THE QUARTERLY VOL. 235. COMPRISING Nos. 466, 467, PUBLISHED IN JANUARY & APRIL, 1921. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.1. NEW YORK: LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION COMPANY. 1921 THE QUARTERLY REVIEW No. 466.-JANUARY, 1921. Art. 1.-THE REORGANISATION OF EUROPE. 1. Peace Treaties: With Germany, at Versailles, June 28, 1919; with Austria, at Saint Germain-en-Laye, Sept. 10, 1919; with Hungary, at Trianon, June 4, 1920; with Bulgaria, at Neuilly-sur-Seine, Nov. 27, 1919; with Turkey, at Sèvres, Aug. 10, 1920; and other treaties. H.M. Stationery Office. 2. A History of the Peace Conference of Paris. Edited by H. W. V. Temperley. Henry Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1920. 3. Some Problems of the Peace Conference. By Charles Homer Haskins and Robert Howard Lord. Harvard University Press, 1920. 4. Peace Hand-books, Nos. 1-162. H.M. Stationery Office, 1920. 5. League of Nations Official Journal. No. 1. Harrison, February 1920. With Special Supplements: No. 1. The Aaland Islands Question (August). No. 2. Draft Scheme for . . . the Permanent Court of International Justice (September 1920). DURING the negotiations at Paris for peace with Germany the press and the public in England, and probably in other countries, constantly complained of the delays between the Armistice of Nov. 11 and the restoration of peace with the principal enemy belligerent. Although the treaty with Germany was signed on June 28, 1919, it did not come into effective operation until Jan. 10, 1920. This interval was necessary in order to procure the ratification of the Vol. 235.--No. 466. treaty by at least three of the principal Allied and Associated Powers. Germany ratified it on July 10, 1919, Italy on Oct. 7, Great Britain on Oct. 10, France on Oct. 12. There were, however, certain unexecuted clauses of the Armistice agreement which Germany had to fulfil before the Peace Treaty could take effect; and, until that result was obtained, by means of urgent pressure on the German Government, the procès-verbal of deposit, which custom requires, could not be signed. Thus the total period consumed between the termination of active hostilities and the resumption of peaceful relations with Germany was one year two months and nine days. Although the Armistice was concluded so early as Nov. 11, 1918, it was obvious that peace negotiations could not be commenced until the arrival in Europe of President Wilson. He landed in France Dec. 13, came to London a fortnight later, left for Paris and Rome on the last day of the month, and finally returned to Paris on Jan. 7. The members of the British delegation began to arrive there on Jan. 4; but the Prime Minister was a week later. Mr Wilson had taken a leading part in the negotiation of the preliminaries of the Armistice. It was to him that the German Government had addressed itself on itself on Oct. 5, 1918. Correspondence between him and the German Government on the one hand and the Governments of the Allies on the other followed; and it was agreed by the latter that the Armistice Convention and the Treaty of Peace should be based on his addresses and speeches and on the recent diplomatic correspondence. To understand what this basis was, Part IV of Chapter IX of Volume I of the History' must be carefully studied. It shows clearly that with the exception of the reservation of the European allies with respect to No. 2 of the famous Fourteen Points, namely, the so-called 'Freedom of the Seas,' the President had been allowed to formulate the principles on which peace should be concluded. Europe expected him to arrive with a thoroughly worked-out scheme of negotiation. But it appears that he brought nothing of the sort with him. No doubt the separate Governments had each formed an idea of what they would demand, but nothing had been settled between them, and it is pointed out in the History' (1. p. 237), that such preparations as had been made by them were 'necessarily of a very general character, made for the most part by subordinate departments, without the direction of the heads of States, without inter-allied consultation and co-operation, and with only a vague idea of how the schemes would be applied in practice. Their influence on the Conference must not, however, be under-estimated. Their labours had produced an enormous amount of material for the use of the men of action; and, though much of this work was wasted, much proved to be of the greatest value.' No doubt the writer of these lines had in mind the series of Peace Hand-books produced by the Historical Section of the Foreign Office, established for the first time in 1917. Very valuable and interesting as these Hand-books are, it must have been quite impossible for the actual negotiators to become acquainted with even a small portion of their contents. In any case, it must be evident that the plenipotentiaries of the Allied and Associated Powers had to begin their work by coming to an agreement as to the procedure to be adopted for negotiation among themselves of the provisions which would be embodied in the Peace Treaty, and that this was a difficult task, as the various countries concerned had suffered in quite different ways from the violence with which the war had been carried on by their adversaries, notably by Germany. Compare the devastation of North-Eastern France, the destruction of public buildings in Belgium, the carrying away of public and private property from these two countries, with the almost entire freedom of the British Islands from damage on land at the hands of the enemy; though, on the other hand, the destruction of a great portion of the British mercantile marine was a very serious blow to the prosperity of the country. To reconcile the French and Belgian demands for reparation with the much smaller requirements of Great Britain must have been no easy undertaking, requiring long discussion and much give and take between the representatives of the Allies. It may seem a very small thing, but it is probable that the want of a common language between the |