Czechoslovakia, a Jugo-Slavia and, in conjunction with old Rumania, erecting a new Latin state which shall include Russian, Austrian and Hungarian territory. There is, beside this, the problem of Albania, bound to be in some measure an Italian protectorate, certain to be a thorny problem because of the Serb and Greek claims. Finally there is the claim of Greece which extends to Constantinople in Europe and with even better right fixes upon Smyrna in Asia.

The Polish state which is to be created will include all of Russian Poland, part of Austrian Galicia, most of Prussian Posen, all of Upper Silesia, the Mazurian districts of East Prussia. So far the road is clear. But if it is to have access to the sea, then it must march north astride the Vistula, reach Danzig, and either annex or isolate the purely German districts about Königsberg. Southeastward, too, we already have news of the Poles and Ukrainians fighting for Lemberg. The Russian district of Cholm, between Lublin and the Bug, the Bug, claimed by the Poles and the Ukrainians, has been a matter of debate since the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Finally there is the question as to whether Lithuania shall rejoin Poland, as in the remoter days, or be joined with Esthonia, the Courland and Livonia in a new Baltic state.

A strong Poland is vital to the peace of Europe. It will constitute a barrier to a new German expansion eastward into Russia, seemingly destined to continue in anarchy for many years. But how strong shall it be made? Shall one sacrifice the Poles or the Prussians, by including or excluding East Prussia with Königsberg from the new state? If Germany keeps a foothold east of the Vistula, she will indubitably seek to return in the footsteps of Frederick the Great, who engineered the First Partition of Poland, that he might have land connection with East Prussia. Nor is it easy to draw a frontier about Posen and Upper Silesia, which will not provoke present bitterness and future

wars.

The Rumanian difficulties are slighter. Bessarabia and Transylvania, both Rumanian in population, although with strong Magyar and Saxon minorities in the case of the latter, have already declared their union with Rumania. The Bukovina, which has a far more mixed population, the Slavs exceeding the Latins, has been occupied. There There remains the Banat, which is a curious Tower

of Babel with Germans, Magyars, Rumanians and Serbs, no race having a majority. Rumania claims all of it; Hungary claims all of it; Serbia, whose claims will not be inherited by Jugo-Slavia, claims certain regions, unmistakably Serb. But only the Versailles Congress can settle the debate.

As for Jugo-Slavia, already much has been accomplished in the creation of the new state. Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Slavonia and the Slovene provinces of Austria have declared for unity and have taken the first steps toward consolidation. But this new state finds itself instantly in conflict with the Italians from Cattaro to Gorizia. Tentative compro

mises of the rival claims have so far led to nothing and one of the angriest of all the disputes to be heard will be the dispute between the Slavs and the Latins. Indeed, there seems to be less hope of a real settlement here than almost anywhere else, because Polish claims in Prussia and Rumanian claims in the Banat can be enforced against enemies; but on the Adriatic, the dispute is between states which are allied with the victors.

Italy, too, finds her plans in conflict with the Greeks in Northern Epirus. She has asserted the right, which has not been challenged and will hardly be now, to protect Albania and to occupy Valona, which is the key of the entrance to the Adriatic. But she claims for Albania the regions of Northern Epirus, included in Albania by the Conference of London, after the Balkan Wars, but occupied by Greece after the outbreak of the present war. The Greek claim seems to be by all odds the juster, the inhabitants are Hellenic and their desire to be Greek again is conceded by all save Italians. Italian possession of the Egean, including Rhodes and the Dodecanesus, resulting from the Italian War with Turkey, is a cause for protest at Athens, which will be voiced at Versailles. Here, again, on the basis of self-determination, the Greek claim would seem beyond debate. But the possession is Italian and Italy is an ally.

The creation of a Czechoslovak state brings up an age-long fight between the Slavs and the Germans. Bohemia and Moravia are overwhelmingly Slav, but a considerable minority of their population is Teutonic and certain regions are wholly German. Moreover, the Slovak country has been a portion of the Hungarian state for many centuries. In creating a new Slav state, as the Allies

certainly will, they will have to face the certain enmity of the German and the Hungarian peoples. The new state will contain a strong German element, and it may be economically at the mercy of the Germans and the Hungarians, who will expect to control all its outlets. It will be like Switzerland, a state without a seaport, but unlike Switzerland, it will not be surrounded by four strong nations all eager to preserve its independence, but set between two strong states each eager to destroy it and both ready to share it.

