Triumph and Disaster: Five Historical Miniatures

by Stefan Zweig

  The Projectile Takes Off

  The first thing Lenin does on Russian soil is typical of him: he does not see individual people, but makes for the newspapers. He has not been in Russia for fourteen years, he has not seen the earth of his country, its flag or the uniform of its soldiers. But this iron-hard ideologist does not burst into tears like the others, does not, like the women in the party, embrace the surprised and unsuspecting soldiers. First the newspaper, Pravda, he wants to search it and see whether the paper, his paper, keeps to the international standpoint with sufficient determination. Angrily, he crumples it up. No, it does not; there is still too much about the motherland, too much patriotism, still not enough that, as he sees it, is purely revolutionary. It is time he came back, he thinks, to take the helm and impel the idea of his life towards victory or downfall. But will he get the chance? Won’t Milyukov have him arrested as soon as he is in Petrograd—as the city is not yet called, but soon will be? The f riends who have come to meet him are now in the train, Kamenev and Stalin, wearing strange, mysterious smiles in the dark third-class compartment, dimly lit by a light running low. They do not or will not answer his question.

  But the answer given by reality is phenomenal. As the train runs into Finland Station the huge concourse is full of tens of thousands of workers, guards of honour carrying all kinds of weapons are waiting for the home-coming exile, the Internationale rings out. And as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov steps out of the train, the man who the day before yesterday was still living in the cobbler’s house is seized by hundreds of hands and hoisted up on an armoured car. Floodlights are shone on him from the buildings and the fortress, and from the armoured car he makes his first speech to the people. The streets resound, and soon the “ten days that shake the world” have begun. The shot has hit its mark, destroying an empire, a world.

  WILSON’S FAILURE

  THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES

  28 June 1919

  ON 13TH DECEMBER 1918 the mighty steamer George Washington, with President Woodrow Wilson on board, is on its way to the European coast. Never since the beginning of the world has a single ship been awaited with so much hope and confidence by so many millions of people. The nations of Europe have been fighting each other furiously for four years; hundreds of thousands of their best young men, still in the bloom of youth, have been slaughtered on both sides with machine guns and cannon, flame-throwers and poison gas; for four years they have expressed nothing in speech or on paper but hatred and vituperation for each other. But all the bad feeling whipped up could not silence an inner voice that told them that what they said, what they did, dishonoured our present century. All these many people, consciously or unconsciously, had a secret feeling that mankind had retreated headlong into chaotic centuries of a barbarism thought to be dead and gone long ago.

  Then, from the other side of the world in America, a voice spoke out clearly above battlefields still hot with blood, demanding “never war again”. Never discord again, never the criminal old style of secret diplomacy that had driven nations to the slaughter without their knowledge or volition, but instead a new, better world order, “the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind”. And remarkably, that voice was understood at once in all countries and all languages. The war, yesterday still a pointless quarrel about tracts of land, borders, raw materials, ore mines and oilfields, had suddenly taken on a higher, almost religious meaning: eternal peace, the messianic empire of law and humanity. All of a sudden it no longer seemed as if the blood of millions had been shed in vain: this one generation had suffered only so that such suffering would never be seen on earth again. Hundreds of thousands, millions of voices, in the grip of frenzied confidence, summoned this man; Wilson was to make peace between the victors and the defeated, and ensure that it would be a just peace. Like another Moses he, Wilson, was to bring the tablets of the new League of Nations to the peoples who had gone astray. Within a few weeks the name of Woodrow Wilson becomes a religious, a messianic power. Streets, buildings and children are named after him. Every nation that feels in need or at a disadvantage sends delegates to him. The letters and telegrams with suggestions, requests and adjurations from all quarters of the globe arrive in their thousands and thousands, building up until whole crates of them are carried aboard the ship going to Europe. A whole part of the earth, the whole world unanimously demands this man as the arbitrator of its last quarrel before the final reconciliation of which it dreams.

  And Wilson cannot defy the summons. His friends in America advise him against going to the peace conference in person. As President of the United States, they say, it is his duty not to leave his country; he would do better to conduct negotiations from a distance. But Woodrow Wilson is not to be dissuaded. Even the highest position in his country, the presidency of the United States, seems to him a small thing beside the task incumbent on him. He wants to serve not a country, not a continent, but all mankind, and not this one moment but a better future. He doesn’t want to be narrow-minded and act only in the interests of America, for “interest does not bind men together, interest separates men”. Rather, he wants to serve the advantage of all. He himself, he feels, must take care that military men and diplomats do not appropriate national passions again: the union of mankind would mean the death knell for their fatal professions. He must be the guarantee, in person, that “the will of the people rather than that of their leaders” is heard, and every word is to be spoken before the whole world, with doors and windows open at that congress of peace, the last, the final peace congress of mankind.

