These two treaties are duly recorded in the Peace History (IV, 519, and v, 428).

Since March 1921-the point to which the story is carried in its two latest volumes-there have been other developments. The award of the League of Nations respecting Upper Silesia has been severely criticised, on the ground that it divides the industrial area of that province between Germany and Poland; it is certainly a decision which may be challenged by Germany in the future. But this award, like the Treaty of Rapallo, has at least removed the uncertainty which did more than anything else to make Silesia a centre of disturbance. Then there has been an attempt, in the Portorose Conference, to bring about better commercial relations between the Danubian Powers; and Czecho-Slovakia has definitely signed a commercial agreement with Austria which shows a realisation of the interdependence of the industries of the two countries. Finally, on March 30 of the present year there has been signed at Riga an agreement between Poland, Latvia, Esthonia, and Soviet Russia, by which the first three of these governments recognise the de jure sovereignty of the last, and agree to take common action at the Genoa Conference for the restoration of commercial intercourse and for the disarmament of all the Powers. While it is impossible to gauge the precise significance of any one of these events, they are certainly symptomatic of a new and better frame of mind in Eastern Europe.

There still remains the question of Austria. However smoothly other problems of Eastern Europe may be settled, the final collapse of the new Austria would shake the very foundations of the peace settlement in this region; so too would a political union of Austria with Germany in defiance of the express prohibition of the Allies. It is rather late in the day to consider whether the treatment of Austria at the Conference was just or unjust. The decisions as to the boundaries of CzechoSlovakia and Italy could only be altered with the assent of the Principal Powers and the Successor States. The veto against union with Germany is incorporated in the German Treaty and would be still more difficult to alter. The new Austria must be taken as it stands. Can it be

made a solvent and self-supporting State? In a paper read before the British Institute of International Affairs in March 1922 (Journal B.I.I.A.,' vol. 1, pp. 34ff.), Sir William Goode is considerably more sanguine than was Prof. Coolidge twelve months earlier. The latter was inclined to predict either a break-up of Austria or a union with Germany as the only possible remedies for a desperate situation. Sir W. Goode states that, until the end of last year, the German solution was a 'national fetish' in Austria; but he adds that the present year has witnessed a rather violent reaction. Austrians have made up their minds to be independent; they are more hopeful about the future of their trade with the other Successor States; they have realised that their industries are reviving, and are recapturing an export trade; and the Schober Government, thanks to its two financial members, Dr Gurtler and Dr Rosenberg, is making an heroic effort to establish a balance between revenue and expenditure by increasing the taxes and abolishing the food subsidies.

Sir W. Goode pleads strongly for a complete and above-board cancelling of all reparation claims on Austria. As he points out, the only kind of loan which Austria can hope to raise is a loan secured upon national assets; and at present these assets are not free security. For nearly a year the League of Nations has been negotiating with the creditor Powers to postpone their claims for reparations and for relief loans for twenty years. But, though the half-measure might serve the immediate purpose, a full remission would be more sensible on the part of the Allied and Associated Powers -who cannot seriously expect to get anything out of Austria-and an encouragement to the Austrians, who have had hanging over their heads for the last three years an indefinite liability which has helped to check the revival of their self-confidence and of their credit. This point, curiously enough, is not recognised by Mr Sydney Peel in his illuminating discussion of the Austrian reparation clauses ('Hist.,' v, c. 1). After remarking that the true purport of these clauses is disguised by bad drafting (which was due to the supposed necessity of following the form of the German treaty), he says: 'Though the form is alarming, there is nothing terrifying

in the substance. The chapter is really a lamb masquerading in wolf's clothing.' But the reparation clauses must be read in connexion with the Advances to Austria Agreement, under which all Austria's assets are hypothecated to the Powers interested in reparations and the relief loans.