Only Hungary will be as badly placed as the Czech state, if the New Europe is built upon the present specifications. It, too, will have no seaport, most of its old conquests will be partitioned between the Northern and Southern Slavs and the Eastern Latins, who will control its outlets on the Adriatic and the Danube. But it will retain a common frontier with its old Teutonic allies and there is sound reason for fearing that it will look once more to German support in an effort to destroy the order created at Versailles and fatal both to Hun and Hungarian desires.

VI: AFRICA AND ASIA

But the European problems by no means. exhaust the difficulties to be surmounted at Versailles. Only less troublesome will be the ultimate disposition of German colonies and the liquidation of the estate of the Osmanli Turk. In Africa the Germans held colonies with an area of above 1,000,000 square miles and a population of at least 12,000,000. In addition there were island colonies in Asiatic waters, Samoa and New Guinea and the Kiaou Chaou concession, which has now passed to Japanese control.

First of all it must be decided whether these colonies or any of them are to return to Germany. This question is complicated by the fact that in the main the conquest of these German lands has been made by British colonial forces and the opposition to a return of the conquests in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa is overwhelming. The reason is simple. If the colonies are to be returned to Germany, then Australia will have to maintain a naval establishment and an army against possible German difficulties in the future. South Africa will have to make even greater sacrifices, having already been compelled to endure a revolution within its boundaries instigated by Germans in Southwest Africa, and thereafter a costly

campaign which ended in the conquest of the German colony. The invasion and conquest of German East Africa was, also, almost exclusively a South African venture.

To all the demands of other powers that the German colonies be returned, to any American suggestions of this sort, the British Government will find itself compelled to respond with an emphatic negative, because to insist upon this would be to invite grave difficulties with British colonies which have given generously of their blood and treasure in winning the war. Neither Australia nor South Africa desires German neighbors, and they are resolved not to allow the colonies to go back. Prime Minister Hughes of Australia, when in the United States last summer, spoke many times on this subject without the slightest hesitation.

It is, therefore, not a case of dealing with Britain but with the British commonwealths, who can claim and will demand the support of the mother-country. Of all the German colonies, all save a portion of Togoland and the larger half of the Kamerun, which will fall to France, have been conquered by British colonial arms. That Germany will make a desperate effort to recover them is certain. That she may enlist a measure of American support is possible, but at the risk of differences with America Britain will have to stand by her colonies.

As to the Turkish problem, it is clear that the French and the British have already been working for a long time upon a clearly defined understanding, which recognizes the right of France to protect and organize the Syrian littoral from the Gulf of Alexandretta to the boundaries of Palestine, which assigns Mesopotamia to Great Britain, and which provides for the organization of Palestine into some form of internationally guaranteed state, in which British interests will be controlling, by reason of the proximity of Egypt.

In reality this is but the recognition of the age-long supremacy of French influence. in Syria, which has survived all the changes since the days of the Crusades. The peculiar rights of France in Syria, particularly in the Lebanon, have been acknowledged by treaties; and all the railways of the region, save the Hedjaz line, constructed by the Germans, were built by French capital. As for Mesopotamia, it is an outpost to India conquered by British arms and already becoming reconciled to British rule. South of Palestine and Mesopotamia an Arab state,

independent of the Turks and containing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, is assured, under the rule of the King of the Hedjaz, who has fought with the British and French in recent days.

Between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Black Sea an Armenian state is likely to be created, backed by the guarantee of the great powers. Its exact frontiers remain problematical, as does the question of including within it the Armenian provinces of Russia. But this last step is logical and just.

There remain Greek and Italian claims to the littoral of Asia Minor; and Italian claims have been recognized to some extent at least along the Gulf of Adalia and the southern shore of Asia Minor, while Greek claims upon Smyrna are certain to gain at least a hearing. In its last, as in all its phases, the Turkish problem promises to be thorny; and it includes the decision as to the Straits and Constantinople. But with Russia gone, Bulgaria crushed, Germany eliminated, a solution is not impossible, in accordance with justice and reason.

VII. QUESTIONS OF PRINCIPLES

Such in a very brief compass are the material problems of the Versailles Conference: the question of peace with Germany, the difficulties incident to the reorganization of Europe, the creation of new nations and the expansion of old, in accordance with the desires of millions of people. Such, too, are the questions of Asiatic and African colonies, which must be faced and answered. To these must be added the tremendous puzzle of Russia, claiming ever more insistently the attention of the statesmen of the world, but furnishing no sufficient basis even for intelligent discussion.

There remains the third division of the great task. This is the creation of some international organization to preserve world peace, a League of Nations, comparable in purpose to the Holy Alliance of the Congress of Vienna, but this time expressing, not the selfish ambitions of a few sovereigns, eager to preserve their power, but the aspirations of millions of free people striving to make a repetition of the recent world calamity impossible.

