The. World War

"The. World War - The military history of the World War is told in these New Volumes in separate articles dealing with campaigns and battles; and a general account of the war at sea is given in the article Naval Operations (supplemented by separate articles On the battles Of Jutland, Dogger Bank, Coronel, Heligoland Bight, Falkland Islands, Zeebrugge, and On the Goeben And Breslau affair, together with those under the headings of Submarine Campaigns, Blockade, Minesweeping And Minelaying and Convoy). As regards the land operations, reference to the separate headings under which the military history is narrated may best be made here by a brief résumé of the course of the war.

The war opened simultaneously on three fronts in Aug. 1914. These fronts were the western, the eastern and the Serbian, and the continuous story of the major operations on these fronts will be found under the respective headings: Western European Front Campaigns, Eastern European Front Campaigns and Serbian Campaigns, together with Salonika Campaigns. In the west the German invasion of Belgium and France was marked by the five-fold battle of the Frontiers - in Alsace, Lorraine, Ardennes, at Charleroi and at Mons - by the sieges of Liege, Namur and Maubeuge (q.q.v.), and by the battle Of Guise. Its culmination in the battles of Sept. 4 -20 is told in detail under the heading Marne; and the development of the northern flanks of the opposed armies towards the sea, at the same time as Antwerp fell to the Germans, is dealt with under the headings Artois (part I.), and Ypres And The Yser (part I.).

On the eastern front the Russian invasion of East Prussia, with its battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, is dealt with in detail under the heading Masuria, Battles In (parts while the main conflict between the Russian and Austrian offensive efforts in Galicia and Poland during August and early September is described under Lemberg (part I.). The subsequent united efforts of the Austrian and German armies in Poland and Galicia to stem the onset of the " steam-roller " may be divided into periods characterized by the battle names Vistl T La San, and Lodz-Cracow. The first siege Of Przemysl will be found under that heading. The three Austrian invasions of Serbia are described in the general article for that front, mentioned above.

The year 1915, a year of stabilization on the western front, was one of open warfare on the eastern. Beginning with the battle of the Carpathians and the second siege of Przemysl on the one flank, and the " Winter Battle " of Masuria (see Masuria, Battles In, part III.) on the other, the operations, after a pause, took shape as a general Austro-German offensive from May I. The right half of this offensive preceded the left by two months, and its successive episodes are marked by the battles of Gorlice-Tarnov and the San (see Dunajec-San and Przemysl), the battles of Grodek, Lemberg and Stryi (see Lemberg, part II.), and by the later episode of RovNO (q.v.). At a certain stage in the development of these operations, their left wing becomes one branch of a double-envelopment aimed at the rear of the Russian centre in West Poland; this branch is the campaign from the Tane y river against Brest Litovsk, while the other is the offensive of the " Gallwitz army " from Przasnysz, across the. Narew into the interior of the corridor followed by the Russians in their retreat (see Narew, Battles Of The). The final efforts of the Germans to isolate the retreating Russians, which ended in ill-success and in the formation of a stable trench-line, as in the W., are dealt with in the general military narrative of operations on the eastern front, named above.

In the E. the entry of Turkey into the war led to the expedition against the Dardanelles, and to the renewal of the offensive of the Central Powers against Serbia in the autumn of 1915 (see Serbian Campaigns), which closed with the conquest of Serbia on the one side, and the creation of a new minor front at Salonika on the other (see Salonika Campaigns). The campaigns in Asia Minor are dealt with under the general heading Turkish Campaigns, of which the several sections describe the operations which took place in the Caucasus, in Mesopotamia and in Sinai and Syria.

In the W. the years 1915, 1916, 1917 are essentially the " trench-warfare " period. The battles of Ypres in 1915 (see Ypres And The Yser, part II.), of Neuve Chapelle, Carency, Souchez and Loos (see Artois, Battles In, part II.) respectively, the minor offensive of Crouy, the winter battle in Champagne (see Champagne, parts I., II.), and the trench-warfare fighting in Argonne and Woevre, culminated in the great French offensive of Sept. 25 1915 in Champagne (see Champagne, part III.), but without materially affecting the stability of the trenchwarfare conditions. The year 1916 opened with the great German blow at Verdun, which forestalled the Allied offensive of the Somme (q.v. part I.): these two great names fill the history of the 1916 campaign in the west. In 1917 a first essay in operating under a united command was made by the Allies in the spring campaign, and produced the Arras battles described under Artois (part III.), and the Aisne offensive of April (see Cham Pagne, part IV.); the results were disappointing, and the parts of the inter-allied machine fell asunder, the British taking up the weight of the task in the battles around Messines, Ypres, Passchendael, etc. (see Ypres And The Yser, part III.), and in the " tank-battle " of Cambrai (see Artois, section I.), while the French carried through two battles of limited objective, described under Champagne (part IV.) and Verdun.

Meantime, the entry of Italy into the war in 1915 had created new military relations in the Mediterranean basin. Austria had established a new defensive front on the Isonzo, and, shortly after the Verdun offensive of her ally, had struck a similar blow on the Tirol front at Asiago. The unity of operations in the Italian theatre of war makes it possible to refer the reader to a single heading, Italian Front Campaigns, with the subordinate articles therein referred to, for the story of the war in this region from first to last.

On the Russian front, the year 1916 saw a final effort of Russia, in spite of losses, to regain lost ground and to help her Allies. The battles, after an isolated winter battle known as the " New Year's fight," described under the heading Strypa-Czernowitz, fall into two main groups, those of the spring and those of the summer and autumn, in which the battles of Naroch Lake and Luck are the central episodes.

The spring of the final year, 1918, finds the focus of military events in Europe placed on that section of the front in France which lies north of the Oise. Here, on March 21, the great German offensive broke through the lines of the British V. Army (see Somme, part III.); here also, on April 9, a second effort was made at the LYS (q.v.). In summer, the German attacks of May 27 on the Chemin des Dames (see Champagne, part V.), of June 9 on Noyon, and of July 15 on both sides of Reims (see Champagne, part VI.), culminate, and the period of Allied counterattacks under united command begins with July 18 (see Cham Pagne, part VII.), Aug. 8 (see Somme, part IV.), Aug. 21 (see Somme, part V.) and St. Mihiel (see W OEvRE), to assume at last a coherent and decisive form in the three simultaneous offensives of the Americans in the MEUsE-Argonne(q.v.)battle, of the British in the battle of Cambrai -St. Quentin and the Belgians, British and French in the last battle of Ypres.

As regards the origin of the World War, its history is told in the article Europe, in the final section of which its results on the national reshaping of Europe after the war are analyzed. Reference on both these aspects may also be made to the historical and geographical sections of the articles dealing with each country involved in the war. But during the war itself the political aspects ceased to be merely European: it became a World War. The general international politics throughout its course are therefore dealt with under the present heading, in the article below, as distinctively world-history, by way of continuation of the historical article under Europe which deals with the international politics of Europe up to August 1914. (H. CH.) Political History Of The War From the moment hostilities began in 1914, it became the absorbing aim of all the combatant countries to win the war; 1 For side-lights on conflicting national viewpoints in connexion with particular episodes, and for greater detail in regard to them - the accounts being still sometimes irreconcilable as between representatives of the different countries concerned, - see the separate historical articles under country headings: especially English History, United States (History), Austrian Empire (Foreign Policy), Germany (History), France (History), Italy (History), Japan (Foreign Relations), Serbia (History), Yugoslavia (History), Czechoslovakia (History), Greece (History). but each of them placed a different interpretation upon the meaning of victory, and that meaning also varied with their. fortunes, the eclipse of this or that belligerent, and the entrance of fresh forces into the arena. The war aims of Great Britain were tersely stated in general terms by Mr. Asquith at the Guildhall on Nov. 9 1914, when he declared: " We shall never sheathe the sword, which we have not lightly drawn, until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has sacrificed, until France is adequately secured against the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation, and until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed." France and Russia, while agreeing with these objects, mentally put a more concrete interpretation on victory: to France the symbol of victory was the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine with further guarantees against a repetition of 1870-1; while Russia desired to exorcise Prussian apparitions " in shining armour " at Petrograd and to secure control of Constantinople and the Straits.

The Original Combatants

Germany was less single-minded in her ideas. The mass of her people had been persuaded that the war was one of defence against a Pan-Slav peril and hostile encirclement by other Powers; but the bourgeois classes looked. for Weltmacht in the shape of commercial and colonial expansion, while Bernhardi expressed the mind of Prussian militarists when he demanded three years before the war that " France must be so completely crushed that she can never cross our path again." Behind such ebullitions was a growing conviction in the Prussian mind that the Prussian system of government could not long maintain itself against social democracy without fresh tributes to the efficacy of the sword. " This danger," wrote Prince von Billow, " must be faced and met with a great and comprehensive national policy under the strong guidance of clear-sighted and courageous governments, which, whether amicably or by fighting can make the parties bow to the might of the national idea." " Nor," concluded Bernhardi, " must we think merely of external foes who compel us to fight. A war may seem to be forced upon a statesman by the condition of home affairs." To Austria the compulsion came from the attitude of Yugosla y s within her borders; and her original war aims probably did not extend beyond the reduction of Serbia, to dependence and the consequent eclipse of Russian prestige in the Balkans. For Belgium and for Serbia the object of the war was primarily self-defence, although in Serbia's case successful self-defence would inevitably bring with it the prospect of increased influence in the domestic affairs of the Habsburg Empire. Japan was bound to intervene by her alliance with Great Britain, but a positive inducement to fulfil its terms was held out by the opportunity of conquering Kiaochow and excluding Germany from Far Eastern waters.

Not much choice had in fact been left to these original combatants by the circumstance of past policy which had driven them into the war. Other Powers had freer hands and a market in which they could sell their alliance to buyers who would bid high. They could intervene or hold aloof, and the nature and extent of the price they set on their services would modify the war aims of those whose cause they espoused. The course, the objects, and the end of the war were profoundly affected by the gradual expansion of the hostile groups.

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The leading part played by Germany in the movements which precipitated the outbreak is emphasized by the fact that Austria, having declared war on Serbia on July 28, remained at peace with all other States for several days after Germany had drawn the sword. It was not until Aug. 6 that Austria declared war on Russia, nor until the 10th and 12th that France and Great Britain declared war upon her, nor until the 27th that she declared war on Belgium, the German invasion of which had dragged in Great Britain three weeks before. So far as Austria was concerned, the Triple Alliance had been purely defensive, and it had not even bound her to defend Germany against France, unless Russia also intervened. Italy, on the other hand, had been bound to assist Germany against a French attack; and the legends about French aggression, which Germany propagated in the early days of Aug., were meant for Italian as much as for British consumption. Italy had, however, under wise guidance, refused to believe in French aggressiveness, and had declared her neutrality on Aug. i on the ground that her intervention was not required by the terms of the Triple Alliance. Her abstention on this occasion was probably the greatest service she rendered to the Entente during the war, for it released from the Franco-Italian frontier some hundreds of thousands of troops without whose assistance the battle of the Marne could hardly have been won. Her example may also have been the last straw in the balance which determined Rumania, despite its Hohenzollern King and its Austrian alliance, to stand aloof from the struggle.

