s I am convinced they will one day, does any statesman believe
that democratic America will despatch troops to coerce them back? If the
Germans of Bohemia secede from the Czechoslovaks or the Croats from the
Serbs, will British armies cross the sea to uphold the union which those
peoples repudiate? And in the name of which of the Fourteen Points would
they undertake the task? That of self-determination? France's interests,
and hers alone, would be affected by such changes. And France would be
left to fight single-handed. For what?

It is interesting to note how the conditions imposed upon Germany were
appreciated by an influential body of Mr. Wilson's American partizans
who had pinned their faith to his Fourteen Points. Their view is
expressed by their press organ as follows:[332]

"France remains the strongest Power on the Continent. With her military
establishment intact she faces a Germany without a general staff,
without conscription, without universal military training, with a
strictly limited amount of light artillery, with no air service, no
fleet, with no domestic basis in raw materials for armament manufacture,
with her whole western border fifty kilometers east of the Rhine
demilitarized. On top of this France has a system of military alliances
with the new states that touch Germany. On top of this she secured
permanent representation in the Council of the League, from which
Germany is excluded. On top of that economic terms which, while they
cannot be fulfilled, do cripple the industrial life of her neighbor.
With such a balance of forces France demands for herself a form of
protection which neither Belgium, nor Poland, nor Czechoslovakia, nor
Italy is granted."

FOOTNOTES:

[326] One of the three districts of Schleswig. A curious phenomenon was
this zeal of the Supreme Council for Denmark's interests, as compared
with Denmark's refusal to profit by it, the champions of
self-determination urging the Danes to demand a district, as Danish,
which the Danes knew to be German!

[327] _Das Berliner Tageblatt_, June 4, 1919.

[328] _Le Journal de Geneve_, June 24, 1919.

[329] Cf. _L'Echo de Paris_, May 12, 1919.

[330] _Ibidem_.

[331] In a monograph entitled _Plus Jamais_.

[332] Cf. _The New Republic_, August 13, 1919, p. 43.

XV

THE TREATY WITH BULGARIA

Among all the strange products of the many-sided outbursts of the
leading delegates' reconstructive activity, the Treaty with Bulgar