The so-called Secret Treaties were mischievous elements in making decisions, particularly regarding the Italian frontier. Great Britain and France entered the conference with their hands tied by promises made to Italy in order to induce her to enter the war on the side of the Allies. The United States was free to act as seemed best. The fight between Wilson on the one hand and Orlando and Sonnino on the other produced the most acute crisis of the conference. The breaking-point came when Wilson gave out his statement of April 23, 1919. This infuriated the Italians and they left Paris with the threat never to return. Wilson bore the brunt of the criticism which this rift in the conference caused, but he was by no means solely responsible.
At this moment feeling regarding Shantung ran high. No direct threat was made by the Japanese delegates, but it was in the air that if the conference refused their request they too would withdraw. They did not ask to keep Shantung, but merely that it should be returned to China through them. Here again Wilson bore the brunt of the fight, and the taunts of the liberals throughout the world were levelled at him. Even his associate commissioners from the United States, with one excep tion, protested against his acceding to the Japanese request. How ever, he and House had personal assurance from Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda that the province would be returned. They were men of the highest character and integrity, and their word, which has since been fully kept, was accepted without question.
The Belgians also were dissatisfied at this period of the con ference. Suggestions of withdrawal were made and, with Italy gone, for the moment at least, it would have been fatal to the conference if Japan had left because her pledged word to restore Shantung to China was not accepted. It was a critical period of the conference, and the subsequent action of Japan has shown the wisdom of meeting her request.
During the war, when President Wil son announced his theory of self-determination, it stirred the dormant hopes of many peoples and did much to break the disci pline in the Central Powers behind the lines. This declaration of war aims brought to Paris many and diverse delegations from Europe, Asia and Africa. They were the most picturesque as well as the most ill-informed and unreasoning of all those who gathered around the historic centre where the peace was made. This noble sentiment, carried to its logical conclusion, would have wrecked the governmental machinery of the world. The conference has received unjustified blame for dividing up the Austrian Empire, but it must be remembered that the empire had already fallen apart before the Peace Conference met. The questions which came before the conference involved the boundaries of states in process of formation, and not the creation of such states. Had the conference undertaken to curb the demand for national independence, its authority to do so would have been denied and another war would have begun.
The acceptance of the principle of mandates was one of the most far-reaching decisions of the conference. It was
a new venture in the government of backward peoples, and one destined to play a large part in the affairs of many nations. It gave an excuse and a method for taking over the German colonies by the several countries interested. The German colonial empire vanished overnight. It was one of the hardest blows which her pride received, and one which she resents with passionate fervour.
Until the Paris Conference there had been no attempt to reach a general understanding or fixed policy between the more powerful civilized nations regarding the control or betterment of such states or territories. However, the system hitherto practised was ad mittedly so bad that when the conference came to the disposition of the late German colonies, there was general agreement that a more enlightened policy should be inaugurated. In furtherance of this desire Article 2 2 was incorporated in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and subsequently a commission was appointed to sit in London during the summer of 1919 for the purpose of preparing the terms of the mandates. Upon this commission were Lord Milner, who had as his adviser Lord Robert Cecil; M. Simon, French Minister for the Colonies; Viscount Chinda of Japan; Signor Marconi for Italy; and Col. House for the United States, with Mr. George Louis Beer as adviser (see MANDATE).
standard history of the Peace Conference is A History of the Peace Conference in Paris, 6 vol., ed. H. W. V. Temperley (192o-24). It is written chiefly by British experts, many of whom took part in the conference, but its point of view is objec tive. The texts of the treaties are to be found in the Treaty Series of the British Foreign Office, published by H.M. Stationery Office (1920). There is a special volume, The Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany (with amendments) and other Treaty Engagements Signed at Versailles June 28, 1919, together with the Reply of the Allied and Associated Powers to the Observa tions of the German Delegation on the Conditions of Peace (1925). Comments by the German Delegation on the Conditions of Peace and the Reply of the Allied and Associated Powers are published by the American Association for International Conciliation (1919) and the covering letter in the American Journal of International Law ( July 1919). See also Deutscher Geschichtskalender, Vom Waffenstillstand zum Frieden von Versailles, pp. 565 seq. (Leipzig, 1918).
Important confidential documents are contained in R. S. Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement (1922). Important memoirs have been written by participants in the Peace Conference, especially Andre Tardieu, The Truth about the Treaty (1921) ; B. M. Baruch, The Making of the Reparation and Economic Sections of the Treaty (192o) ; Robert Lansing, The Peace Negotiations (1921) ; see also J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (192o); E. M. House and C. Seymour, What Really Happened at Paris (1920 .
(E. M. H.)