The Neutral Stales. - Neutrality was expected from the other European States, whatever their sympathies might be. Holland's traditions were more friendly to Germany than to Belgium, but they were obliterated by the wanton invasion of Belgium's neutrality, and Bethmann Hollweg's argument that a German annexation of Belgium would be useless without the acquisition of Dutch territory was not calculated to assuage alarm. But more immediate perils dictated Dutch neutrality. There was no reason to suppose that Entente forces, which protected only a tiny corner of Belgium, could have saved a single acre of Dutch territory. Holland, with its wealth of capital and agricultural produce and its harbours, would have fallen an easy prey to Germany, while the remnants of its colonial empire might have gone the way the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon had gone during the last occupation of Holland by an enemy of Great Britain. Holland was wise in its neutrality, and even the Entente probably benefited more by it than it would have done by Dutch intervention. It was certainly well for Great Britain that in 1917-8 German submarines had no Dutch ports for bases which could not be blocked as the exits from Bruges were in April 1918.

Denmark was in the like case, albeit with an ancient grievance against Germany in the wrongful detention of Danish Slesvig. But again, Denmark could not have been defended against German invasion, and Danish coasts and ports would have been invaluable to German submarines. Denmark, too, was wise to eschew belligerency and seek to develop its influence in conjunction with its Scandinavian colleagues. Of these, Norway sympathized with the Entente, and might, but for the fear of Sweden, have been driven by German piracy into war. Sweden's affections were more divided. The Labour party, led by Branting, was, if not pro-Entente, at least averse from intervention on Germany's side. But the upper and bourgeois classes were strongly German in sympathy and inclined to activism in that direction. This affection was partly due to cultural development, but more to a greater fear of Russia which had been aggravated by the fate of Finland and Russian designs in the Aland Islands. The Baltic was, like the Adriatic, the scene of a triangular duel; but the Russian menace in the Baltic was greater than the Teutonic menace in the Adriatic. Sweden's fears of Russia counterbalanced Danish and Norwegian grievances against Germany, and the Scandinavian States found a basis for neutrality in an equilibrium of antipathies.

Spanish neutrality was the resultant of similarly antagonistic domestic feelings. The King, with his English wife, was proEntente, but the Catholic and conservative upper classes were pro-German, while the democratic factions, hankering after revolution, took the opposite side. Portugal was, as it had been since its war of liberation and the marriage of Catherine of Braganza, an ally if not a pawn of England; and the prospective agreements which England and Germany had just made for the division of its colonies had not sufficed to transfer its allegiance from the one to the other beneficiary. No one expected Switzerland to abandon its neutrality; and the Balkans were left as the principal sphere of diplomatic competition. Greece had a Prussian Queen and a King who was a Prussian fieldmarshal, but a prime minister whose sympathies and confidence were whole-heartedly on the Entente side. Bulgaria, as a result of the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, had no sympathies at all, but a comprehensive grievance against all her neighbours who had robbed her of the fruits of victory over Turkey, and against the Great Powers which had acquiesced in that spoliation. Her object was simply to discover the probable winner, and back it with all her resources in the hope of getting back all she could from the losers. For the moment she would wait and see.

Turkey was nearer to a decision. She had long been wooed by the Kaiser. In 1898 he had declared himself the friend of all Mahommedans, whose-soever subjects they might be; and the circumstance that, outside Turkey, they were mostly the subjects of Great Britain, Russia, or France gave point to his policy. The Turkish revolution of 1908 and the machinations of a so-called party of progress, led by Enver and Tal'at, made no difference to the growth of Turco-Teutonic affection. England had afforded but a half-hearted support against the Russian advance toward Constantinople; she had assisted in the liberation of Greece and the Balkans, and had helped herself to Cyprus and Egypt and other fragments of the dismembered Turkish Empire; and her friendship seemed but the nether millstone to the upper millstone of Russian aggression. Moreover, by August 1914 the antagonism between England and Russia, on which `Abdul Hamid relied, had disappeared in an alliance in which, so far as the Near East was concerned, Russia would be the predominant partner; and the interpretation which Russia put on that entente was illustrated by a crown council held in St. Petersburg on Feb. 6 1914 to discuss the means for securing the Straits and Constantinople. The appointment of the German Gen. Liman von Sanders to reorganize Turkish forces was the retort which naturally commended itself both to the Turk and the Teuton.

The Turkish mind was, however, slow to move; it was no light matter to reverse the traditional policy of centuries and embark on war with a Power which had long regarded the maintenance of the Turkish Empire as one of the first of British interests. The Kaiser believed that he had Turkey in his pocket, but no one knew what her attitude would be. When the German admiral made for the Dardanelles with the " Goeben" and the " Breslau" on Aug. 8-9 his course was dictated by necessity and not by plan, and he was even prepared to force his way up the Straits if peaceful admission were refused. As late as the 5th the German embassy at Constantinople had reported that it was undesirable for him to arrive there yet. He was, however, received with open arms. Turkish opinion had been profoundly irritated by the commandeering of two Turkish dreadnoughts which had been built in British dockyards out of the proceeds of a patriotic Turkish loan; officers of the British Naval Mission in Turkey were superseded, and, in spite of the Grand Vizier's opposition, Enver, the Minister of War, was mobilizing Turkish forces for an attack on the Suez Canal. Plans for Anglo-French naval cooperation in the Mediterranean had to be abandoned and British ships detached to blockade the Dardanelles and safeguard the Red Sea, while troops were hurried from India to Egypt. Twice before the end of Aug. Sir Louis Mallet, H.M.'s ambassador at Constantinople, mooted the possibility of forcing the Dardanelles, but expressed the opinion that success was doubtful without military cooperation and that failure would be disastrous. He succeeded, however, in prolonging the resistance of the Grand Vizier to Enver's designs and in delaying the breach until toward the end of Oct.

Turkey's Entry

By that time the German Government had determined to cut the Gordian knot of Turkish indecision. The western campaign was coming to a deadlock before Ypres, the first German attack on Warsaw had failed, and a great Austrian effort was being planned to punish Serbia for her success in resisting attacks in the Balkans. On Oct. 28 Souchon sallied out of the Bosporus into the Black Sea with the combined German and Turkish squadrons, and on the 29-30th he mined Sevastopol harbour, sank a transport, and bombarded Odessa, Theodosia, and Novorossisk. Souchon alleged that the transport was a minelayer laying mines in Turkish territorial waters; and while the rival parties were still discussing the rival versions, Russia, having in Sept. secured a neutrality engagement from Rumania which was not communicated to her allies, declared war on the 31st without their connivance. The British and French ambassadors had already been instructed to follow their Russian colleague; on Nov. 1 they left Constantinople, and on the 3rd Adml. Carden bombarded the forts of the Dardanelles. Russian precipitation had, however, only hastened the end. Enver's troops had long been on the march toward the Suez Canal, and on Oct. 27 British outposts at El 'Arish and Nekhl had been withdrawn.

The entrance of Turkey into the war as Germany's ally was the first great diplomatic success achieved by either of the belligerent groups, and it did more than anything else to extend the sphere of the war and to increase in particular Great Britain's anxieties and obligations. Britain had little contact with Austria, and not much more with Bulgaria. Even Germany, apart from her naval ambitions, presented few points of direct conflict; they arose indirectly, either through the menace to Britain's allies in France and Belgium, or through the doors which Turkey now opened to German penetration. These led so far and in so many directions threatening British interests that, as they were gradually revealed in 1914-5, it seemed to many that they represented the original motive of Germany's aggression. Through Turkish dominions lay the overland route not merely to India but to Egypt and E. Africa; and both paths were strewn with inflammable material. Britain ruled over something like half the Mahommedans of the world, and for many of them the Sultan of Turkey as Caliph was their head. Even more dangerous might Germany's propaganda, backed by German military success, become in the midst of other discontented elements in India and in Egypt. With these under German and Turkish influence, the ferment might spread throughout the greater part of Asia and of Africa. Even the sea routes, on which the life of the Empire depended, would become unsafe when threatened on their flanks; for the problem has not yet been solved of how to command the sea in distant waters against an enemy holding the neighbouring lands and using the submarine. More immediately the entrance of Turkey into the war imposed upon Great Britain the task of defending the naval position in the eastern Mediterranean, the route through the Suez Canal, Egyptian territory, the Persian Gulf and the overland route to India against Turkish and Arab attacks. Incidentally it cut off Russia from her least indirect and irregular communication with her allies. Fortunately, the action of Japan limited these anxieties and relieved the Entente of the greater part of the burden of eradicating German power in the Far East. A Japanese ultimatum, which had been expected a little earlier, was delivered to Germany on Aug. 15 demanding the unconditional surrender of Kiaochow; it expired on the 2 2nd, and next day Japan entered the war.

Turkey's intervention had an immediate effect upon the status of her former provinces held by Great Britain. Cyprus was annexed at once; a British protectorate was proclaimed over Egypt on Dec. 17 with the connivance of France, whose protectorate over Morocco was recognized by Great Britain on the 24th, and on the 18th the Khedive `Abbas II., who had thrown in his lot with his Turkish suzerain, was deposed in favour of his uncle Husein, who further received the title of Sultan. Egyptian opinion accepted the change, and Turkey's efforts to reconquer her lost dominions were frustrated by the necessities of self-defence in the Dardanelles and on all her Asiatic frontiers. Before the Russians could move across the Caucasus, divisions of the Indian army had sailed up the Shatt al `Arab and begun that chequered advance which led them from Basra to Mosul. Not the least of the political effects of Turkey's action was to bring India into the war to a far greater extent than would have been possible had British participation been restricted to European fronts. Over a million native Indian troops were eventually engaged, and they assisted materially in the conquest of Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Syria. Before long Arabia, too, turned against the Turks, and found in Turkey's participation in the war the opportunity to emancipate itself from Turkish rule.

Russia's Claims

For the moment, however, these were unforeseen developments, and the more immediate effect of Turkey's intervention was to bring within the sphere of apparently practical politics ambitions which belonged to an older world. The breach which Russia had helpedto precipitate opened up the prospect of giving effect to the deliberations of the Russian crown council of Feb. 6 1914. The subject was not apparently broached by Russia to her allies until they, for reasons of their own, had committed themselves to an enterprise which would render it possible for Russia to reap its fruits - unless, indeed, it was really with an eye to securing Constantinople and the Straits by means of allied efforts that Russia despatched on Jan. 2 1915 an urgent request for some diversion to relieve Turkish pressure in the Caucasus. This is not the place to trace the growth of the Dardanelles expedition, which after the premature bombardment of Nov. 3, was keenly taken up by Mr. Churchill. The political and strategical motives for it seemed adequate. There remained no flank to turn on the western front; an unbroken line of trenches stretched from the North Sea to the Alps; and neither side could break the deadlock. On the other hand, the flank might be turned by sea power operating in the Dardanelles, an enemy knocked out by the capture of Constantinople, communications restored with Russia, the Teutonic path barred to the East and to Egypt, and two if not three new allies found in Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria, who uniting with Serbia and linking up Russia with a fourth potential recruit in Italy, might sweep upon Austria-Hungary and threaten an attack on Germany's southern frontiers which would destroy the bastions she had made on her eastern and western fronts.

