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as international governing bodies par excellence.1 Later, international conference seemed to be most important.2 It cannot be too strongly affirmed that any adequate international association must include organs of all types, constituent and legislative, administrative, and judicial. The most recent projects for international federation respond favorably to this test.3

Finally, all recent plans have recognized the need for control in operation and for adaptation as times and circumstances change. Earlier plans pretended to be panaceas to be adopted by the world intact and left as originally framed. In some cases the precious scheme was to be imposed upon the world by autocrats and maintained in place by their authority. Modern plans do not pretend to be infallible and are subject to amendment. They are, in the first place, to be adopted by voluntary action by the states of the world. They are, further, to be operated by responsible officials; their virtue is to depend on such operation rather than upon any magic quality of the scheme as adopted; and they are to be open to constant revision.*

Needless to say, this last view is of great importance. Combined with the other changes in approach just described it has brought the proposal for international federation out of the realms of religion and speculative theory into practical politics. International federation is to be built up gradually, on the basis of what has gone before, to meet the actual needs of this cosmopolitan world, by the voluntary coöperation of the states in the paths of conference, administration, and arbitration, subject always to revision and control as the times require. Such was the approach to the League of Nations as organized in 1919.

1 Reinsch, 186.

'Goldsmith, Chaps. IX, X.

Minor reveals the spread of this conviction, ix-xxxiii; also Woolf, 371410, especially 371-375.

*Minor, Chap. XVII.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS, 1919

HE nature of the action taken at the Peace Conference

TH

of Paris in 1919 for the creation of a League of Nations was determined by several divergent, if not conflicting, national aims. As has been pointed out, such projects commonly reflect either an idealistic desire for abstract justice, an effort to obtain national advantages under a cloak of international reform, or more general historical development among the family of nations at large. The League of Nations was no exception to this rule. President Wilson and General Smuts, while defending the interests of the United States and South Africa, especially their interests in the maintenance of world peace, were also, and for this very reason, engaged in serving certain general ideals of international coöperation laudable in themselves. Clemenceau, in so far as he supported the program of a League at all, did so to secure protection for France. And beyond these motives and the suggestion of conflict between them lay a more comprehensive aim, shared by all the belligerents, namely, to supplant the inadequate machinery for regulating international relations which had failed in 1914 with a world government capable of insuring that such a thing should not happen again. It was the failure of the Concert of Europe in 1914 that created a demand for the creation of a League of Nations in 1919.

The failure of the Concert of Europe in 1914 and the nature of the result must be studied with reference to the whole of the period from 1862 onward.

The course of events in 1914 was fairly well forecast in

1864 and 1867 and again in 1871. For the greatest single cause of the failure of the Concert in 1914 was the new German Empire, and the new German Empire was built up in the years 1862-1914.1 In 1862 Bismarck became Prussian Chancellor. In 1864 Schleswig and Holstein were conquered by Prussia; in 1867 Austria was excluded from competition with Prussia for control of the new Germany; and in 1871 the Empire was formally and ceremoniously established on the strength of the victory over France.

The years from 1871 to 1914 saw a tremendous development for the new Empire. The disorganization of the latesurviving Medieval anarchy was in a measure replaced by German unity. Industrial and financial and commercial power in the new nation came to full fruition. In the later years German influence in the colonial world grew as German colonies multiplied in Africa, Asia, and the isles of the Pacific. Until the turn of the century, and for a little while beyond, Prussian Germany was the dominant power in Europe.

This development was soon followed by the inevitable result, a competition of alliances. Already in 1879 Germany had attempted to secure herself against possible enemies by an Austrian alliance, defensive in terms but general in its effect. In 1882 Italy was drawn in to complete the Triple Alliance. The powers stretching across the center of Europe formed a firm bloc and, either for good or ill, absolutely dominated the political scene.

British statesmen at length began to feel the danger. But Britain was too completely preoccupied with colonial questions and domestic social and political questions to pay a great deal of attention to the continent. It was, therefore, France who moved first to check Germany. In 1891-92 a defensive alliance with this aim was concluded with Best account of diplomatic history prior to 1914 is in Seymour; see especially Chaps. I-III, VII, VIII.

244

"The Background of the War; History and Texts," in League of Nations, I, 173-251 (April, 1918).

Russia. Fifteen years later, after Britain and France had adjusted their colonial rivalry in Africa, these Powers drew together in the cordial understanding of 1904-07. The Entente was further strengthened in 1907 when Russia and Great Britain succeeded in clearing up their mutual relations in the Near and Middle East. Finally, the Triple Entente was strengthened in Asia in 1911 by the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902.

The result was a balance of power in its worst form, that of a see-saw. Two great combinations of states faced one another across the heart of Europe, which is the heart of the world, and no detached power pretended to watch over and help maintain that balance. The precarious balance could last only until one party to the system should attempt to force the issue. Then would come a struggle, not so much to regain the position of balance, as to gain a position of dominance. The German dominance of 18711904 had been largely lost, replaced by a balance with the Entente. Then, from 1907 to 1914, Germany might well feel that the balance was going against her and that the Entente was attaining a dominant position. The only remedy, it might well appear, was to force the issue and see to it that the position of dominance of 1871-1904 was regained.

Roughly speaking, that is what happened in 1914, in connection with an indirect attack on Austrian imperial unity by one of the satellites of a member of the Entente. When the Entente, or the leading member thereof, tried to secure a peaceful adjustment of the case Germany forced the issue in war.1 Possible methods of adjustment between the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente and between or among the individual nations members thereof were defeated by Germany, and the gage of battle was thrown down.

It has been seen that the growing danger of the years 1890-1914 had been perceived in Europe and that efforts 'Seymour, 265.

had been made to provide some machinery for regulating international relations peaceably. The conferences at The Hague, trivial and anemic as their results appear when contrasted with the tremendous diplomatic struggle of the alliances with which they were expected to cope, were undoubtedly intended to remedy the existing diplomatic situation. The years from 1900 to 1914, especially, are filled with fear and appeals for reorganization before it should be too late.1 As has also been seen, the full success of the Hague Conferences was blocked by German and Austrian opposition. It was German opposition that prevented the adoption of compulsory arbitration at the conference in 1907. Now, in 1914, it was precisely this deficiency in the existing system of international government that allowed Austria to press her attack upon Serbia without fear of being compelled to submit to arbitration at The Hague as Serbia proposed. The ensuing efforts to secure a conference on the issues were failures in the same way and for the same reasons. Germany and Austria took advantage of the lack of any international machinery for compulsory adjudication or compulsory conference to make an attempt to secure again the diplomatic hegemony of Europe by challenging the balance of power in 1914.

During nearly four years of war the balance remained fixed. Through the last weeks of 1914, through 1915, 1916, 1917, and the first half of 1918, the war was at a stalemate. Both parties won marked victories here and there-in the march into Belgium and France; at the Marne; in Shantung; in East Prussia; and all along the eastern front. At one time and another Bulgaria and Turkey joined the Triple Alliance, Italy and Rumania the Triple Entente. Yet the stalemate remained.

Then, in the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918, the crisis arrived. Russia went out of the fight, as a result of Czaristic inefficiency, the wastage of war, and Bolshevik See especially Hanotaux, Politique d'Equilibre, generally.

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