The Inside Story of the Peace ConferenceDillon, Emile Joseph
History
The Inside Story of the Peace Conference
Dillon, Emile Joseph
Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920)
But Mr. Wilson demurred. A commercial outlet through foreign territory,
he said, might possibly be as good as a direct outlet through one's own
territory in peace-time, but not in time of war, and, after all, one
must bear in mind the needs of a country during hostilities. In the
mouth of the champion of universal peace that was an unexpected
argument. It had been employed by Italy in favor of her claim to Fiume.
Mr. Wilson then met it by invoking the economic requirements of
Jugoslavia, and by declaring that the Treaty was being devised for
peace, not for war, that the League of Nations would hinder wars, or at
the very least supply the deficiencies of those states which had
sacrificed strategical positions for humanitarian aims. But in the case
of Bulgaria he was taking what seems the opposite position and
transgressing his own principle of nationality in order to maintain it.
Mr. Wilson, pursuing his line of argument, further pointed out that the
Supreme Council had not accepted as sufficient for Poland an outlet
through German territory, but had created the city-state of Dantzig in
order to confer a greater degree of security upon the Polish republic.
To that M. Venizelos replied that there was no parity between the two
instances. Poland had no outlet to the sea except through Dantzig, and
could not, therefore, allow that one to remain in the hands of an
unfriendly nation, whereas Bulgaria already possessed two very
commodious ports, Varna and Burgas, on the Black Sea, which becomes a
free sea in virtue of the internationalization of the straits. The
possession of a third outlet on the Ægean could not, therefore, be
termed a vital question for his protégée. Thus the comparison with
Poland was irrelevant.
If Poland, which is a very much greater state than Bulgaria, can live
and prosper with a single port, and that not her own--if Rumania, which
is also a much more numerous and powerful nation, can thrive with a
single issue to the sea, by what line of argument, M. Venizelos asked,
can one prove that little Bulgaria requires three or four exits, and
that her need justifies the abandonment to her tender mercies of seven
hundred and fifty thousand Greeks and the violation of one of the
fundamental principles underlying the new moral ordering.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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