Such was the prospect which Allied vision discerned and Russia proposed to convert into territorial substance. On March 4, when England and France had been committed to the enterprise, Russia handed in a memorandum to the British and French ambassadors at Petrograd, in which she explained her ideas. Most of what was left of Turkey in Europe, including Constantinople, the western shores of the Bosporus, of the Sea of Marmora, and of the Dardanelles, and Thrace as far as the Enos-Midia line, was to become Russian territory. So, too, were the islands in the Sea of Marmora, Imbros and Tenedos outside the Dardanelles, and the coast of Asia Minor from the Bosporus to the mouth of the Sakaria and across to the gulf of Ismid. On the other hand, the middle zone of Persia, declared neutral by the agreement of 1907, was to be assigned to the British sphere of influence, while Arabia was to become independent. By March 20 both the British and French governments had signified their assent to these proposals. Russia was still the predominant partner in the military alliance, her armies were overrunning the Carpathians and the Bukovina, and the anticipated collapse of Austria discounted the need to respect Balkan susceptibilities.

The agreement was secret, but Russian secrets had a habit of leaking out to her enemies during the war. Nor, indeed, did British or French politicians conceal their conversion to the justice of Russia's demands, while they ignored in their comments the impression it would produce upon wavering minds in the Balkans. The effect was to give Turkey the unaccustomed part of champion of Balkan independence; for with Russian ambitions fulfilled, no other Balkan power could have been more than a client State. Greece saw her aspirations - more legitimate at least than those of Russia - thwarted for ever by Allied complaisance; Bulgaria seemed to have struggled in vain under Stambolov to free herself from Russian tutelage, and to be doomed to perpetual servitude; Rumania lost hope of righting the wrong of 1878 and redeeming the Rumanians of Bessarabia; and only Serbia, which looked to the Adriatic, was content with this prospective Russian monopoly of the Black Sea and the Straits and dominance of the Aegean. The intervention of Turkey had given a predatory turn to the thoughts of the Entente; and, so far, the diplomacy of the war had tended to show an increasing disrespect for the liberties of little nations. The war was not, however, making much progress on those lines. In the Near East Russia's difficulty lay not in securing her Allies' assent to her aspirations but in providing for their realization. This she was totally unable to do, and her contribution to the Dardanelles campaign, which was to have taken the form of a hundred thousand men landed on the N. coast of Thrace and a naval attack on the Bosporus, came to nothing. Great Britain and France were not merely to assent to Russia's schemes but to give them effect; and they were not such as would enlist support in the Balkans. Venizelos was apparently prepared to land two Greek divisions, but they would almost certainly have been inadequate, and it was more than Hohenzollern interests that prevented the embarkation. Bulgaria would have bowed to the accomplished fact, but no sane politician could have expected her to help Russia into Constantinople. The western Allies themselves were deeply committed to an offensive with their maximum force on the western front, and reluctantly doled out belated troops for the Dardanelles. So the ill-starred enterprise dragged on to its inevitable end. Success may sometimes redeem the worst of policies and plans, but the failure of the Dardanelles expedition precipitated the evils it had sought to prevent, drove Bulgaria into the enemies' camp, and handed the Balkans over to the Teutonic alliance.

Italy's Entry

The next diplomatic move was more successful. The better mind of Italy had been shown by her refusal to acquiesce in an Austrian attack on Serbia in 1913 and to back up her Allies in Aug. 1914; and the tradition of Garibaldi and Mazzini had already inspired Italians to enlist under Ricci Garibaldi for service in France. The gibe of the French diplomatist that Italy would rush to the rescue of the conqueror was disproved by her quiescence when the Germans were at the gates of Paris; and popular Italian sympathies were undoubtedly stirred by the wrongs of Belgium and of Serbia. But in Italy, as in other countries, there was at first a hiatus between the soul of the people and the diplomacy of her government. It was Baron Sidney Sonnino who was mainly instrumental in negotiating the secret Treaty of London on April 26 1915. He had been convinced that Italy's interests required her intervention on the side of the Entente. He believed in a balance of power which Italy might turn to her own advantage. The seizure of Tunis by France in 1881, and fear lest the Mediterranean might become a French lake, had driven Italy into the Triple Alliance and the bosom of her hereditary Austrian enemy; and fear lest the Adriatic should fall under Teutonic domination if the Entente were defeated, and under Yugoslav influence if it won, drove Sonnino in 1915 out of the refuge of neutrality. In either event it was only by Italian belligerency that the situation could be redressed in Italy's favour; and Sonnino's calculations were that, if the war did not end in a decisive victory, Italy would probably get more out of a semi-victorious Entente than out of a semi-victorious Germany. Germany might, indeed, throw the Habsburg dominions into the melting pot as part of a general liquidation, and recognize Yugoslav independence; but she would keep Trieste for herself and Fiume for Hungary, which would be worse for Italy than the status quo. Better terms could be obtained from the Entente, and Sonnino sought a fulcrum for his bargain in the concessions he demanded from Austria. Both Austria and Italy were pledged to the principle of reciprocal compensation in case either was forced to disturb the status quo in the Balkans. Austria argued that the invasion of Serbia involved no permanent territorial change; but Sonnino retorted that during the Turkish-Italian War Austria had declared that an Italian bombardment of the Dardanelles or even the use of searchlights against the Turkish coasts would constitute a claim for Austrian compensation. In March 1915 Burian admitted the principle of the Italian claim, and under pressure from Germany conceded the Trentino to avoid a breach. But there was no guarantee that the concession would be regarded as binding in the hour of victory, nor would Burian budge an inch with regard to Gorizia, Trieste, the Dalmatian islands, or Valona. Sonnino had naturally less compunction in demanding from the Entente Powers their recognition of acquisitions to be made at the expense of their enemy than he had in requiring the surrender of territory from his ally; and in the Treaty of London, signed on April 26 1915, he made full use of this opportunity. To the Entente it seemed that victory was all that mattered, and victory appeared to be doubtful without Italian assistance. It was useless to talk about placing the rights of the smaller nationalities upon an unassailable foundation if insistence upon all those rights prevented any foundation at all. Nor apparently did any of the Entente governments appreciate at that time the view which the smaller nationalities involved in the bargain took of their rights.

The complete dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was not then, declared Salandra four years later, considered as a possible war-aim; and it was under the impression that peace would still leave the Habsburg Empire a formidable foe to Italy that the Entente agreed to the terms which ultimately threatened to break up the Peace Conference in 1919 and provoke a fresh war between Italians and Yugosla y s. Thus Italy was to receive the Trentino up to the Brenner Pass; this would give her all the advantages of a strategic offensive against Austria which Italy complained that Austria had possessed against her, and would subject to Italian rule a quarter of a million Germans. She was to acquire Istria, including Gorizia, Trieste, and Pola, but not Fiume, and western Dalmatia including the harbours of Zara and Sebenico, a protectorate over central Albania and the sovereignty of Valona. The Adriatic would thus become an Italian lake. In the E. Mediterranean she was to have entire sovereignty over the Dodecanese which she had occupied since the Turco-Italian War, and in the event of a complete or partial partition of Turkey was to receive the province of Adalia and its adjacent littoral. She was to be compensated for any British and French colonial expansion in Africa by similar extension of territory in Eritrea, Somaliland, and Libya, and to be paid a share in the war indemnity corresponding to her sacrifices. The signatories were pledged to secrecy and to support Italy in opposing papal participation in the negotiations and settlement of peace. Italy in return undertook to wage war with all her resources against all the enemies of the Entente, to commence hostilities within a month, and to sign the declaration of Sept. 5 1914 by which the Allies engaged to make no separate peace. But while she denounced the Triple Alliance on May 3 1915 and declared war on Austria on the 23rd, she did not announce her adhesion to the pact of Sept. until Nov. 30 and' remained at peace with Germany until Aug. 27 1916. Salandra subsequently claimed this delay as an important service rendered to his country, and Tittoni justified it on the ground that no' date had been specified in the treaty, although her Allies in giving their consent to it noted her declaration that she would " actively intervene at the earliest possible date, and at any rate not.. later than one month after their signature." The secrecy of the treaty exonerates the Italian people from the charge of being actuated by its materialistic motives when they enthusiastically supported intervention hi May 1915 and defeated Giolotti's attempt to drive Salandra from power.' But the treaty was soon revealed to the Yugosla y s with results which materially helped the Austrian cause. Great indignation was expressed during the Peace Conference of 1919 at the admission of Yugosla y s to plead their cause, and the Italian premier Orlando exclaimed that it would be as proper to call in the Germans, since Slovenes and Croats had fought throughout the war on Austria's side. But some at least of-their persistence was due to the Treaty of London, which proposed to transfer hundreds of thousands of them merely from a familiar to an unfamiliar alien domination. The upshot was largely to reinforce the small pro-Austrian party among the Yugoslays, and to place obstacles in the way of Italy's march to Trieste. Similarly deterrent was the effect of the Italian claim to the purely Greek Dodecanese and her Albanian pretensions upon the popular mind in Greece. Italy was not, however, alone to blame. On the eve of her decision a Pan-Slav society in Petrograd adopted and published abroad a resolution to the effect that in view of Russia's victorious progress across the Carpathians the projected Italian intervention was belated and undesirable; and the first use which Serbia made of the promised accession of strength was, as soon as Italy was at war, to dash across to the Albanian coast where Serb and Italian ambitions conflicted. It was not the imperialism of Italy which delayed the intervention of Rumania, to whom an Entente loan had been guaranteed three months before; nor was it the ineffectiveness of Italy's attacks across the Isonzo. It was the military defeat of Russia in Galicia and Poland, and Great Britain's failure in the Dardanelles, that provoked the next accession of strength to the enemies' cause.

Bulgaria's Entry. - Bulgarian neutrality had always been precarious, and the Government itself had difficulty in restraining its irregulars and komitajis from raiding the Serbian frontier.

A serious affray of this sort occurred on April i at Valandova while King Ferdinand was still waiting upon events, but by July the Russian debdcle in Galicia and the British failure to make much advance in the Dardanelles convinced him that Germany would win, and on the 17th a treaty was concluded which offered Bulgaria, in return for her intervention, the whole of Serbian Macedonia and Albanian Epirus; she was also allowed to extort from Turkey a strip of territory along the Maritsa controlling that river and Adrianople. Belated efforts had been made to buy off this,new enemy, but it was not until Aug. 23 that the Serbian Skuptshina was brought to recognize " the sacrifices indispensable for the preservation of the vital interests of her people." They would have preferred more heroic measures, and in vain begged the Entente to authorize a Serbian attack on Bulgaria before the latter got her blow in first. The normal correctitude of the Entente was reinforced by the fact that Serbian aggression would release Greece from her treaty obligations to assist Serbia if attacked by Bulgaria. It did not foresee the autocratic dismissal of Venizelos by Constantine on Oct. 6, the acquiesence of the Greek parliamentary majority, and Constantine's repudiation of his treaty obligations when Bulgaria took the offensive. It was carefully synchronized with Mackensen's invasion from the N.; and, taken on two fronts, Serbia was in a desperate position. The British and French troops hastily transferred from Gallipoli to Salonika were too late even to assure the Serbs a retreat down the Vardar; and they had to make their perilous way across the trackless and snowclad mountains of Albania to the inhospitable shores of the Adriatic. The outposts followed the centre of the Entente position in the Balkans; Montenegro was overrun by Austria;' and the British evacuated Gallipoli, keeping Salonika as a thorn in the enemy's side and a bridle on Greek vagaries.

