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)
That the Conference was incapable of solving a problem of this magnitude
is self-evident. But the delegates could and should have referred it to
an international parliament, fully representative of all the interests
concerned. For the best way of distributing the necessaries and comforts
of life, which have been acquired or created by manual toil, is a
problem that can neither be ignored nor reasoned away. So long as it
remains a problem it will be a source of intermittent trouble and
disorder throughout the civilized world. The titles, which the classes
heretofore privileged could invoke in favor of possession, are now being
rapidly acquired by the workers, who in addition dispose of the force
conferred by organization, numbers, and resolve. At the same time most
of the stimuli and inventives to individual enterprise are being
gradually weakened by legislation, which it would be absurd to condemn
and dangerous to regard as a settlement. In the meanwhile productivity
is falling off, while the demand for the products of labor is growing
proportionately to the increase of population and culture.
Hitherto the laws of distribution were framed by the strong, who were
few and utilized the many. To-day their relative positions have shifted;
the many have waxed strong and are no longer minded to serve as
instruments in the hands of a class, hereditary or selected. But the
division of mankind into producers and utilizers has ever been the solid
and durable mainstay of that type of civilization from which progressive
nations are now fast moving away, and the laws and usages against which
the proletariat is up in arms are but its organic expression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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