[324] President Wilson, when at the close of his conference with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations—­at the White House—­asked how the United States had voted on the Japanese resolution in favor of race equality, replied:  “I am not sure of being free to answer the question, because it affects a large number of points that were discussed in Paris, and in the interest of international harmony I think I had better not reply.”—­The Daily Mail (Paris edition), August 22, 1919.

[325] In virtue of Article LX of the Treaty with Austria.

XIV

THE TREATY WITH GERMANY

To discuss in detail the peace terms which after many months’ desultory talk were finally presented to Count Brockdorff-Rantzau would transcend the scope of these pages.  Like every other act of the Supreme Council, they may be viewed from one of two widely sundered angles of survey—­either as the exercise by a victorious state of the power derived from victory over the vanquished enemy, or as one of the measures by which the peace of the world is to be enforced in the present and consolidated in the future.  And from neither point of view can it command the approval of unbiased political students.  At first the Germans, and not they alone, expected that the conditions would be based on the Fourteen Points, while many of the Allies took it for granted that they would be inspired by the resolve to cripple Teutondom for all time.  And for each of these anticipations there were good formal grounds.

The only legitimate motive for interweaving the Covenant with the Treaty was to make of the latter a sort of corollary of the former and to moderate the instincts of vengeance by the promptings of higher interests.  On this ground, and only on this, did the friends of far-ranging reform support Mr. Wilson in his contention that the two documents should be rendered mutually interdependent.  Reparation for the damage done in violation of international law and sound guaranties against its recurrence are of the essence of every peace treaty that follows a decisive victory.  But reparation is seldom this and nothing more.  The lower instincts of human nature, when dominant as they are during a bloody war and in the hour of victory, generally outweigh considerations not only of right, but also of enlightened egotism, leaving justice to merge into vengeance.  And the fruits are treasured wrath and a secret resolve on the part of the vanquished to pay out his victor at the first opportunity.  The war-loser of to-day aims at becoming the war-winner of to-morrow.  And this frame of mind is incompatible with the temper needed for an era of moral fellowship such as Mr. Wilson was supposed to be intent on establishing.  Consequently, a peace treaty unmodified by the principles underlying the Covenant is necessarily a negation of the main possibilities of a society of nations based upon right and a decisive argument against joining together the two instruments.