I
THE PEACE OF GENEVA
The Treaty of Geneva, which brought to a close the European War, was signed, on March 1, 1916, by the peace plenipotentiaries of no less than thirteen nations.
Throughout the spring, summer, and winter of 1915, the titanic conflict, enlarged by the entry of over 3,000,000 troops of Italy and the Balkan States into the theater of operations, swayed to and fro across the blood-soaked soil of Europe, with a ferocity and slaughter which sickened even the most hardened veterans of the war. Weight of numbers and a crushing superiority in artillery drove the armies of the Dual Monarchy back upon Budapest and Vienna, held the redoubtable Von Hindenberg within his own frontiers, and rolled the German armies in France and Belgium slowly back to the Rhine and the Dutch frontier.
Undismayed, and fighting against heavy odds with a magnificent courage and steadiness, Germany took up a seemingly impregnable position on the right bank of the Rhine and marshaled her forces for a strictly defensive campaign in 1916. Late in November of 1915, however, when by common consent the warring hosts on the Western battle line had apparently settled down for comparative rest and recuperation during the winter months in a quasi-defensive, similar to that of 1915, Holland suddenly declaring war, entrenched herself heavily on the German border, and a vast Allied reserve army, entering Holland by the Belgian-Dutch border, and by way of Rotterdam and Amsterdam, concentrated to the east of the Rhine, drove down in a resistless offensive into Westphalia, taking the German army in the right flank and rear, and captured the great centers of artillery and ammunition supply in Essen and the surrounding districts.
Germany, realizing that, with the Krupp and other factories in the hands of the enemy, the war must end automatically, accepted the friendly offices of the Swiss Government and the peace conference opened at Geneva.
And thus it came about that there gathered on the shores of the placid lake the most momentous conclave in all the history of the world.
Contrary to universal expectation the deliberations moved forward with a swiftness which, considering the enormous interests at stake, appeared to a nervously apprehensive world simply incredible. And herein was seen the advantage, costly though it had been in blood and treasure, of carrying the gigantic struggle through to an absolutely decisive issue.
The earlier deliberations, relative to the readjustment of boundaries and territory, moved rapidly to their expected results. Russia, content with the possession of Constantinople, and the extension of her frontier to the Carpathians, agreed readily to the re-creation of Poland as an autonomous and "buffer" state between herself and Germany. To Roumania was given Transylvania on the condition, arranged previously to her entrance into the war, that she return to Bulgaria the territory wrested from her during the second Balkan War, and Servia was enlarged by the acquisition of Herzegovina and Bosnia. The boundary between Italy and Austria was rectified so as to restore to Italy her lost provinces. France, as the reward of the heroic struggle of her citizen soldiery, regained possession of Alsace and Lorraine. Japan was permitted to hold Kiao-Chou and acquire from China the lease formerly held by Germany, a pledge being given for the maintenance of the "Open Door" in that country.
So far, so good; but when it came to the insistence by the Allies on an indemnity of fifteen billion dollars, the first installments of which were to be paid into the Belgian treasury, Germany presented an adamantine front. And to the demands of Great Britain that the German fleet be reduced by the distribution of its major units among the fleets of the Allies, she retorted that if the transfer of so much as a ship's launch to a foreign flag were again suggested, Germany would withdraw at once from the convention, and "would fight it out until the last mark, the last loaf of bread, and the last man was gone!"
The convention was adjourned for a week; and in view of the uncompromising front presented by Germany and Great Britain, and the probability of a continuance of the war to the bitter end, the world was thrown into a state of profound despondency and foreboding.
The next session was marked by the most dramatic incident of the whole conference. No sooner had the meeting been declared open than the German plenipotentiary abruptly announced that he had received instructions from Berlin to state that, if no more mention were made of the dismemberment of her fleet, Germany would agree to pay an indemnity to the Allies of fifteen billion dollars, and give the customary pledges therefor.
The curt announcement of Germany's assumption of this stupendous obligation produced, even in that well-poised assembly, a barely-checked murmur of astonishment. The British plenipotentiary asked for a three days' adjournment. He was instructed by his home government to stand firm for the disruption of the German navy; but on his cabling that it was the unanimous opinion of the rest of the Allies, that the assumption by Germany of this enormous indebtedness would so far cripple her financially as to render any material increase of her naval forces impossible before the existing ships were becoming obsolete, he was instructed to accept the German conditions.
And so, on the 1st of March, 1916, the thirteen signatures which ended the greatest moral and material tragedy in the whole history of the world were appended and peace settled over the stricken people of Europe.
And, thereafter, men said to one another when they met: "How came it about that Germany so suddenly agreed to pay that fifteen-billion-dollar indemnity?"