So far we have been dealing with works of a scientific and judicial character. To this category the work of M. André Tardieu cannot be assigned. It is a most able defence of French policy at the Conference, but it shows the defects of its qualities. M. Tardieu speaks of events at Paris with a fulness of knowledge which very few outside the charmed circle of the Four can claim to possess. He was a plenipotentiary. He presided over five of the eight territorial commissions. He was frequently employed to draft the French plaidoyer on questions of the most delicate and important kind. He has at his disposal an excellent chronological record of the proceedings of the Four, and he is acquainted with some incidents which he can scarcely have learned except from one of their number. Apart from the benedictory epistle which M. Clemenceau has written as a preface, there are many proofs that M. Tardieu enjoys the confidence of the former President of the Conference. Unfortunately M. Tardieu has made use of these great opportunities, not to write a history, but to vindicate his patron and to indict those who have been responsible for French policy since that patron fell from power. The defence is not intended for foreign consumption. While foreign critics are arguing the question whether France claimed too much, or whether she was too indulgently treated by her Allies, M. Tardieu proclaims from the house-tops that M. Clemenceau did not ask for too little, that he asked for more than he obtained. 'It is an established fact that the French point of view has generally prevailed, though not without a struggle.' The italics are ours. They are justifiable because the thesis of M. Tardieu may be bluntly stated in this form: that, considering the opposition which she encountered from her own Allies, particularly from the British and the Americans, France has done very well out of the Treaty of Versailles.

配

Certain of M. Tardieu's chapters, in spite of, even because of, this bias, have a considerable value as evidence. He describes methodically the course of the debates on certain questions-particularly on the Saar Valley, the Left Bank, and Reparations-quoting very fully from the French official documents and giving some piquant summaries of the oral discussions. M. Clemenceau congratulates his lieutenant for throwing on the subject which he has in hand 'the light of concatenated facts.' This in a sense is true; the pages of M. Tardieu bristle with statistics, dates, and documents. But the statistics and the documents only illustrate one side of the question on which they are brought to bear. This may not be altogether the fault of M. Tardieu. We can imagine that, even when he has at his disposal an important state-paper of British or American origin, he feels unable to publish it without permission; and it is E a delicate matter to ask such a permission from the people whom you propose to put into the dock, when the documents are required to complete the indictment against them. Still, the method has unfortunate results, as, for example, when M. Tardieu prints in full a French rejoinder to a famous memorandum presented by Mr Lloyd George to his colleagues at the Conference on March 26, 1919, without giving even a summary of that memorandum, which is not quite fairly treated in the rejoinder.* The work of M. Tardieu will be still more useful than it is already when the reminiscences of Mr Wilson and Mr George are given to the world. M. Tardieu is always urbane, except when he is referring to Mr Keynes or to French défaitistes and champions de la révision, and he is profuse in his compliments to the Allies; but in his suave manner he contrives to impress upon us the defects of those who dared to differ from M. Clemenceau, to emphasise the professorial rigidity of Mr Wilson, the yet more embarrassing open-mindedness and mutability of Mr Lloyd George.

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It is unnecessary to go over the elaborate arguments by which M. Tardieu proves the justice of the Treaty of Versailles, or at least of those clauses in which France

Vol. 238.-No. 472.

* 'La Paix,' pp. 129-132. The memorandum is now printed as a White Paper [Cmd. 1614] 1922.

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was particularly interested. Most of these arguments will be found, in a much shorter form, in the American volume, and particularly in an able chapter by Prof. Haskins on the new boundaries of Germany. We will only remark that, on the financial and economic clauses relating to Alsace-Lorraine-clauses which, so far as we can discover, the Americans do not discuss-M. Tardieu remains impenitent. Indeed, it appears to be one of his most cherished memories of the Conference that, in this matter, the commission agreed with him, 'après une dizaine de séances de quatre heures chacune,' in which he was pitted against an English expert. M. Tardieu is a good fighter, like his chief. But we should be sorry to convey the impression that his book and his action at the Conference justify all the hard things that have been said about the French negotiators. We think that his policy, the policy of M. Clemenceau, is very fairly appraised in some remarks by an American economic specialist, Prof. Young, relating to the three types of French delegate that he encountered. There was, he says, the type which laboured, happily without effect, to humiliate the vanquished by incessant pin-pricks. There was another type to which French security meant French supremacy in Europe, bolstered up by military alliances, by the partitioning of enemy states, and by the deliberate destruction of their economic life. But the type represented by Clemenceau and his ablest lieutenants was not open to these reproaches. These, the best French statesmen, really and truly subordinated all other considerations to that of making France secure against another unprovoked attack ('What Happened,' pp. 298–9).

Oddly enough, Prof. Young does not credit M. Clemenceau with an overwhelming desire for the 'integral reparation' which played so large a part in all French statements of French aims at the Conference. Perhaps this is an accidental omission. M. Tardieu, at all events, is very specially concerned to prove that M. Clemenceau was both sound and successful on this important issue. He is even prepared to prove that, if M. Clemenceau had remained in power, Germany would have been obliged to pay. For M. Tardieu, writing early in 1921, it is certain that Germany can pay, and that the Allies ought to exercise without scruple the powers