Though the latter was universal in its scope, its center was in Europe, and it contained hardly anything corresponding to the world-wide economic and social organizations which are being set up today. The European Alliance of 1815 and the Covenant of the League of 1919 were made in Europe. The peacemaking nevertheless began with general questions affecting the whole world and for the most part these were negotiated in the United States. China has been unable to assume the rôle which Japan played in 1919, and her hopes that her special interests might be treated pari passu with those at stake in Europe have failed. True, the Far Eastern and the European settlements are almost completely separated. Today this fact is universally recognized except in a few backwaters. The separate treaty which the United States made with Germany its repudiation of the League of Nations and its summoning of the Washington Conference were part of an effort, necessarily vain, to divide again a world which the war had shown had become one as never before. Moreover, the withdrawal of the United States from Europe after the treaty with Germany had been signed resulted in the later treaties being made mainly by Europeans. Nevertheless, the peace was made in Europe. But 21 of the 32 governments (reckoning the Dominions separately, as ought to be done) which signed the Treaty of Versailles were extra-European. Japan had confined its action almost entirely to its own immediate neighborhood and showed only a limited interest in the European peace and the same was true of China, whose entry into the war had been delayed by Japanese opposition. The influence of the United States secured places for Latin American countries which either had played only a very nominal part in the struggle or had not even declared war on Germany. The peace treaties were made in Europe but they concerned the whole world, and states from the whole world were members of the Conference. The war had been won only after the intervention of the United States, which at the close of hostilities had nearly 2,000,000 soldiers in Europe. Britain had at least to declare her colonial terms when negotiations took place between France and the Great Alliance she made the restitution of the Dutch East Indies depend upon the creation of a viable Netherlands. Even so, there was some link between the separate peaces. Britain also refused to allow her allies to have anything to do with her struggle with the United States, though the latter gladly accepted Russia's proffered mediation. The structure of the world outside Europe was established by Britain alone, in separate treaties with the other European colonial Powers from which the rest of Europe was excluded. The conference was purely European no state from another continent was represented. In 1814-15 there was no world conference. These facts have been reflected in the procedures of peacemaking. It is significant, however, that the last war really began outside of Europe and that the course of military events in Europe was much more influenced by what happened in other continents than had ever been the case before. The outcome of the war in each case depended more than anything else on the defeat of the most powerful enemy in Europe. In the last war, the Far East was one of the main centers of contest. The war of 1914-1918 affected the Far East deeply, even though it hardly touched China, Malaya and India. India and the Dutch East Indies were included in the Napoleonic wars but not the rest of the Far East and the Pacific, which at that time had only occasional contacts with the rest of the world. The Middle East and Africa were an arena of conflict in all three wars, the area much increasing with each succeeding war. The whole of Europe was involved in the Napoleonic wars, nearly the whole of it in the other two. Let us hope that the present settlement will never have to be reviewed in the light of another series of peace treaties.Įach of these three settlements was the result of a world-wide war. The verdict on the peace treaties that ended the First World War is already in process of being changed by our recent experiences. Our estimate of the Congress of Vienna was drastically revised by the experience of the Paris Conference of 1919. Some sense of proportion may be achieved, however, by a comparison with the past, especially with what happened in the other two periods of comprehensive peacemaking, 1814-1921. To appreciate the value of the processes being pursued and the results obtained is not easy. THOUGH much yet remains to be done, gradually the pattern of peacemaking is emerging from the cloud of conferences. " Nous ne pouvons acquérir de connaissance que par la voie de la comparaison" - Buffon.
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