The Fargo forum and daily republican., 1918-11-23


.~~-cs~-~-~-,s~~-~-~- ~I%~-~-~~~~N~~~~-
the making of peace. The food tide
of French success had long passed
Blenhein1, RapilIies and Malplaque
had broken the military might Of
France, but the French armies were
still strong, French territory prac-
tically intact and French exhaustion
no more complete than that Of the
allies, who were IiondfnaIly victorious
Actually there was ne general
congress and no single document OF
settlement. Separate peace was
made between France and her en-
emies. The teTnas of the peace left
to Louis most of his conquests. which
were mere extensions of French rule
| populations. It left him those dis
tricts in Flanders which have seen
such terrible fighting in the present
conflict; If confirmed his hold upon
AIsace, but it rescued the Belgian
/ lands from him and established for
France the frontiers which, save on
! the side of Italy, subsisted until the
lFranco-Prussian war and are now to
be restored.
Thirty Year War Finish.
AS for the settlement of West
phaIia, like that OF Utrecht, it was
peace by negotiation, without vic
tory. 1t ended the Thirty Years
war; it established the principle OF
religious toleration; it marked the
rise of France as a great state; it
bestowed Alsace upon the French
monarchy: it left Germany a broken
mass of disunited states. 1t was a
real settlement so far as the religious
issue was concerned: in all else it
was no settlement, but rather a ces-
satton of war, made necessary by
! exhaustion and achieved not at a
peace agreements between the vari-
Gus contestants.
A"reyiew Of these previous great
settlements or unsettlements is per-
l1aps worth while now, when we are
to make the greatest of all settle
ments, which seems bound to have
as long q life as that OF Vienna and
exercise at least as great an in
fiuence upon succeeding generations
as did the 1916 document upon his
tory from Waterloo to the later Sc
dan. OF all these previous settle
ments only that Of Vienna is OF real
contemporary interest, because alone
of the many arrangements it was
like the present, the consequence OF
complete victory in a general war
which put complete power in the
hands of the victor.
Principles Are Rejected,
At Vienna the principles Of civil
liberty and OF racial unity We're re-
jected. Metternich, Talleyrand, Cas-
tlereagh, the Russian emperor and
the Prussian soldiers were not con-
Il &Ian v.so 1fc -
pies, and they were determined to
exercise the evil spell OF the French
revolution. But the victors were go.
divided by mutual rivalries that
only the return OF Napoleon pre-
vented collapse OF the congress. and
Talleyrand at all times was able to
save beaten France from the CON-
sequences Of defeat by playing upon
the mutual jealousies of the con-
querors. =
The statesmen and the sovereigns
who framed the Vienna document re-
garded Europe, save for France Of
1889, as an open hunting ground.
Prussia, Austria, Russia, through
their kings, quarrelled over their
respective shares OF Poland, all of
which the car once, by an eloquent
gesture, claimed as his own, as sue
cessfGl bandits might quarrel over
the division of a booty. ! Disagreed
over all else, however, the contes-
'tants were agreed in disregard Of the
rights OF the real owners. And not
less complete was the disregard of
the men OF the congress Of Berlin for
the same conside iderations.
At Vienna nobody cared about the
Poles; nobody cared brass farth-
ing for the Serbs or the Greeks at
Berlin. In the later gathering none
OF the assembled statesmen was
troubled by the haunting fear Of a
revolution such as had shaken EJr-
ope before the Vienna gathering. I'm.
Berlin the diplomatists were con-
cerned only with avoiding a general
war and with acquiring as much ter
ritory as possible. At Vienna. the,
double objective was personal profit
and collective royal safety. An evic-
ton OF kings, like that which has
Just occurred, had followed the
French revolution, and the general
association Of nonarchs met at
Vienna was resolved to make any
repetition impossible.
Task Is Greater.
Now contrast the task before the
statesmen who gather at Versailles
Will IudL eO4 Lk4c4E BISQGESS5OIS aI
Vienna and at Berlin. Their task
far surpasges that Of a little more
than a century ago. They have to
make a new map of Europe. They
have to deal with the racial and na-
tionalistic aspirations OF more peo-
pie than the combined soyereighs OF
the Vienna era ruled over. They
have to erect new nations larger
than any German state in 1915. They
have TO resolve Austria Hungary
into its component parts, to settle
the Bulkan rivalries, to dispose Of the
Turk in Asia as well as in Europe
They have the Polish problem on
their hands with all its complexities.
They have the German colonies TO
bestow upon themselves, or return to
Germany.
And beyond these questions of ter-
ritory and nationality there are the
stupendous tasks growing out of the,
German revolutions and the Russian