a diplomatic settlement, made chiefly in the interests of Austria, Prussia, and Russia-names which stood for dynasties and the interests of small groups of favored individuals in each of these countries.

It was a "Cabinet settlement" by diplomatists working in secret, undisturbed by and indifferent or hostile to popular opinion. The settlement gave to Europe, its apologists say, thirty years of repose. But it was a drugged rather than a healthy repose, a sleep from which there was a rude awakening in the next generation.

*Satow, II, 77, quoting Sorel, L'Europe et la Révolution, VIII, 382. At the Congress of Vienna the representatives of the Powers signed 100 protocols and seven treaties. Gentz to Nesselrode, Lettres de Nesselrode, V, 238.

Even Castlereagh, reactionary though he was, was not sanguine as to its duration. As early as 1818 he noted the fact that there was "a great fermentation in all orders of the State." The Allied sovereigns sought to preserve peace not by removing the causes of unrest, but by putting out of sight forces which accumulating became irresistible. True, the Allies recognized the neutrality of Switzerland. But that was long before virtually done by the Peace of Westphalia. And notwithstanding their recognition of Swiss independence, they violated that neutrality when it suited them to do so. In their dread of the power of France and for military reasons they yoked together Holland and Belgium, a short-lived combination never to the liking of the latter.

The only permanent elements in the work of the Congress were provisions which most of the representatives thought of little value and were reluctant to adopt. I mean the declaration as to the Slave Trade and the agreement as to the navigation of international rivers. At Vienna the internationalizing of the great rivers was initiated; and the principle then proclaimed has, to some extent, been followed throughout the world. (Articles 108 to 117 of the General Act.) But even these provisions were for a time somewhat shadowy benefits. The Powers concerned did not carry them out fully in practice. It is still not true that the navigation of the Rhine and Elbe is entièrement libre.

At Vienna and Paris began, on the initiative of the English Government, international action against the Slave Trade. The Continental Powers did little to further it. They approved of the principle, but it was left to England to see it through. They were very cool on the subject. They did not wish to

"precipitate the abolition of this form of commerce" or to "attack for the advantage of negroes the sacred right of property." The avowed object of the Allies was to put an end to the misfortunes of Europe and to establish order.* There was no looking behind Governments and their wishes to the lot of the people. There was no perception of anything beyond and above territory, population, and military power. From first to last the proceedings were anti-democratic-I might say, anti-national. The labors of the great Powers were concerned with a division of spoil chiefly at the expense of France. Here is how the proceedings struck a shrewd observer overlooking the negotiators at their work: "Vous serez effrayé, lorsque vous verrez les deux conventions pour les articles non exécutés du traité de Paris, où Humboldt d'un côté, et Castlereagh de l'autre, ont épuisé tout ce que l'on imagine de conditions dures, de précautions et de chicane, pour extorquer à ce malheureux gouvernement jusqu'à la dernière réparation du dernier grief que Bonaparte avait fourni à l'Europe."†

Gentz, a bystander-and looking, so to speak, over the shoulders of the players at the diplomatic card tablewas struck not only by the rapacity but by the collective folly of all concerned. Writing at the close of 1814and there is no reason to think that his

opinion changed a year later he says, "L'aspect des affaires publiques est lugubre; mais il ne l'est pas, comme autrefois, par le poids imposant, et écrasant suspendu sur nos têtes, mais par la médiocrité et l'ineptie de presque tous les acteurs." Castlereagh, whose straightforward honesty stands from a record of intrigue, was startled at the predatory spirit of *See preambles to treaties of Chaumont and Paris.

†Gentz to Nesselrode, Lettres de Nesselrode, V, November 22, 1815.

Tagebücher, Í, 352.

some of his colleagues; they were engaged in "a lawless scramble for power.'

