Conference of Genoa

GENOA, CONFERENCE OF (April i o–May 19, 1922), a meeting of representatives of the British self-governing Domin ions and of 29 European states, including not only the Allies and ex-neutrals, but all the ex-enemy Powers except Turkey (who was excluded on the ground that she was an Asiatic country). Above all, the conference was attended by representatives of Soviet Russia, and the dominant issue was the renewal of relations be tween Russia and the countries of Europe. Before the conference met M. Briand had been succeeded as prime minister by M. Poincard. Since the project of the Genoa conference had already been accepted by the supreme council, M. Poincare could not reject it altogether, but he sought to interpret the agreed pro gramme in the narrowest sense and to hedge the participation of Russia with the fullest possible restrictions. He gave detailed and stringent instructions in this sense to his representative, M. Barthou.

The general conference was preceded by a meeting between M. Poincare and Mr. Lloyd George at Boulogne, on Feb. 25, a meeting of Allied economic experts in London from March 20 to 28, which drew up detailed agenda for Genoa, and two other preliminary meetings of a regional character, one between the members of the Little Entente at Belgrade, and another at War saw between Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. The parties represented at Warsaw subsequently conferred at Riga with representatives of Soviet Russia. The invitation to Genoa was accepted by the Soviet Government with alacrity, but was de clined by the United States.

Adverse Influence of the Rapallo Treaty.

At its first plenary session the conference set up four commissions, the first to examine methods of putting into practice the principles of the Cannes resolution of Jan. 6, 1922 (see CANNES, CONFERENCE OF), while the other three were to deal respectively with financial subjects, economic and commercial subjects, and transport. These three latter commissions all reported before the conference came to an end; but their reports were bound to remain academic unless the first commission achieved positive results. The task of the first commission was more difficult, because it was general and political in character, and its work was soon suspended in favour of informal discussions between the three principal Allied Powers and Belgium on the one side and the Russians on the other. Mean while the Germans signed, on April 16, a separate treaty with the Russians at Rapallo, in which the objects of the Genoa conference were achieved as between these two parties by a mutual renunci ation of reparation claims and a resumption of normal consular and diplomatic relations.

This separate Russo-German treaty damaged the general prospects of the conference by the fear it instilled into the Allies. In these circumstances there was little prospect of success for a general pact of non-aggression, which Mr. Lloyd George suggested on April 25. But the conference actually broke down through the intransigence of Belgium, who insisted upon the integral resti tution of foreign-owned private property in Russia. France sup ported the Belgian contention. Eventually a formula on the British lines was carried, even Belgium finally giving way; but it was so evident that, with Great Britain and France divided, no positive result could be achieved, that the Genoa conference was quietly wound up by remitting its agenda to a mixed commission of experts, who duly met at The Hague from June 26 to July 20, 1922, but also foundered on the rock of foreign-owned private property in Russia. The Genoa conference was interesting be cause economic and financial problems were approached from the point of view of reconstruction, and not of reparation. It was also the first attempt at a settlement between the European gov ernments and Soviet Russia.

See Sir C. Gordon and E. Montpetit, The Genoa Conference, Joint Report of the Canadian Delegates (192 2) ; J. S. Mills, The Genoa Conference (1922).