  So he stands on the ship and looks at the European coast emerging from the mist, vague and formless like his own dream of the future brotherhood of nations. He stands erect, a tall man with firm features, his eyes keen and clear behind his glasses, his chin thrust forward with typically American energy, but his full, fleshy lips are closed. The son and grandson of Presbyterian pastors, he has the strength and restricted vision of those men for whom there is only one truth, and who are sure that they know what it is. He has the fervour of all his pious Scottish and Irish ancestors in his blood, and the enthusiasm of the Calvinist faith that sets a leader and teacher the task of saving sinful humanity, not to mention the obstinacy of those heretics and martyrs who would rather be burnt for their convictions than deviate one iota from the word of the Bible. And to him, as a Democrat and a scholar, the concepts of humanity, mankind, liberty, freedom and human rights are not cold words but what the gospel was to his forefathers. To him, they mean not vague, ideological concepts, but articles of religious faith, and he is determined to defend every syllable of them as his ancestors defended the message of the evangelists. He has fought many battles, but this one, he feels as he looks at the land of Europe becoming ever clearer before his eyes, will be the deciding one. Instinctively, he tenses his muscles “to fight for the new order, agreeably if we can, disagreeably if we must”.

  But soon the severity leaves his gaze as he looks into the distance. The cannon and flags that greet him in Brest harbour are merely honouring the president of an allied republic, but the noise he hears from the shore is, he feels, not an artificial, organized reception, not a pretence of jubilation, but the blazing enthusiasm of a whole nation. Wherever the train in which he is travelling goes, flags wave—the flames of hope—from every village, every hamlet, every house. Hands reach out to him, voices roar around him, and as he is driven into Paris down the Champs-Élysées, cascades of enthusiasm fall from the living walls. The people of Paris, the people of France, as the symbol of all the distant nations of Europe, are shouting jubilantly, they press their expectations on him. His face relaxes more and more, his teeth flash in a free, happy, almost intoxicated smile, and he waves his hat to right and left as if to greet them all and the whole world. Yes, he did right to come himself; only the vigorous will can triumph over the rigidity of the law. Can one, should one not create such a happy city and such joyfully hopeful men and women f
or everyone, to last for ever? One night for rest and quiet, and then he will begin the work of giving the world the peace it has dreamt of for thousands of years, thus doing the greatest deed that a human being has ever accomplished.

  Journalists flock impatiently to the exterior of the palace that the French government has set aside for his use, to the corridors of the Foreign Ministry, to the Hôtel de Crillon, headquarters of the American delegation. They are an army of some size in themselves. A hundred and fifty have come from North America alone; every country, every city has sent its correspondents, and they are clamouring for tickets to let them into all the meetings. All of them! For “complete publicity” has been promised to the world. There are to be no secret meetings or agreements this time. The first of the fourteen points runs, word for word, that there shall be “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind”. The pestilence of secret agreements, which has demanded more deaths than all other epidemics, is to be defeated once and for all by the new salve of Wilson’s “open diplomacy”.

  But, to their disappointment, the impetuosity of the journalists comes up against delaying tactics. Yes, certainly, they would all be given access to the large meetings, and the minutes of those public meetings—in reality, chemically cleaned of all causes of tension—would be conveyed to the world in full. But no information could be given yet. First the method of procedure had to be established. Disappointed, those who wanted to know more felt that there was some inconsistency here. However, they had not actually been told anything untrue. It was over the method of procedure that Wilson sensed the resistance of the Allies at the first discussion between the Big Four; they did not all want to negotiate openly, and with good reason. Secret agreements lie in the files and records of all military nations, agreements ensuring that they all get their share of the booty. There is dirty laundry that can be mentioned only in a very restricted circle. If the whole conference were not to be compromised from the first, these matters had to be discussed behind closed doors and sanitized. However, there were differences of opinion not only in the method of procedure but also at a deeper level. Fundamentally, the situation was entirely unambiguous in both groups, the American and the European, a clear opinion on the right, a clear opinion on the left. It was not just that peace was to be made at this conference; there were really two peaces to be made, two entirely different treaties. One peace was to end the war with defeated Germany, which had laid down its arms, and at the same time another, the peace of the future, was to make any future war impossible for ever. On one hand peace of the old, hard kind, on the other the new Wilsonian covenant that was to found the League of Nations. Which was to be negotiated first?

  Here both points of view come up sharply against each other. Wilson takes little interest in peace only for the present day. Determining borders, paying compensation, making war reparations and so forth should, as he saw it, be left to the experts and committees on the basis of the principles established in the fourteen points. That was painstaking, detailed work, subsidiary work, work for experts on the subjects. The task of the leading statesmen of the time, on the other hand, should, and he hoped would, be what was new and coming into being, the union of nations, eternal peace. To each group, its own ideas are of pressing importance. The European Allies reasonably make the point that the exhausted and battered world cannot be left waiting months for peace to be made, or Europe will succumb to chaos. First they must get tangible matters settled, the borders, the reparations. Men still carrying arms must be sent back to their wives and children, currencies must be stabilized, trade and commerce must get going again, and only then, on an established basis, can the mirage of Wilson’s project be allowed to shine brightly. Just as Wilson is not really interested in peace for its own sake, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Sonnino, as practical men and tacticians, are really indifferent to Wilson’s demands. They have paid tribute to his humane requirements and his ideas out of political calculation, and in part also out of genuine sympathy, because, whether consciously or unconsciously, they feel the captivating, compelling force of an unselfish principle on their nations; they are therefore willing to discuss his plan, qualified and watered-down to some extent. But first, however, peace with Germany as the conclusion of the war, then the covenant.