The men who did the work of the Congress at Paris and Vienna-about a dozen in all-included consummate masters of diplomacy, as then understood, such as Talleyrand, and Wessenberg. There were not wanting statesmen of wide culture and outlook, men such as Humboldt, who might have planned worthily and wisely if they had cared to be more than the advocates of their sovereigns. The Emperor Alexander stands out as an interesting and enigmatical figure, a mixture of egotism, benevolence, vanity, mysticism, cunning, and impulses of generosity, now aspiring to be a St. Louis, and now a passive instrument to be played upon by Madam Krudener and other semi-charlatans. With far-reaching schemes of benevolence, some of which he had broached to Pitt, he meant well if the world went as he wished it. But he, the Christian Emperor with genuine desire to make it better, became at Verona and Laybach, when he heard of revolts, a despot not much unlike his brutal successor. With all his genuine ebullitions of chivalry, he was not above sharp practices. He was false to his Polish subjects and to his allies; he broke the promise which he had given to the former to restore their kingdom, and he backed out of the engagement into which he had entered with Austria and Prussia to divide among them the Duchy of Warsaw.† Though able and honest representatives of their country's interests, the English diplomatists were shortsighted and wavering. In their dread of the power of France, they were too subservient to Prussia. There was no consultation of the people's wishes. The supreme endeavor was to construct military

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States powerful against each other, and particularly against France.*

Historians of all shades of opinion have condemned the settlement as conceived in a narrow spirit, and as an example of crude egotism. Treitschke is as emphatic as democratic historians. It was, as he says, an "unhappy peace"; unhappy in a different sense from that of the eulogist of Prussia. The settlement was a bad settlement. It would have been worse had Prussia had her own way. She insisted that France was a conquered country, though her conquerors entered her as "Allies"; that she must be treated as such, and must be mulcted in an indemnity and deprived of territory; that the States of Germany which had assisted Napoleon must be punished; that there must be large cessions to Prussia of territory by her neighbor, Saxony. To what lengths the Prussian leaders were prepared to go, the memoirs of Gneisenau, who was at the head of Blucher's staff, show. If they had had their way, the "despicable adventurer" would have been shot out of hand. Saxony would have ceased to exist, Belgium would have been a Prussian province, and France would in 1815 have been deprived of Alsace and Lorraine and enfeebled forever. In their exasperation at not getting enough, the men who execrated Napoleon as a criminal were apparently ready to use him as an instrument for the aggrandizement of Prussia-to stir up civil war in France, to set up two kingdoms therein, a Bourbon and a Napoleonic.‡

To sum up the characteristics and *See Hardenberg's plan "pour l'arrangement futur de l'Europe," Wellington, Correspondence, IX, 303.

"The Congress of Vienna was exclusively an affair of the Princes and Government; they only decreed, applied and confirmed it, and only their interests and wishes had voice or hearing in its deliberations. It was a typical realization and expression of the old diplomacy which yet continues to be that of Europe today, more than a century later."

*See the astonishing letter of February 18, 1815, by Gneisenau to Clausewitz, Life, by Pertz, IV, 323.

results of the settlement of 1815. Unequaled diplomatic ability, great labor devoted to the study of details, produced a "settlement" which stands out as a warning. It did not provide for growth; the arrangements which were to be perpetual were made regardless of the wishes of the people concerned and with a view to insure military equilibrium and to curb France, always the potential enemy. The Final Act of 1815 is the perfect and classical example of a diplomatic settlement.

During the forty years between the first and second arrangement, European foreign affairs were virtually directed by a dozen to a score of men. It has generally been so; probably in the eighteenth century the real rulers were not more than a dozen. The aim of the leading Austrian and Russian statesmen, such as Metternich and his successor Buol, Hübner and Nesselrode, was to maintain the arrangement of 1815, except when it stood in their way, as was the case with the provisions relating to Poland, which were quickly torn up. What was to happen, they asked, if men cast off these agreements. Once break away from them, "Nous voilà arrivés au Mexique."* With many differences as to matters of detail, English statesmen, such as Wellington, Lord Aberdeen, and Lord Russell also desired to preserve that settlement. But through the foreign policy of the various English Governments ran a strain of sympathy (not always very effective or consistent) with

free institutions. Justice is not done to Canning, Palmerston, and Russell until we know how they were detested by the representatives of Austria and Russian autocracy and by a doctrinaire such as Guizot.

The second settlement, that of 1856, was marred by some of the defects of *Hübner, Souvenirs, I, 43.

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