Christmas, 1915, marked the climax of German success in the war. She had easily held her western front with inferior forces against wasteful and premature Allied attacks, while she conquered Galicia and Poland, and with Bulgarian help overran Serbia and made a corridor to Turkey and the East. Von der Goltz was already in ` Mesopotamia organizing the Turkish forces which saved Bagdad from Townshend in Nov. 1915 and then captured his army in Kut in the following April; while Egypt had to withstand Arab attacks on the W. and Turkish attempts in the Suez Canal. But it needed a longer and stronger arm than even Germany possessed to strike with much effect across the torpid body of the Turkish Empire and the sands of Syrian and Arab deserts. Russia more than atoned for the British failure before Bagdad by the rapid and brilliant seizure of Erzerum in Feb. 1916, and then pushed on S. to Mush, Bitlis, and Van, and W. to Trebizond. On June 7 the Grand Sherif of Mecca threw off his allegiance to Turkey, occupied Jidda and Yambo`, laid siege to Medina, cut the Hejaz railway and was joined by tribes farther S. who captured Aunfuda; on Dec. 16 he was recognized as King of the Hejaz by Great Britain. Between March and Sept. Smuts conquered nine-tenths of German E. Africa, while Portugal threw in her lot with Great Britain to assist in the campaign; and, although the week after the fall of Kut did not seem a happy moment for the conclusion of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 9 1916, its arrangements for British, French, and neutral zones in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine were intelligent anticipations of the future. Germany's oriental visions were unsubstantial, and her Balkan allies would not be much help toward a decision on the western front. She had merely secured immunity for her eastern frontiers and relief from fear lest Austria should collapse, while she turned her forces once more to the W. for a blow at the heart of France before the first serious Allied offensive matured. The Marne had taught her the risks of the far-flung line, and she now selected the shortest route to a vital spot at Verdun.

Rumania's Entry

France saved herself in the titanic conflict which followed; but Germany, too, was hardly less successful in her resistance to the Franco-British attack on the Somme, while with her left hand, so to speak, she bolstered up Austria's stand against the unexpected and vigorous assaults which Brusilov launched in July, and then crushed Rumania when on Aug. 27 the fifth Balkan state ventured into the turmoil of war. Rumania,long shivering on the brink, chose an unfortunate moment to plunge. ' Her case was a replica of Italy's; there was a Romania iridenta (as the Rumanians spell it) across the Carpathians, subject to worse treatment from Magyars than unredeemed Italy suffered at Austria's hands. There were also strategic frontiers to be rectified, and a semi-circular state to be rounded off. By the secret treaty with Rumania which was signed by Italy, France, Great Britain, and Russia, Rumania was to receive the Banat, the whole of Transylvania, a large slice of Hungary up to a line from Szeged on the Theiss through Debreczen to half-way between Csap and Szatmar-Negeti, as well as the Bukovina up to the Pruth, " the most ethnically unjust of all the secret agreements made during the war," 1 which only the subsequent and separate peace of Bucharest in May 1918 released the Allies from their obligations to enforce. Nothing was naturally said about the Rumanes under Russian rule in Bessarabia or Bulgarians under Rumanian sway in the Dobruja. The treaty had been drafted on Aug. 8, but Stuermer objected that the Great Powers must not be bound to continue the war until all Rumania's territorial aims had been achieved, and Briand agreed to waive the point. Bratiano, however, threatened to resign, and on Aug. 12 the Tsar apparently yielded. The Allies were to advance from Salonika on the 10th and Rumania to declare war on the 2 7th.

Sarrail's plans had, however, been betrayed by two of his officers, and it was not until Sept. 7 that he could move. Rumania kept to her bond, and attacked Transylvania on Aug. 28. Her subsequent disasters were attributed to her neglect of Entente counsels and wishes in attacking Transylvania instead of Bulgaria; but the criticism was unjust. There was apparently no stipulation about the direction of Rumania's action, and she had hopes that Bulgaria might not intervene. Justification for aggressive war must always be found in a political and not a strategical motive. Rumania had a legitimate grievance against Austria-Hungary in the treatment of Romania iridenta; she had none against Bulgaria whom she had robbed in 1913. Even on strategical grounds her conduct might be defended; her ruin was wrought, not by Bulgaria, but by Falkenhayn's AustroGerman attack through the passes, and their progress would have been even more rapid had Rumania launched her armies against Bulgaria. She might have withstood Falkenhayn, had Russia done her duty and sent adequate forces into the Dobruja to oppose Mackensen and carry out the threats she had uttered against Bulgaria in 1915, while Rumanian neutrality barred their execution. The Entente Powers had, in fact, simply looked to Rumania to + pull their chestnuts out of the Balkan fire; they had no idea that the battle of the Somme had left Germany in a condition to make an effort elsewhere like Falkenhayn's; while the creeping paralysis which had overcome Russia suggested the tale of a secret understanding between her ambiguous Premier Stuermer and the Habsburgs to partition Rumania, Wallachia to go to the Habsburgs and Moldavia to Russia. Before the end of the year Bucharest had been captured and the Rumanian armies driven behind the Sereth, while Sarrail's offensive in the S.W. barely reached Monastir. From the Aegean to the Carpathians, and from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, the Balkans had become a solid Teutonic block.

Peace Moves, 1916-7

The moment appeared favourable for Germany to make overtures of peace. The Kaiser had discussed the idea in a letter to his Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg, at the 'History of the Peace Conference, i. 184. end of Oct.; on Dec. r 2 a note was addressed to President Wilson and the Pope, and the matter was made public in the Reichstag. The note was based on Germany's success; she and her allies, it declared, " have given proof of their indestructible strength... Their unshakeable lines resist ceaseless attacks.. .. The latest events have demonstrated that a continuation of the war cannot break their resisting power. The general situation much rather justifies their hope of fresh successes." These they would forego for the sake of peace. " They do not seek to crush or annihilate their adversaries " and " they feel sure that the propositions which they would bring forward. .. would be such as to serve as a basis for the restoration of a lasting peace." These they did not specify; nor, indeed, had they made up their minds on the point. Eighteen months earlier the " Six Associations " representing German industry and commerce had demanded as conditions of peace " a colonial empire adequate to satisfy Germany's manifold economic interests," the military and economic control of Belgium, the annexation of the French coast and its hinterland from the Belgian frontier to the Somme, of Briey, Longwy, Verdun and Belfort, of " at least parts of the Baltic provinces," and had declared that the surrender of any occupied territory " in which so much German blood has been spilt and so many of our best and noblest have found a grave, would do violence to the sentiments of our people and to their conception of an honourable peace." Bethmann Hollweg would not have countenanced such preposterous demands; but Ludendorff was more influential, and in vaguely describing the terms which alone reached the enemy with his approval, he uses phrases which might be made to cover them all except the annexation of the Channel ports and their hinterland.

Whatever their official conceptions of peace, the Teutonic allies dared not avow them in public, and the absence of substantial proposals convinced their opponents that the note about peace was a mere manoeuvre of war, a continuation of the German offensive designed to complete the disintegrating work of German arms and to break up the Entente by playing off one Power against another. Consciousness of the real perils of such a conference gave an angry tone to the note in which the Entente replied on Dec. 29, and it consisted of a comprehensive indictment of Germany's conduct during the war, with particular reference to Belgium, and of a categorical refusal " to entertain a proposal which was devoid alike of sincerity and of substance." Almost simultaneously but quite independently President Wilson addressed an inquiry to both belligerent groups on Dec. 18. He admitted that he was embarrassed by the coincidence because his note " may now seem to have been prompted by the recent overtures of the Central Powers," and the popular voice in Entente countries was convinced that he was " playing Germany's game." Clearer sighted observers discerned in it the President's first step toward intervention on the Entente side. It was, in effect, a request for information about the intentions of the belligerents, and resembled the inquiry which Great Britain addressed to France and to Germany with respect to Belgium's neutrality. The answers then determined British intervention, and the answers to Wilson's note helped him to make up his mind, or rather that of his people. " What," he asked, " did the two sides mean by the general terms they used of the war ? The concrete objects for which it is being waged have never been definitely stated. The leaders of the several belligerents have ... stated those objects in general terms. But, stated in general terms, they seem the same on both sides. Never yet have the authoritative spokesmen of either side avowed the precise objects which would, if attained, satisfy them and their people that the war had been fought out. The world has been left to conjecture what definitive results, what actual exchange of guarantees, what political or territorial changes or readjustments, what stage of military success even would bring the war to an end." Germany brushed aside the request on Dec. 26 by reaffirming her contention that a direct exchange of views between the belligerents was " the most suitable way of arriving at the desired result," and proposing " the speedy assembly, on neutral ground, of delegates of the warring States." The Entente reply was more considered and was not completed until Jan. ro 1917. Demurring to the President's " assimilation " of the two belligerent groups, the Allies expressed their disbelief in the possibility at the moment of attaining " a peace which will assure them reparation, restitution, and the guarantees to which they are entitled by the aggression for which the responsibility rests with the Central Powers." They proceeded to indicate as their objects the restoration of Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro with indemnities; the evacuation of the invaded territories of France, of Russia, and of Rumania with just reparation; the "reorganization of Europe "; the "restitution of provinces and territories wrested in the past from the Allies by force or against the will of their populations; the liberation of Italians, of Slays, of Rumanians, and of Czechosla y s from foreign domination; the enfranchisement of populations subject to the bloody tyranny of the Turks; the expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman Empire." In a covering despatch dated Jan. 13, which was one of the most important and effective State papers of the war, Mr. Balfour demonstrated that " a durable peace can hardly be expected unless three conditions are fulfilled. The first is that existing causes of international unrest should be, as far as possible, removed or weakened. The second is that the aggressive aims and the unscrupulous methods of the Central Powers should fall into disrepute among their own peoples. The third is that behind international law and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor." It would, perhaps, be hyperbole to call Mr. Balfour the author of Mr. Wilson's policy, but its future outlines could hardly have been more accurately indicated.

Germany's first " peace offensive " had failed, to the deep disappointment of her people and her Government. Her situation was, indeed, imposing rather than substantial. Apart from a corner of German E. Africa, her colonies had all been lost; the battle of Jutland had terrified her high seas fleet into ignominious inaction; and on the western front Hindenburg had prepared a comprehensive retreat. In Oct. the Vorwdrts had been suppressed as a minority Socialist organ and subjected to official inspiration. Ominous creaking began to be heard in the joints of her Austrian ally. Francis Joseph had died on Nov. 21, giving place to the more pacific Charles, and the murder of Count Stiirgkh on Oct. 27 was followed by a rapid succession of three prime ministers in Dec. and by the substitution of Czernin for Tisza's henchman Burian as Foreign Minister. Peace had become a popular aspiration, and when the Allies rejected the offer, astonishment mingled with consternation. ."Jetzt ist alles verloren," exclaimed a German officer interned in the Engadine. Nor did the opening months of 1917 belie this gloomy German forecast. The German retreat to the Hindenburg lines, sound enough in itself, depressed a public accustomed to judge by the map. Sir Stanley Maude's spectacular conquest of Bagdad gave a sinister turn to the Berlin-Bagdad vision. Sir Archibald Murray was at the gates of Gaza, and, if Maude's campaign were a precedent, would soon be in Damascus. Above all there loomed the threatened breach with the United States, which would make the ultimate defeat of Germany inevitable save by a miracle. Corresponding elation appeared on the Entente side; even sober critics thought that the war would soon be won with the substitution of Mr. Lloyd George for Mr. Asquith in Dec., and in Jan. 1917 a highly successful "Victory" loan was launched in England on the basis of triumph within eight months.

