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)
Many of the entries and comments of the chroniclers of 1815 read like
extracts from newspapers of the first three months of 1919. "About
Poland, they are fighting fiercely and, down to the present, with no
decisive result," writes Count Carl von Nostitz, a Russian military
observer.... "Concerning Germany and her future federative constitution,
nothing has yet been done, absolutely nothing."[10] Here is a gloss
written by Countess Elise von Bernstorff, wife of the Danish Minister:
"Most comical was the mixture of the very different individuals who all
fancied they had work to do at the Congress ... One noticed noblemen and
scholars who had never transacted any business before, but now looked
extremely consequential and took on an imposing bearing, and professors
who mentally set down their university chairs in the center of a
listening Congress, but soon turned peevish and wandered hither and
thither, complaining that they could not, for the life of them, make out
what was going on." Again: "It would have been to the interest of all
Europe--rightly understood--to restore Poland. This matter may be
regarded as the most important of all. None other could touch so nearly
the policy of all the Powers represented,"[11] wrote the Bavarian
Premier, Graf von Montgelas, just as the Entente press was writing in
the year 1919.
The plenipotentiaries of the Paris Conference had for a short period
what is termed a good press, and a rigorous censorship which never erred
on the side of laxity, whereas those of the Vienna Congress were
criticized without truth. For example, the population of Vienna, we are
told by Bavaria's chief delegate, was disappointed when it discerned in
those whom it was wont to worship as demigods, only mortals. "The
condition of state affairs," writes Von Gentz, one of the clearest heads
at the Congress, "is weird, but it is not, as formerly, in consequence
of the crushing weight that is hung around our necks, but by reason of
the mediocrity and clumsiness of nearly all the workers."[12] One
consequence of this state of things was the constant upspringing of new
and unforeseen problems, until, as time went on, the bewildered
delegates were literally overwhelmed. "So many interests cross each
other here," comments Count Carl von Nostitz, "which the peoples want to
have mooted at the long-wished-for League of Nations, that they fall
into the oddest shapes.... Look wheresoever you will, you are faced with
incongruity and confusion.... Daily the claims increase as though more
and more evil spirits were issuing forth from hell at the invocation of
a sorcerer who has forgotten the spell by which to lay them."[13] It was
of the Vienna Congress that those words were written.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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