Evening star., 1939-01-29
By Mary.Corter Roberts

personal memory OF tIle WOTlQ wal
there is, unquestionably, much in
public print and speech today that
is puzzling. There is, for example
the loudly uttered claim that the
war itself was entered into from
purely mercenary motives. And there
is also a steady insistence that the
peace terms were dictated by un-
restrained rapacity without a
thought of justice. Both of these
current opinions are, as said, strange
hearing to those members of the
population who carry vivid recollec-
tions of the late war and peace in
their own minds. Indeed, If such
citizens are to accept those opinions,
they must needs erase their personal
memories completely.
For in 1914 it was not found
within sanity, even in the minds of
neutralS, to believe that France and
England, to say nothing of Belgium
and Serbia, defended their frontiers
and sworn treaties from pure cold
blooded greed. And later, in 1917,
we did not feel ourselves attracted
to the conflict, either, from any
mercenary motive Instead we went
into it on a wave of idealism-as
far as the people and their repre-
sentatives were concerned, at any
rate.
And when the peace of Versailles
was dictated, it was rather through
q plethora of justice that it en-
bodied such terms as were unen-
forceable, than through rapacity
For, had those peace terms been set
down by men coldly determined to
bleed Germany to their own inter-
ests, a more practical settlement
would have been achieved. The
merely rapacious, it should be noted,
generally have as their first con-
Germ reality. They would rather de-
mand three-quarterS of the loaf and
be sure of getting it, than hold out
for the whole, if the whole is i'm
possible. 1t is only the fanatically
just who insist on complete pay
ment of difficult debts to their own
ultimate loss. The reviewer, hearing
the Versailles treaty eXcoriated in
the manner which is at present
fashionable, has often wondered that
SO few commentators seem to have
remembered these perfectly obvious
truths.
Mr.. Wheeler-Bennett in this pres
ent book, strikes a note of whole
some sanity which sounds well in
Io nh II
ing about the wreck of the stern
old eye-for-a -an-eye Versailles docu-
ment. He is not writing about Ver-
sailleS, to be sure He writes of the
treaty of Brest-Litovsk, that agree
ment by which Germany and Russia
came to peace after the Russian
Revolution. But, in Brest-Litovsk
he sees the germs of Versailles, and
citizens who are now prone to weep
over dismembered Germany, robbed
and pilloried by her victors, might
do well to inform themselves of the
terms laid down by Germany her
self to beaten and defenceless
enemy. For such information they
could not do better than go to Mr..
Wheeler Benefits book. 1t Is. a
splendid piece of work, mine of
facts and written in an extroordi-
narily interesting manner.
It tells the whole story of Brest-
Litovsk, from the fall of the imper-
ial Russian government to the final
abrogation of the treaty under the
terms of Versailles. 1t is story
of amazing brutality-even to those
who still remember Germany's con-
duct during the war, and for ra-
pacity and injustice it is chapter
in world history that is probably
not surpassed.
BY the terms of Brest-Litovsk and
related treaties Russia lost the Uk-
raine, Poland, Courland, Lithuania,
Finland, the Aaland Islands, the
provinces of Eastern Anatolia and
the three Sanjaks, or, in all, "a per
cent of her population, third of
her agricultural land and SO per
cent of her coal. Germany, as Mr..
Wheeler Bennett puts it, extended
her control of Eastern Europe to
the Arctic Ocean and the Black Sea,
and had acquired the undisputed
arbitrament of the fate of fifty-five
millions of Russia's western fringe"
At the same time, through subsid-
iary treaties with Rumania and the
Ukraine, she gained control of vast
resources of wheat and petroleum"
These gains were acquired under
the political clauses of the treaties
alone. Under the commercial
clauses there were proportionate
advantages in trade for Germany.
Russia had no choice but to sub
NIT. Lenin urged ratification; he
saw it, realistically, as the only
course before the nation. But he
called it "Tilsit Peace" "the very
bottom, the abyss of defeat, parti-
tion, enslavement and humiliation"
More recently, as Mr.. Wheeler-Ben-
nett points out, Hitler has become
eloquent in praise of the doings of
Germany at Brest-Litovsk. II placed
the two treaties (Brest-Litovsk and
Versailles side by side,' said the
Fuehrer in his book, compared
them point by point, showed the
positively boundless humanity of
the one in contrast to the inhuman
cruelty of the other"
1t was precisely this kind of logic,
of course, which made Versailles
as 'inhuman" as it was.
It may be we'll to refresh our fad
ing memories of the history which
has been made in our own time by
quoting, as does Mr.. Wheeler-Ben-
nett, the answer by President Will
son to Germany's claim, advanced
when defeat in the west became in
evitable, that, whatever condition
might be asked by the Allies, the
terms of Brest-Litovsk were to
stand unchanged in the east.
I'VE are all agreed" said Presi-
dent Wilson, that there can be no
peace obtained by any kind of bar
gain or compromise with the gov
ernments of the Central Powers, be-
cause we have dealt with them al
%hnyn Ino1