Allied War Aims. - Prospective victors made haste to divide the contingent spoil. France demanded, and Russia agreed, on Feb. 14 1917 to the Rhine as " a permanent strategical frontier against a Germanic invasion." Besides the restoration of AlsaceLorraine, the new boundaries were " to be drawn up at the discretion of the French Government so as to provide for. .. the inclusion in French territory of the entire iron district of Lorraine and of the entire coal district of the Saar valley." The rest of the territories on the left bank of the Rhine were to be separated from Germany, constituted an autonomous and neutral state, and garrisoned by French troops until all the condi tions of peace had been completely satisfied. Mr. Balfour on Dec. 191917 affirmed that the British Government had never desired, encouraged, or approved of this idea; but it was publicly advocated by one of his colleagues in the Cabinet. In return Russia insisted upon, and France recognized, Russia's " complete liberty in establishing her western frontiers." The meaning of this had been specifically explained by Sazonov a year earlier, on March 9 1916: " It is particularly necessary to insist on the exclusion of the Polish question from the subjects of international discussion and on the elimination of all attempts to place the future of Poland under the guarantee and the control of the Powers." Since that date, the Central Powers had, on Nov. 5 1916, proclaimed the independence of Russian Poland, and on the 15th the Tsar issued an ambiguous statement to which Mr. Asquith and M. Briand endeavoured to give a precise interpretation. In his general order for Christmas Day, the Tsar did, indeed, refer to a "free Poland," and the Allied note of Jan. 10 1917 averred that his intentions had thereby " been clearly indicated." But an imperial commission, appointed to determine what was meant by the phrase, narrowed it down in Feb. 1917, as Gourko relates, on the ground that " a free Poland would fall under Germany's influence." Others of Russia's imperialistic aims had been recognized in the spring of 1916, at the time of the Sykes-Picot Agreement about Syria and Mesopotamia, and she had secured Erzerum, Trebizond, and Turkish territory as far as a line running through Mush, Sert, Ibn `Omar, and Amajia to the Persian frontier. On July 3 1916 by a treaty which was to be " kept in complete secrecy from everybody except the two high contracting parties," Russia and Japan had bound themselves to safeguard China " against the political domination of any third Power entertaining hostile designs toward Russia or Japan "; and in Jan. - Feb. 1917 the Entente Powers, by another secret treaty, recognized the concessions which Japan had extorted from China on May 7 191.5 by means of an ultimatum. Japan thus became the territorial if not the spiritual heir of Germany in the Shantung peninsula and acquired a lien on China's economic development.

The opening of the campaign of 1917 proved, however, delusive, and its later stages postponed to an indefinite future the realization of these secret agreements. The Hindenburg lines justified the hopes the Germans had placed upon them; and while the British won a considerable success at Vimy, the French effort in Champagne and along the Chemin des Dames was a costly and disastrous failure. The German submarine campaign was hardly less disastrous to the shipping upon which Great Britain and her Allies relied for their ability to continue the war; the British offensive in Flanders was a depressing disappointment, and Murray failed to force the gates of Palestine. The doubtful success of Entente arms corresponded to the dubious methods and aims of its diplomacy; and a candid survey of the secret agreements, to which the Entente Powers had committed themselves, suggests a serious doubt whether, if victory had been won early in 1917, it would have been worth the winning or would have resulted in a happier world than that which had existed before the war broke out. Not all of the Powers were, indeed, committed to all of the agreements; but each of them had staked out claims for new conquests and fresh subject-peoples, and not one had proposed to sacrifice a single acre on the altar of selfdetermination. Nor, in the hour of imperialistic victory, would it have been British or American statesmanship which would have interpreted the " freedom " of Poland, the " autonomy " of Germans on the Rhine, the rights to self-government claimed by Czechoslovaks, Dalmatians, or Armenians, or the liberties of little nations in the Balkans or the Baltic. There would, in the event of victory early in 1917, have been no League of Nations, no " minorities clauses," no mandates, no guarantees for better domestic rule by states or better regulation of their external affairs. Russia might even have remained an autocracy fortified by success, and the Tsar have supported the cause of autocracy in Germany and in Austria. Cruel as were the sacrifices exacted from the western Powers by the deferment of hope and by Russia's collapse, criminal as were the means by which the Bolsheviks imposed their new tyranny upon the Russian people, the destruction of Tsardom may seem to have been in the long run the greatest service Russia rendered in the war. No one would claim perfection for the work of the Peace Conference of 1919, but what sanity it showed was mainly due to the fact that the one autocracy in the Entente had disappeared and its place in council had been more than filled by the great republic of the West. The diplomatic atmosphere was purified by the change, and power shifted towards an idealistic left. Great Britain, instead of representing as hitherto the extreme of moderation, presently found herself holding the balance between France, which, with the elimination of Russia, came to represent the right of annexation, and the United States, which ultimately put two million men in the field and did not ask for an acre in return. Gradually a programme was evolved which did not require the veil of secret diplomacy; a reformed band of Allied and Associated Powers gathered behind its banner of freedom most of the democracies of the world; and the war entered on a course which made a fight to a finish a rational policy.

The Russian Revolution

The Russian revolution and American intervention together form the turning point of the war even more from the diplomatic than from the military point of view. But the one was needed to complete the other: without the revolution American intervention would still have left the Entente with a dubious face and a divided mind; without American intervention the Russian revolution would have robbed the Entente of its victory. Nevertheless, the coincidence of. the two events appears to have been accidental. The revolution came first by some three weeks, and the Ides of March were fatal to the Russian Caesar. Its effects upon the war developed step by step with the progress of internal change, but from March 1917 fighting almost ceased upon the Russian fronts. The Cadet party, which was led by Miliukov and controlled the Provisional Government, would have continued the war for the sake of the Straits and Constantinople; it was straightforward on Poland, and on March 30 frankly recognized its independence. But power passed more and more into the hands of the Soviets, who wanted a general peace which would give each nation what it possessed before the war and each proletariat a good deal more. There were to be " no annexations and no indemnities," save such as each proletariat was entitled to levy upon its own capitalists and bourgeoisie. For this purpose the Soviets on May 12 proposed an International Labour Congress at Stockholm and on the 30th invited the Allies to restate their war aims. But even the Soviets did not yet demand a separate peace, and while on April io Russia renounced her imperialistic aims, on the 15th Czernin's offer to that effect was declined.

On May 13, however, the Russian Provisional Government fell, and Kerensky became the leading spirit in a new and more socialistic administration. He believed that only the success of Russian arms could guarantee the orderly progress of the revolution, and did his best to withstand the propaganda of the Bolsheviks, who were destroying discipline, urging peasant soldiers to go home and garner the fruits of the revolution in the shape of the land, and denouncing the wickedness of Russians killing their brother German socialists. Lenin's Bolshevik insurrection on July 16 was suppressed, but the miasma of his doctrine proved fatal to Kornilov's spirited offensive in Galicia; and as soon as the Germans counter-attacked, Russian troops threw down their arms and fled, massacring the officers who sought to stop them. By the end of July Russia had lost all her gains in Galicia; in Aug. a similar riot in the Russian contingent in Rumania nearly ruined the latter's gallant resistance which defeated the Germans at Marasheshti; in Sept. the Germans forced the Dvina and captured Riga, and in Oct. occupied Oesel, getting into touch with Finland. Kerensky now became a convert to the necessity of a dictatorship, but repudiated Kornilov when on Sept. 7 he moved troops on Petrograd to effect it; and on Nov. 7 another Bolshevik insurrection transferred the dictatorship to Lenin and Trotsky, who began pourparlers for peace. Russia had gone effectively out of the war faster than the United States came in; but she left a blazing trail behind her, and sparks from the conflagration started a smouldering fire on German soil which was never extinguished. Bolshevik pacifism seemed a ridiculous gesture in face of Prussian arms, but its moral effect was by no means contemptible. " Looking back," writes the archmilitarist Ludendorff, " I can see that our decline obviously began with the outbreak of the Revolution in Russia." After all, the original ground or pretence upon which the war had enlisted democratic support in Germany was its appearance as a war of defence against autocratic Pan-Slavism. When Russia had destroyed the Tsardom, repudiated its aims, and laid down its arms, Germans who were not militarists or capitalists might well ask for what they were fighting; and on June 27 Hindenburg pointed out to the Kaiser the decline in German moral. So, while the elimination of Tsarism gave greater reality to the moral claims of the Entente, it deprived those of the Central Powers of their substance; and the war became more nakedly a struggle between militarist imperialism and democratic idealism. A practical illustration was afforded by the formation of a Polish army in Russia and a Polish legion in France at the moment when the Polish legion in Austria had to be disbanded.

Czernin seems to have been the first among Teutonic statesmen to realize the change in the position and to seek to capitalize a situation in which the Habsburg Empire had nothing more to gain and everything to lose. Her soil was now rid of the Russian invader; Italy had made no serious impression, and Trieste was in no danger; Serbia only existed in exile, and Rumania trembled on its brink. On the other hand, the prolongation of war and Russian contagion might stir a series of domestic revolutions. Hence his conference with Bethmann Hollweg on March 27, his offer of peace to Russia in April, and his suggestion that Germany should cede Alsace-Lorraine to France while Austria handed over Galicia to Poland with a view to the subjection of both to German control; hence, too, the meeting of the Austrian Reichsrat on May 30 for the first time since the war began.

Ludendorff placed his heel on these proposals, and Czernin then turned his attention to the German Reichstag, where a complicated struggle was waged between Ludendorff's militarists and Bethmann Hollweg's politicians, who were beginning to react to popular discontent and the effect of Russian developments. "Bethmann Hollweg and Czernin," writes Ludendorff, " were both completely obsessed by the Russian Revolution. Both feared similar events in their own countries." On July 6 Erzberger, who was perhaps in Czernin's confidence, opened the attack with revelations about the non-fulfilment of official hopes from the submarine campaign and demanded a " peace of understanding." On the 11th the Kaiser was constrained to sign a rescript promising universal, direct, and secret suffrage for Prussia after the war; as a set-off to this Bethmann Hollweg was forced to resign on the 13th, being succeeded by Michaelis, a mere official who said what he was told and contradicted himself when occasion or his superiors required it. Then on the 19th the Reichstag passed by 214 to 116 votes a resolution in favour of peace " without indemnities or annexations," which Michaelis accepted only " as he understood it." It was timed and tuned for the Stockholm conference, which German and Russian Socialists were allowed to attend, while British and French were not, and probably also for the Peace Note which the Pope launched on Aug. 1, and which France and England, being estopped by their secret agreement with Italy, left President Wilson to answer.

