THE FORGOTTEN TREATY

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 251, 27 October 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE FORGOTTEN TREATY

We often hear Versailles blamed ior post war European troubles, but seldom the treaty the injustice of which reacted at Versailles

jasSrSfflANY public men try to ■V ■ put a tolerable face ■ A’A fl on Mr. Chamberlain’s ■AA 1 surrender of the bestgoverned State east of the Rhine to German violence by speaking of the injustices of the Peace made at Paris. But if the Peace of Munich is a sequel to ■the Peace of Versailles, using that term to cover all the treaties that ended the war, the Peace of Versailles is the sequel to the Peace of Brest-Litovsk.

fused to sign were now much harsher, and Lenin only persuaded his Central Council to accept by seven votes to four, with four abstentions, by threatening to resign. Russia lost 34 per cent, of her population, 32 per cent, of her agricultural land, 85 per cent, of her sugar-beet land, 54 per cent, of her industrial undertakings, and 89 per cent, of her coal mines. At one stroke, Germany had extended her control of Eastern Europe to the Arctic Ocean and the Black Sea and had acquired the undisputed arbitrament of the fate of 55,000,000 inhabitants of Russia’s western fringe.

Few people remember much about the Treaty of BrestLitovsk, and yet it has a great importance, and an importance that is not limited to its influence on events of the past. All who wish to understand the spirit of Germany and the complex problem of the relations of Germany and Russia must give great attention to the history of that Peace.

Germany thought that by this treaty she could crush Russia. The Kaiser played with the idea of breaking Russia up into four independent States and eliminating the Russian danger. But this brutal peace made for her own destruction. It had an immense moral effect in the United States, and its military effect was even more important for the forces that might have turned the scale in the west were kept in the east enforcing this peace of the sword. The man, therefore, who defeated Ludendorff, the soldier, was not Focli, but Ludendorff, the politician. For this violent peace represented Ludendorff’s victory over the far-sighted Kuhlmann.

In March, 1918, when Germany imposed her ruthless terms on Russia, Radek is known to have said to Hoffmann, Chief of the German Staff, “It is your day now, but in the end the Allies will put a Brest-Litovsk treaty upon you.” This prediction has come true for, assuredly, Germany paid first, and the whole world later, for the brutality of Brest-Litovsk.

This treaty is the climax of a series of exceedingly complicated events, beginning with the Russian Revolution and continuing through the Russian movement for a general peace without annexations or indemnities. When the terms were being proposed, Lenin was convinced that he had to make peace, however bad the peace, in order to organise the Russian Revolution, but at the same time he believed that it would not last. Indeed, Trotzky induced him to consent to a compromise. Russia could not afford to go on with the war, but might she not refuse to sign the Peace? Lenin agreed to try this plan, though he did not expect success.

The whole story is a fascinating tale of insolence and nemesis, but it has a bearing on our present problems. For there are close resemblances between Ludendorff’s ideas and those of Germany’s rulers to-day. The history of Brest-Litovsk should be a warning to strong and confident peoples of the danger to which they expose themselves if they let their strength and their confidence tempt them into such excesses.

As a result there was a great burst of simple optimism in Russia, where it was believed, as one school of pacifists in England believes, that violence melts away before non - resistance. Even Pravda at the time suggested that the Central Powers could, in view of events, no longer “ continue their aggression without revealing their cannibal teeth dripping with human blood.” But as events proved, unhappily, the Central Powers 'did show their cannibal teeth and broke off the armistice, setting their armies on the march, capturing towns, guns and men at their pleasure.

At this point, Lenin pressed for immediate surrender, but when he got his way by seven votes to six it was doubtful whether Germany would accept any surrender. Trotsky sounded the Allies and found that they would give help if the Bolsheviks were compelled to resume tlie war.

• On February 23, 1918, tlie German reply arrived. _ The harsh terms which the Russians had r«-