[258] Mr. Thomas Millard, some of whose letters were published by The New York Times.  Cf. Le Temps, July 29, 1919.

[259] The Chicago Tribune (Paris edition), August 20, 1919.

X

ATTITUDE TOWARD RUSSIA

In their dealings with Russia the principal plenipotentiaries consistently displayed the qualities and employed the standards, maxims, and methods which had stood them in good stead as parliamentary politicians.  The betterment of the world was an idea which took a separate position in their minds, quite apart from the other political ideas with which they usually operated.  Overflowing with verbal altruism, they first made sure of the political and economic interests of their own countries, safeguarding or extending these sources of power, after which they proceeded to try their novel experiment on communities which they could coerce into obedience.  Hence the aversion and opposition which they encountered among all the nations which had to submit to the yoke, and more especially among the Russians.

Russia’s opposition, widespread and deep-rooted, is natural, and history will probably add that it was justified.  It starts from the assumption, which there is no gainsaying, that the Conference was convoked to make peace between the belligerents and that whatever territorial changes it might introduce must be restricted to the countries of the defeated peoples.  From all “disannexations” not only the Allies’ territories, but those of neutrals, were to be exempted.  Repudiate this principle and the demands of Ireland, Egypt, India to the benefits of self-determination became unanswerable.  Belgium’s claim to Dutch Limburg and other territorial oddments must likewise be allowed.  Indeed, the plea actually put forward against these was that the Conference was incompetent to touch any territory actually possessed by either neutral or Allied states.  Ireland, Egypt, and Dutch Limburg Were all domestic matters with which the Conference had no concern.

Despite this fundamental principle Russia, the whilom Ally, without whose superhuman efforts and heroic sacrifices her partners would have been pulverized, was tacitly relegated to the category of hostile and defeated peoples, and many of her provinces lopped off arbitrarily and without appeal.  None of her representatives was convoked or consulted on the subject, although all of them, Bolshevist and anti-Bolshevist, were at one in their resistance to foreign dictation.

The Conference repeatedly disclaimed any intention of meddling in the internal affairs of any other state, and the Irish, the Egyptian, and several other analogous problems were for the purposes of the Conference included in this category.  On what intelligible grounds, then, were the Finnish, the Lettish, the Esthonian, the Georgian, the Ukrainian problems excluded from it?  One cannot conceive a more flagrant violation