President Wilson's Policy

From that time onward for two years President Wilson became the principal spokesman of the Allied and Associated Powers; but it appears that the Russian revolution had exercised so far a more potent influence on the Central Empires than the intervention of the United States. Russia was their immediate neighbour on a frontier of a thousand miles. America was four thousand miles away, and it was long a German delusion that American troops would be kept out of Europe by the same submarines on which Germany relied to bring Great Britain to terms; and to arguments not backed by mailed fists Germany was indifferent. She had made up her mind to take what risk there was when in Feb. 1 9 17 she resumed her unrestricted submarine campaign; and that approaching resolve had helped to determine her simultaneous refusal state her war-aims in response to the President's invitation. The coincidence seems to have been largely a matter of accident. Originally elected President in 1912 by a minority vote owing to the split in the Republican party between Roosevelt and Taft, Mr. Wilson was reelected in 1916 after a close contest in which neither of the opposing American parties had made war with Germany a plank in its platform; and without the prospect of an unprecedented third presidential term, Mr. Wilson enjoyed in his second a freer hand than any other democratic statesman. But he was obviously tied by the traditions and public opinion of a community diverse in origin, in interests, and in outlook, spread over vast areas, separated by thousands of miles from the European conflict, and inured to the idea of splendid isolation. " We are," said President Wilson on March 5 1917, " a composite and cosmopolitan people. We are of the blood of all the nations that are at war." Action was impossible until there was some common measure of agreement in a heterogeneous people, and it was not easy to unite on a basis of intervention a Federal democracy whose one common principle in foreign policy was abstention from European quarrels. The Monroe Doctrine, as understood by modern interpreters,: implied that the United States would resent and resist Europea t n! intervention in a S. American war, however gross might have been the aggression, and however much it might have shocked the European conscience. So far as the Western Hemisphere was concerned, the United States claimed to be the keeper of the conscience of the world, and it thought that claim was only tenable so long as it washed its hands of conscience so far as Europe was concerned. Intervention on behalf of Belgian neutrality or even protest against its violation might open the door to retorts in kind and break down the quarantine which the democratic republic had sought to impose upon Old World infection.

But the war put the finishing touch to the obsolescence of the schismatic doctrine of two worlds and two human consciences. It was only a practicable dogma provided either that the United States kept not merely its conscience but its people, its capital, its commerce, and its shipping on its side of the Atlantic; or that the Old World observed those rules of international law and conscience which had commended themselves to the American people. In other words, so far from there being two worlds, the Old must accommodate itself to the New; and the most hardened believers in the Monroe Doctrine rebelled against the idea that Germany could indefinitely sink American ships and kill American citizens without provoking a war, which America could not wage without giving its conscience a passport to Europe. " As far as the United States is concerned," writes Dr. J. B. Scott, " the cause of its war with the Imperial German Government is the submarine. .. for the law could not be changed to suit the submarine." Nor was the Monroe Doctrine compatible with the enforcement of the American conception of the freedom of the seas or with the maintenance of neutral rights; and a long series of incidents convinced the American public that its cause could not be isolated. " The challenge," said President Wilson, "is to all mankind "; and when he intervened, it was not merely in defence of American rights but of a common humanity.

The outstanding episode in the slow and painful process by which the American people were brought to realize the dilemma between war and the surrender of their principles must be briefly indicated. A series of events, which, in the despatch of Secretary Bryan, the Government of the United States had observed " with growing concern, distress, and amazement," culminated on May 7 1915 when the "Lusitania " was torpedoed without warning, and 114 American and nearly a thousand other lives were lost; and on the 13th he intimated that his Government would not " omit any word or act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoyment." But he resigned when acts seemed likely to follow words, and the President's second " Lusitania " note was signed on June 9 by Mr. Lansing. Bryan's resignation was not, however, without its effects; and the words continued while more American lives were lost in each succeeding month.' The most definite action was taken in Sept. against Germany's less powerful and less pernicious ally, when Dr. Dumba, the Austrian ambassador, was required to leave on account of his complicity in the intrigues of J. F. Archibald and other Teutonic agents. A graver crisis was reached with the torpedoing of the Channel steamer "Sussex" on March 24 1916. "The Government of the United States," wrote Mr. Lansing on April 18, "has been very patient.... Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether." On May 4 the German Government made some concessions, and as President Wilson expressed it on April 2 1917, " somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft." The reason for its complaisance, given later on by Bethmann Hollweg, was that it had not yet sufficient submarines to carry out unrestricted submarine warfare effectively.

That time came with the beginning of 1917. The decision was taken on Jan. 9, and it was Germany's real answer to the President's note of Dec. 18. But it was based on a serious miscalculation. The German naval authorities thought it would compel Great Britain to sue for peace within six months, and Bethmann Hollweg has cast the responsibility for its effects upon them. Hindenburg's plea that the Chancellor failed to inform him of the impression it would produce in America is less convincing, for Ludendorff says that " we reckoned that the adoption of the submarine campaign would effect a favourable decision for us, at latest before America's new troops could participate in the war." So American intervention was anticipated and discounted. But eighteen months were yet to pass before American intervention took a form which was materially to disconcert Ludendorff's military calculations. For more than a year diplomatic relations had practically been severed between the United States and Austria-Hungary, and it did not at once appear that the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare would be followed by more drastic American action with regard to Germany.

On Jan. 22, ignorant of Germany's decision, Mr. Wilson addressed Congress on the results of his note of Dec. 18, and sketched the conditions which would justify the United States in guaranteeing peace with a view to making it permanent.

" In every discussion of the peace that must end this war it is taken for granted that that peace must be followed by some definite concert of power which will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again.. .. Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed. It is right that before it comes this Government should frankly formulate the conditions upon which it would be justified in asking our people to approve its formal and solemn adherence to a League of Peace.. .. No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include the peoples of this New World can suffice to keep the future safe against war.. .. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantee of the permanency of the settlement.. .. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power.. But the implications of these assurances. .. imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory.. .. Only a peace between equals can last.

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.. Statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, independent, and auton omous Poland.. And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, equality, and cooperation.. .. The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.. .. I am proposing, as it were, that all nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world; that no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people. that all nations should avoid entangling alliances.. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power.. These are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others." ' See a provisional list of these and other crimes in J. B. Scott, Diplomatic Correspondence, pp. ix. - xv.

But while it was " inconceivable that the people of the United States should play no part in that great enterprise " of laying " afresh and upon a new plan the foundations of peace among the nations," the present war must first be ended, and the United States would " have no voice in determining. .. the treaties and agreements which would bring it to an end," only " in determining whether they shall be made lasting or not by the guarantees of a universal covenant." American Intervention. - Such was the President's frame of mind when, nine days later, on Jan. 31, Bernstorff communicated Germany's revocation of its pledge of May 4 1916 and its decision to recommence unrestricted submarine warfare on Feb. I. On Feb. 3 he simply and literally fulfilled his threat of April 18 and " severed diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether." " I take it for granted," he said to Congress, " that all neutral governments will take the same course," but " we do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial German Government." On the 26th he pointed out that the caution of shipowners and consequent congestion of commerce " might presently accomplish, in effect, what the new German submarine orders were meant to accomplish, so far as we are concerned," and proceeded to arm American merchant ships; but he was "not now contemplating war or any steps that need lead to it.. .. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others." It came with speedy steps. Germany denied the right of neutrals to use arms at all, and intimated that the armed guards placed on American merchant ships would be treated as pirates. " Armed neutrality," confessed the President, " it now appears, is impracticable." There had, too, been intercepted a note dated Jan. 19 from Berlin to Mexico, proposing in the event of war an offensive and defensive alliance between Germany, Mexico, and Japan, and the reconquest of Mexico's " lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona "; and on April 2 Mr. Wilson advised a special session of Congress " to declare the recent course of the Imperial Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States." " We are," he had declared in his second inaugural address on March 5, " provincials no longer. The tragical events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back." And now " the world must be made safe for democracy." " The great, generous Russian people have been added in all their native majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honour.... We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind." The resolution was passed in the Senate on April 4 by 82 votes to 6, and in the House of Representatives on the 5th by 373 to 50, and on the 6th the President declared war. Austria was not included, but Tarnowski, Dumba's successor, had been refused recognition, and relations were suspended; on April 13 they were severed with Turkey.

The President's somewhat naive assumption that all neutral governments would follow his lead into armed neutrality had been promptly belied; and all European neutrals excused themselves. They were even less likely to follow him into war; but New World States, which were more immune from the consequences, were more amenable to his example. Cuba declared war on April 7, and on the 8th Panama associated itself with the United States. Brazil broke off diplomatic relations on April II, Bolivia on the 13th, and Guatemala on the 27th, Honduras on May 17 and Nicaragua on the 19th, Haiti on June 15, Costa Rica on Sept. 23, Peru on Oct. 6 and Uruguay on the 7th, and Ecuador on Dec. 9. Brazil declared war on Oct. 26, while the Argentine declared her benevolent neutrality on April 11: but Chile and Venezuela remained neutral without benevolence. The contagion, however, spread into the Eastern Hemisphere: Liberia severed diplomatic relations on May 8 and declared war on Aug. 7: Siam declared war on July 22, and China on Aug. 14. Securus judicat orbis terrarum: but the world of little States needed some security before it would pronounce judgment. Nevertheless, more than half the States of the world had now declared war on, or broken off diplomatic relations with, Germany and her three allies; the Entente had become a War League of Nations; and the peace that would be made in case of victory would represent the judgment of the world and be very different from that contemplated in the secret agreements.