It is to frame such an international agreement that President Wilson has gone to Europe. He regards it as the supreme duty of the Versailles Conference. Yet who can measure the obstacles that lie in the path

way? At the present hour we have no German Government-no organized Germany with which to make peace, let alone a new international compact. We purpose in our peace treaty to deprive Germany of much territory unjustly taken in the past, and we purpose to make her pay a large part of the burden resulting from her wanton destruction, if not a considerable share in the actual costs of the war to the nations she has attacked.

So great has been the German devastation that it is clear that mere reparation for this will exhaust the possibilities of German resources. In addition, the nations which have conquered Germany are resolved that they will not hereafter permit German manufactures to compete with their own on equal terms in their own markets; and the French and British are resolved that their ports and colonies shall not be the bases of German commercial fleets. All of this means but one thing: it means that the Germany which emerges from Versailles will be struck alike in territory and in wealth. She will emerge showing the unmistakable effects of a righteous but terrible judgment visited upon her.

But such being the case, will Germany willingly enter a League of Nations dominated by her recent enemies, who have just exacted from her terrible payment for her crimes? Remember that in 1814 and 1815 Europe let France go almost scot-free in order that they might win the French people away from Napoleon and persuade them to accept the rule of a Bourbon sovereign, who would join with the other kings in the Holy Alliance, which was the League of Nations. of that hour. And despite this leniency, France broke away in just fifteen years and upset the Bourbon.

Further than this, are the nations which have conquered Germany in any mood to welcome Germany as an equal, after the record of recent years, even if she came purged and repentant, which is excessively unlikely? Or will the bitterness and resentment, above all the suspicion, endure for a generation to come? These questions are pertinent because the success of the League of Nations rests upon the essential condition that all nations enter it with equal willingness and mutual trust. They are pertinent because they are based upon the history of the last League of Nations, which fell to ruin in a decade and a half after the Congress of Vienna.

Beyond these difficulties lies the question of the "freedom of the seas," which has already been excluded from the list of points formulated by President Wilson and accepted, otherwise, by the nations associated with the war. Just what the "freedom of the seas" means, remains problematical. But the British interpret it to mean a surrender on their part of some fraction of their naval supremacy, the basis of the victory in this war and the basis of British security. Ready to join with the United States in an alliance to police the seas, willing to share with the United States the domination of the oceans, the British seem totally unwilling to resign to the League of Nations any control of their fleet. But here, again, is a fatal obstacle; for the League of Nations, to be successful, must not be merely universal, it must also be supreme. In a word, it must include all nations; and all nations must be subject to its power without any reserved powers of their own permitting them to resist its decisions, if they choose.

This problem the Congress of Vienna failed to solve. It relied upon the community of interest of all kings to provide agreement and concerted action. But France and Britain, lacking this interest, soon escaped from the Holy Alliance, which itself became thereafter impotent as a guarantor of world peace or royal security.

It is well to have the problem clearly in mind. A League of Nations must be everything or it will be nothing. It must be an international parliament having the necessary power to enforce its decisions, having the right to reach decisions binding upon all nations, however unpleasant or unfavorable. It must have the right to crush resistance within nations and it must have the ships and the land forces. But how shall the Parliament be organized? Will the small nations have equal representation with the

large-Bolivia with Britain, for example? Or will it be exclusively a body composed of representatives of the Great Powers, as was the Holy Alliance?

Speculation on these phases would be endless, but it is necessary to indicate some of the principal obstacles which will doubtless fill the debates of the immediate future. Meantime behind all the discussions rises the shadow of Bolshevism, which may yet dissolve the Congress of Versailles as Napoleon's return from Elba ended the Congress. of Vienna. If Europe, east of the Rhine and north of the Alps, and the Carpathians, falls into anarchy and chaos, new military operations may become inevitable and the first task of the League of Nations, if then constituted, may be to wrestle with the new enemy, which is daily gaining strength in Germany, while retaining a firm grip upon unhappy Russia.

Therefore it is at least possible that the Congress of Versailles may be unable to restore peace in the world, however sincere its efforts; and it may well be that the failure will not be due to the rivalries of the nations represented but to the consequences of the storm which Germany loosed four years and a half ago.

In saying this last, I do not mean to be understood as forecasting failure. The very magnitude of the task inevitably involves the possibility. But as I close this article the French nation is giving President Wilson a welcome forever memorable. In Britain the spirit of eager conciliation is manifest.

Whatever the obstacles, it is at least to be said that the peace negotiations are beginning under circumstances which are most promising. The desire to make peace, and a just peace, is unmistakable. A better beginning it would be impossible to imagine, and this is a source of optimism priceless now, when the history of a century is to be shaped.