But there was a yawning gulf between judgment and execution, and a painful interval between the President's declaration and the time when, in Ludendorff's words, " America became the decisive power in the War." Financial cooperation began to relieve the strain at once, and naval cooperation to ease the submarine situation in May; and at the end of June the so-called " sentimental Division " arrived as an earnest of what was to follow on the field of battle. But as late as March 1918 there were only five American divisions in France, of which two were untrained; and meanwhile the endurance of the European Allies was sorely tried. The French army was seriously demoralized by the failure of Nivelle's offensive, and Caillaux began to undermine its political fortitude. The sinking of. 25% of British merchantmen at sea in April was an almost more fearful menace; Russia had become a broken reed; the British campaign in Flanders proved a disappointment; Stockholm was holding out the lure of a " peace by negotiation" to Labour: Mr. Henderson resigned from the British Cabinet on Aug. Ii; the Pope had appealed on the ist for a peace on the basis of the status quo, disarmament, and arbitration; and tentative discussions were proceeding by more or less authorized agents in Switzerland. Michaelis secured an equivocal answer to the Pope's note in his effort to please both his militarist and his parliamentary masters. But the situation in Germany was as equivocal as its Chancellor: for while at the end of Oct. he was replaced by Hertling, a persona grata to the Pope as the first Roman Catholic Chancellor of Protestant Germany, for receding from the July resolutions, Germany was receding quite as fast with the apparent improvement in her military situation. " The future will show," declared Czernin after the Armistice, " what superhuman efforts we made to induce Germany to give way. That all proved fruitless was not the fault of the German people. .. but that of the leaders of the German military party, which had attained such enormous power in the country." Greece in the War. - The only set-back had been the constrained entry of Greece into the Entente fold. Since the dismissal of Venizelos in Oct. 1915, Constantine had governed by means of phantom ministers; and in May 1916, acting under his orders, the Greek commanders admitted Bulgarian forces into Forts Rupel and Dragotin, the keys of the Struma valley, while in Aug. Greek garrisons surrendered Seres, Kavalla, and Demirhisar to the same racial enemies. This was too much for the better part of Greece. A revolution broke out at Salonika, which swept over Crete, Mytilene, Samos, Chios, and the other Greek islands in Sept.; and a provisional government of insurgent Greece was formed under Venizelos, Condouriotes, and Danglis, which was tardily - owing to Russian and Italian influence - recognized by the Entente and declared war on Bulgaria. But Constantine controlled the mainland of Old Greece, and constantly intrigued against the Entente. At length, in June 1917, Tsarist protection having been removed by the Russian revolution, the Entente intervened by force of arms, and Constantine was deposed on the z 1 th and removed to Switzerland. Venizelos returned to Athens on the 21st, and on the 30th diplomatic relations were severed with Germany and Austria. The high-handed proceedings of the Entente were, no doubt, necessary measures of war; but Venizelos had to pay the penalty later for the violent patronage he had enjoyed, and the Entente needed the moral support which President Wilson gave it in the drastic reply he returned to the Pope's peace note on Aug. 27. To deal with Germany by way of peace upon the plans proposed by His Holiness would, the President declared, " involve a recuperation of its strength and a renewal of its policy." Brest Litovsk. - The recuperation of its strength was exemplified in Oct. by the further advance into Russia and the Italian disaster at Caporetto: and the renewal of its policy wasseen at Brest Litovsk. On Nov. 20, a fortnight after the successful Bolshevik revolution, Lenin proposed to all the belligerents a general armistice and discussion of peace, and on the 29th Germany accepted the invitation. The armistice was concluded at Brest Litovsk on Dec. 15. The Bolsheviks inserted a clause to the effect that German troops were not to be transferred from the eastern to the western front; but the Germans simply ignored it. It was mainly for that purpose that they signed the armistice; the idea of a great offensive on the W. had already occurred to them, and in Nov. and Dec. 24 divisions were transferred. Austria's main idea was much the same: " peace at the earliest moment," said Czernin, " is necessary for our own salvation, and we cannot obtain peace unless the Germans get to Paris, and they cannot get to Paris unless the eastern front is free." Czernin, and possibly even Kuhlmann, the German Foreign Secretary, were prepared for such terms as might have secured this freedom and given Ludendorff a reasonable prospect of getting to Paris; but the grasping nature of the militarists stood in their own way.

A preliminary conference at German Headquarters on Dec. 18 agreed to demand the acquisition of a protective belt of territory along the Russian-Polish frontier, and a personal union of Courland and Lithuania with Germany or Prussia, and to suggest the evacuation of Esthonia and Livonia by the Russians in the interests of self-determination.

At the Conference of Brest Litovsk, which opened on the 22nd, Kuhlmann and Gen. Hoffmann represented Germany, Trotsky and Joffe the Bolsheviks, and Czernin Austria-Hungary. The Bolsheviks insisted on open diplomacy, and the arguments of the diplomatists were published throughout Europe from day to day by wireless telegraphy. This was essential for their schemes, for they relied upon propaganda to rouse the proletariats in all the belligerent countries to demand a cessation of the national wars which divided their forces, in order to combine them in a universal revolutionary movement. Their proposals were the evacuation of all conquests, restoration of independence to all nations subjected during the war, selfdetermination for those which had not previously secured independence, and no indemnities. Czernin replied for the Central Powers on the 25th, accepting the principles of no forcible annexations and no indemnities, but making the whole bargain conditional upon the acceptance of a general peace by the Allied and Associated Powers, who were given until Jan. 4 to signify their assent. No formal reply was made by them to the invitation; but one of the most important results of the Brest Litovsk negotiations was to clinch the case for a restatement of the Entente aims in the war.

Peace Moves, /9/7-8. - Russia had asked for that restatement as far back as May 30, and in a communication addressed to the Provisional Government on June 9 President Wilson had replied that " no people must be forced under sovereignty under which it does not wish to live. No territory must change hands `except for the purpose of securing those who inhabit it a fair chance of life and liberty. No indemnities must be insisted on except those that constitute payment for manifest wrongs done. No readjustments of power must be made except such as will tend to secure the future peace of the world and the future happiness of its peoples. And then the free peoples of the world must draw together in some common covenant. .. that will in effect combine their force to secure peace and justice in the dealings of nations with one another." On Nov. 18 M. Clemenceau, the new French premier, spoke slightingly of a League of Nations, remarking that he was only out to win the war; and the Bolshevik publication of the Secret Agreements which began on the 22nd revealed the gulf which separated the Old World ambitions of the Entente Powers from the objects for which Mr. Wilson had told revolutionary Russia we can afford to pour out blood and treasure." On the 29th Lord Lansdowne published a letter in the Daily Telegraph (The Times having declined to give it publicity) coupling a demand for a restatement of war aims with a more dubious proposal for peace negotiations. To the latter suggestion Wilson made an effective reply by declaring war on Austria on Dec. 4, and fulminating against German power as " a thing without conscience or honour or capacity for covenanted peace " and refusing to negotiate until the " German people have spokesmen whose word we can believe " and " those spokesmen are ready in the name of their people to accept the common judgment of the nations as to what shall henceforth be the bases of law and of covenant for the life of the world. ... Our immediate task is to win the war." But even he had not grasped all the implications: " We do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire," and it was left to France to recognize on Dec. 19 the Czechoslovak forces as " an autonomous army." The Fourteen Points. - The initiative in a comprehensive and radical restatement of war aims was taken in a British Labour Memorandum, which was adopted without amendment by a special Labour conference on Dec. 28 and was then, with changes due to President Wilson's address of Jan. 8 1918, accepted by the Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference in London on Feb. 22. Basing itself on Wilson's principle that " the world must be made safe for democracy," it emphasized the necessity, and sketched a plan, for a League of Nations, declared that the problem of Alsace-Lorraine was one of right and not of territorial readjustment, demanded restoration and reparation for Belgium and the Balkan States (with a Customs and Postal Union for the latter), the independence of Poland with access to the sea, the liberation of subject peoples from Turkish rule with the neutralization of the Dardanelles, condemned German annexation in Livonia, Courland, or Lithuania, and " the aims of conquest of Italian imperialism," and while " not proposing as a war aim the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary " protested against regarding " the claims to independence made by the Czechoslovaks and the Yugosla y s merely as questions for internal decision." Most of these aims were accepted in principle by Mr. Lloyd George on Jan. 5 after consultation with Dominion statesmen, Labour leaders, and Lord Grey and Mr. Asquith; but he made some notable concessions to what seemed to be the realities of the situation, and disclaimed any idea of fighting to " alter or destroy the imperial constitution of Germany," " to destroy Austria-Hungary," or even " to deprive Turkey of its capital or of the rich and renowned lands of Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in race "; and he seemed lukewarm about the League of Nations. Then on Jan. 8, in an address to Congress, President Wilson laid down his famous " Fourteen Points," demanding: I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understanding of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, as far as possible, ,of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Governments whose title is determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded to Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their goodwill, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which had unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognized lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan States should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

The Humiliation of Russia

In introducing these points President Wilson referred to the Brest Litovsk negotiations as having been broken off, and described " the whole incident " as " full of significance." There had, indeed, during the interval allowed for the Entente to reply, been a violent disagreement between Ludendorff and Kuhlmann, who was supported by Czernin and Hertling. On Dec. 28 the militarists secured a German declaration to the effect that the representative bodies existing in the occupied territories under German protection expressed their " self-determination " and that plebiscites were superfluous. On Jan. 2 Trotsky denounced these claims as hypocritical, and proposed to change the seat of the conference from Brest to Stockholm. He reappeared at Brest, however, on Jan. 7, asseverating that the Bolsheviks would make no peace that was not " just and democratic ": and there followed weeks of discussion on the meaning of " self-determination " and its methods of expression. Trotsky's flank was turned by the appearance of delegates from the Ukraine asserting their independence of Russia. They represented only the middle-class Rada, while Ukraine revolutionaries sided with the Bolsheviks, seized Kiev, and overran most of the Ukraine. The Rada thereupon signed a peace with the Central Powers on Feb. 9, which gave Polish Kholm to the Ukraine and sowed the seeds of discord between the two nationalities, and invited the Germans and Austrians to drive the Bolsheviks out of the Ukraine. They were willing enough; food was their real quest, and alarming strikes had already broken out in Vienna, Berlin, and elsewhere.

These seemed to give Trotsky the leverage he had been seeking, and on the day the Ukraine treaty was signed he issued a wireless call to the German arm y to refuse obedience to the Kaiser. Next day he declared war to be at an end, but refused to sign a German peace. On Feb. 13 Germany denounced the armistice, and on the 18th recommenced the march toward Petrograd and the occupation of the Ukraine. There was no organized resistance; the peace of Brest Litovsk was signed on March 3 and ratified by a congress of Soviets at Moscow, after a three days' debate, on the 16th. The Baltic nationalities were surrendered by Russia for their fate to be determined between themselves and Germany; the Ukraine treaty of Feb. 9 was accepted by the Bolsheviks; Russia was also required to cede the districts of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum to Turkey; commercially she was made a preserve for the Central Powers; and the two million German colonists in Russia were exempted from the legislation of, and allegiance to, the Bolshevik Government. Trotsky had given up foreign affairs on March 8 and devoted himself to the more promising task of organizing a Red army; it was left for Lenin to persuade the Soviets of the necessity of temporarily bowing to the inevitable. Consequential and similar treaties were signed between the Central Powers and Finland on March 7 and with Rumania, provisionally, on March 5 and finally on May 7. German control over their commerce, industry, and finance was established in both, and Rumania further ceded the Carpathian crests and the Dobruja.

Germany and the Fourteen Points

These deeds were a more convincing reply to President Wilson's " Fourteen Points" than the disingenuous speeches made in concert by Kuhlmann and Czernin at Berlin and Vienna on Jan. 24. The Central Powers had been given the opportunity of demonstrating the interpretation which they put on victory; and there could not remain the slightest doubt that they would impose similar, if not severer, conditions upon the rest of the world if they got the chance. Nothing could have been more sinister or more impressive than the complete contradiction between their words to Powers which they did not yet control and their deeds to those which they did; and whatever criticisms might be made of the ultimate settlement, they would have to be based not on the ground that the Central Powers suffered more than they deserved, but that the penalties were impolitic and fell on the wrong shoulders. The treaties were approved of by all parties in the Reichstag except the Minority Socialists and the Poles; and early in March the Minority Socialists lost a seat at Nieder Barnim.

There was little more for diplomacy to say. It was obvious, although the fact was not universally recognized, that the speeches of Teutonic ministers afforded no basis for negotiation, since from Brest Litovsk onward the German G.H.Q. superseded the Government; but it was a blunder on the part of the supreme war council at Versailles to issue on Feb. 4 a statement that it would not accept Hertling's and Czernin's professions and had decided on a vigorous prosecution of the war, thereby creating the impression that the same supersession of the civil by military power was also taking place in the Entente. Nevertheless, President Wilson did, indeed, on Feb. 11 give a useful definition of Four Principles on which the settlement must be based; and he used what his Secretary of State, Lansing, subsequently denounced as an explosive expression when he declared that " ` Self-determination' is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril." But he was in closer touch with the realities of the situation when on April 6, commenting on the contrast between Hertling's professed acceptance of those four principles and the militarist terms dictated at Brest Litovsk, he declared: "Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether Right as America conceives it or Dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one response possible from us: force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make Right the law of the world, and cast every selfish Dominion down in the dust." It needed, however, a crisis to elicit an adequate display of American force on fields where the issue would be decided. In the previous Nov. the Kaiser had declared that the only means to secure peace was for Germans to hew their way through those who would not make it; and the terms of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk are intelligible only on the assumption that he relied upon a German offensive on the western front to constrain the Entente to recognize those terms if not to accept similar ones for themselves. From the beginning of the German offensive on March 2 1 until the first Austrian peace-note on Sept. 15 the pen gave way to the sword. Czernin resigned on April 15 after his controversy with Clemenceau over the Sixte of Parma pourparlers in the summer of 1917, but the fact that he was suc ceeded by Burian indicated a stiffening rather than a relaxation of the Austrian attitude. Nor had the growing discontent and the declining moral of the German people any effect upon the diplomatic situation, although in Jan. strikers had demanded peace on the basis of self-determination without annexations or indemnities, and crowds in Berlin had vociferated against a fresh offensive on the western front.

War Weariness

More potent than social ferment in Germany was imperial disintegration in Austria. The disaster at Caporetto had a wholesome effect upon the Italian attitude toward the Yugosla y s, and the revelation of the secret Treaty of London by the Bolsheviks gave more progressive opinion in Italy an opportunity of expressing itself. In Feb. 1918 a committee was formed to promote an understanding with the Yugosla y s, and on March 7 Signor Torre on a visit to London arranged with Dr. Trumbitch the holding of a congress of oppressed national-. ities at Rome. It met early in April, and on the 10th produced the " Pact of Rome," by which the" unity and independence " of the Yugoslav nation, " known also as the nation of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes," were recognized as a vital interest for Italy, and the completion of Italian unity as a vital interest for the Yugosla y s. It was also mutually agreed to defend the freedom of the Adriatic against every enemy present or future, and to decide amicably the territorial questions between them on the basis of nationality and self-determination. This entente was of the utmost value in promoting the successful Italian resistance on the Piave in June and victory in Oct. President Wilson hastened to bless the practical application of his own principles; on June 28 he asserted that all branches of the Slav race must be completely freed from German and Austrian rule; on Sept. 3 he formally recognized the Czechoslovak National Council as a belligerent Government; and on Oct. 18 in reply to the Austrian peace-note declared that he was no longer at liberty to accept the " autonomy " of these peoples - as indicated in the tenth of his Fourteen Points - as a basis of peace, but " is obliged to insist that they, and not he, shall be the judges of what action on the part of the Austro-Hungarian Government will satisfy their aspirations and their conceptions of their rights and destiny as members of the family of nations." For the time, the success of the German offensive made all talk about terms of peace irrelevant except on the German side, where it generally took the form of repudiating the peace resolution of July 1917. But before the end of April confidence began to wane, first at G.H.Q. and then in the public mind in Germany itself. The difference was that the worse the situation became, the more determined Ludendorff grew in his persistence, and the more sceptical the public showed itself of his success; the reason was that the militarism of the German Government became more and more involved in the fortunes of the war. On June 24 Kuhlmann in a long speech let fall the phrase, " an absolute end can hardly be expected through purely military decisions alone "; and a fortnight's disputation over his meaning ended in his resignation at Ludendorff's behest on July 9. It had become heresy, in the waning prestige of militarist orthodoxy, to dispute what the German G.H.Q. could do; and Kuhlmann's successor was von Hintze, its nominee without any pretence of that " parliamentarization " which both the Reichstag and President Wilson had demanded as a preliminary to peace. On July 4 President Wilson laid down four great ends of the war, which he said " can be put into a single sentence. What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind." Next day Mr. Lloyd George said the Kaiser could have peace to-morrow if he would accept the President's terms. But Ludendorff's conception of the reign of law was the will of G.H.Q. sustained by German arms, and he was desperately bent on giving it effect.

He refused to admit in words that his increasing lack of success and resources, or even Foch's counter-offensive on July 18, had made his position hopeless. But he confessed that Aug. 8 was Germany's " black day," and on the 14th at a crown council at Spa the Kaiser decided that negotiations must begin on the World War, The ° r 08 7 first suitable occasion. The Austrian Emperor and Burian emphasized the need on the r5th, and wanted to begin at once.

t A fortnight was spent in arguing, and on the 30th Austria hreatened an independent overture. But both parties assumed that defensive war could still be successfully carried on in France, while the offensive submarine inclined the enemy to a peace which would leave the Central Empires their ill-gotten gains in the east; and they were at the moment engaged on the supplementary treaties of Brest Litovsk, which, as signed on the 27th, compelled the Bolsheviks to oppose the Entente forces in N. Russia, to renounce sovereignty over Esthonia, Livonia, and Georgia and to pay heavy gold indemnities, and riveted the German economic yoke more firmly than ever. The German public and even the civil government looked helplessly on while G.H.Q. wasted their opportunities for peace. There was no foresight, and no discussion of any terms that might have satisfied enemies whom Germany found it increasingly difficult to resist. Civil intelligence had abandoned its functions for so long to the soldier that it was simply atrophied for lack of use; and it was not until late in Oct. that ministers screwed up their courage to action independent of General Headquarters.

Concluding Stages

By that time the Hindenburg defences on which the army and public relied had broken down. On Sept. 2 the Wotan line was pierced, on the r 2th the Americans wiped out the St. Mihiel salient, and on the r5th, the day on which the Bulgarian line in the Balkans was broken, Austria addressed a peace-note to belligerents, neutrals, and the Pope proposing a confidential and non-committal discussion in some neutral country. President Wilson replied on the following day that the United States " can and will entertain no proposal for conference upon a matter concerning which it has made its position and purpose so plain "; and Austria retired from the diplomatic struggle. German G.H.Q. were not reduced to a suppliant attitude until the 29th, the day on which Bulgaria signed her armistice and went out of the war, abandoning the whole of the Balkans to the Entente. Meanwhile Allenby had destroyed the Turkish armies in Palestine, the Hindenburg lines in front of Cambrai had been broken, and a combined offensive in Belgium had undermined Germany's hold on the coast. On the 27th President Wilson added " Five Particulars " to his " Fourteen Points," " Four Principles," and " Four Ends." Some details, he said, were needed to make his general terms " sound less like a thesis and more like a practical programme." But even these particulars were less terms of peace than principles which must govern those terms, and they were as follows: First, The impartial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those to whom we wished to be just and those to whom we did not wish to be just.

Second, No special or separate interest of any single nation or any group of nations can be made the basis of any part of the settlement which is not consistent with the common interest of all.

Third, There can be no leagues or alliances or special covenants and understandings within the general and common family of the League of Nations.

Fourth, And, more specifically, there can be no special selfish economic combinations within the League, and no employment of any form of economic boycott or exclusion, except as the power of economic penalty, by exclusion from the markets of the world, may be vested in the League of Nations itself as a means of discipline and control.

Fifth, All international agreements and treaties of every kind must be made known in their entirety to the rest of the world.

Two days later Hertling and all his ministers resigned in order that the Kaiser might be provided with an administration supported by the Reichstag to meet the President's objection to negotiating with an autocratic government; but the Kaiser in accepting this principle would only say that it was his " will that men who are supported by the confidence of the people should, to a large extent, participate in the rights and duties of the Government." Prince Maximilian of Baden was appointed German Chancellor, and he had to deal with a veritable panic at G.H.Q. Ludendorff was in despair. " To-day, " he declared, " the soldiers hold their ground; it is impossible to foresee what may happen tomorrow. .. the peace offer must be made to-day." Hindenburg was hardly less emphatic: " Every day of delay will cost thousands of brave soldiers their lives." So on Oct. 4 a first peace-note was despatched by Germany. The appeal was to President Wilson alone, asking him to take steps for the restoration of peace. The German note accepted the Fourteen Points as a programme; the Austro-Hungarian note, which followed on Oct. 7, accepted also the Four Principles of Feb. r r and agreed that the Five Particulars should " also be taken into account." x0 The President's replies to these and to the succeeding notes constituted a process of depriving the German Government one by one of possible loopholes of escape, and of the means, such as defensive warfare on French soil, delay for recuperation, and the submarine campaign, by which Ludendorff still hoped that the situation might be improved. On Oct. 8 he pressed for more specific acceptance of his principles, declined to propose an armistice unless the Central Powers consented " immediately to withdraw their forces everywhere from invaded territory," and pointedly asked whether the German Chancellor was merely speaking for the imperial authorities who had so far conducted the war. Satisfactory assurances were given by Germany on. the r 2th with regard to the first; but as to the second she proposed a mixed commission, and as to the third was not conclusive. Her acceptance of the first justified the President, as he said on the r4th, in being frank with regard to the other two points; the process of evacuation and terms of the armistice must be left to the advice of the military authorities, but no arrangement could be accepted which did not guarantee the present military supremacy of his Government and its Allies. Nor would he or they consent to consider an armistice so long as German submarines continued their sinking of passenger ships, and German troops the pillage and destruction which marked their withdrawal. With regard to the democratic character of the German Government, he referred to his " Four Ends " speech of July 4, in which he had plainly intimated that if the Germans wanted peace they must change their constitution. To the AustroHungarian note he returned a separate reply on the r8th, explaining his change of attitude toward Czechoslovak and Yugoslav " autonomy." Both Governments made in reply concessions, in view of which the President said on the 23rd he could not decline to take up the question of an armistice with his Allies. He had therefore transmitted the correspondence to them; but he pointed out that extraordinary safeguards would have to be demanded in view of the fact that " the power of the King of Prussia to control the policy of the Empire is unimpaired. .. that the nations of the world do not and cannot trust the word of those who have hitherto been the masters of German policy." If the Government of the United States "must deal with the military masters and the monarchical autocrats of Germany. .. it must demand not peace negotiations but surrender. Nothing can be gained by leaving this essential thing unsaid." The German reply was dated the 27th. Incidentally that was the date of the Austrian debacle on the Piave; but Germany's action was dictated by events nearer home. Almost the last vestige of the Hindenburg defences had disappeared. But Ludendorff had recovered his obstinacy, if not his nerves, and urged the rejection of Wilson's terms. At last the civilian ministers acted on their own responsibility, and Ludendorff had to resign on the 2 7th. Next day, when the High Seas Fleet, the submarine having been barred, was ordered out, it mutinied; and the German note merely intimated that the German Government awaited the proposals for an armistice. But the President's Allies had still to be heard; and on Nov. 5 he informed Germany that they reserved complete freedom of action at the Peace Conference with regard to the freedom of the seas, and understood by " restoration " " compensation, for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies and their property by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea, and from the air." No reference was apparently made to the Secret Agreements, which therefore would not be binding on the Conference.' 1 See Peace Conference for the actual proceedings.

Germany raised no further objections, and on Nov. 7 the Armistice Commission met. It continued its deliberations, to the accompaniment of popular insurrections and monarchical abdications, until on the 11th an Armistice was signed on the day that Americans fought their way into Sedan and Canadians into Mons. Verily a New World had been called in to redress the balance of the Old. For subsequent events see especially articles on GREECE, RUSSIA, OTTOMAN EMPIRE, and other countries of Eastern Europe. (A. F. P.)