  However, Wilson himself is practical enough to know how delay can affect a vital demand, leeching away its force. He himself knows how you can postpone matters by means of annoying interruptions; no one gets to be President of the United States by idealism alone. So he inflexibly insists on his own viewpoint: the covenant must be worked out first, and he even demands its explicit verbal inclusion in the peace treaty with Germany. A second conflict crystallizes organically from this demand. As the Allies see it, building such principles into the treaty would mean granting Germany the undeserved reward of the principles of humanity in advance, after it was the guilty party that brutally infringed international law by invading Belgium, and set a terrible example of ruthlessness in General Hoffmann’s negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, when Russia backed out of the Great War after the revolution. They insist on settling accounts first in the old way, in hard cash, and only then turning to the new method. Fields still lie devastated, whole cities are destroyed by gunfire. To make an impression on Wilson, the Europeans urge him to go to see them for himself. But Wilson, that “impractical man”, deliberately looks past the ruins. His eyes are fixed on the future, and he sees not the cities wrecked by cannon but the everlasting construction to come. He has one task and one only: to “do away with an old order and establish a new one”. Imperturbable and implacable, he persists with his demand, in spite of the protests of his own advisers Lansing and House. First the covenant. First the cause of all mankind, only then the interests of the individual nations.

  It is a hard battle and it wastes a great deal of time—something that will prove disastrous. Woodrow Wilson has unfortunately omitted to define his dreams more clearly in advance. The project of the covenant that he puts forward is by no means entirely formulated, it is only a first draft, and it has to be discussed, altered, improved, reinforced or watered down at countless meetings. In addition, courtesy requires him to make visits now and then to Paris and the other capital cities of his allies. So Wilson goes to London, speaks in Manchester, visits Rome; and as the other statesmen show no enthusiasm for making progress with his project in his absence, more than a whole month has been lost before the first plenary session is held—a month during which regular and irregular troops improvise battles in Hungary and Romania, Poland and the Baltic area, occupying land, while there is a rising rate of famine in Vienna and the situation in Russia is considerably worse.

  But even in this first plenary session on 18th January, it is only determined in theory that the covenant is to form “an integral part of the general treaty of peace”. The document itself has not yet been drafted, it is still going from hand to hand in endless discussions. Another month goes by, a month of the most terrible unrest for Europe, which more and more clearly wants to have its real, actual peace. Not until 14th February 1919, a quarter of a year after the Armistice, can Wilson put forward the covenant in its final form, the form in which it is unanimously accepted.

  Once again the world rejoices. Wilson has won his cause. In future, peace will not be kept by terror and the force of arms, but by agreement and belief in a higher law. Wilson is stormily acclaimed as he leaves the palace. Once again, for the last time, he looks with a proud, grateful smile of delight at the crowd surrounding him, sensing other nations behind this one. And behind this generation that has suffered so much he sees future generations who, thanks to this ultimate safeguard, will never again feel the scourge of war and the humiliation of dictators and dictatorships. It is the greatest day of his life, and at the same time his last happy day. For Wilson spoils his own victory by leaving the battlefield too early; and next day, 15th February, he travels back to America, to place t
he Magna Carta of eternal peace before his voters and countrymen, before returning to sign the other peace treaty, the last, the treaty to put an end to war.

  *

  Yet again the cannon thunder in salute as the George Washington moves away from Brest, but already the throng watching the ship leave is less dense and more indifferent. Something of the great, passionate tension, something of the messianic hope of the nations has already worn off as Wilson leaves Europe. He also meets with a cool reception in New York. No airplanes circle the ship coming home, there is no stormy, loud rejoicing, and in his own offices, in the Senate, in Congress, within his own party, the welcome is rather wary. Europe is dissatisfied, feeling that Wilson has not gone far enough. America is dissatisfied, feeling that he has gone too far. To Europe, his commitment to the reconciliation of conflicting interests in the general interest of mankind does not yet seem far-reaching enough; in America his political opponents, who already have their eyes on the next presidential election, are agitating because, they say, he has linked the new continent too closely, without justification, to the restless and unpredictable continent of Europe, thus contravening a fundamental principle of national policy, the Monroe Doctrine. Woodrow Wilson is forcefully reminded that it is not for him to found the future empire of his dreams, or think for other nations, but to keep in mind first and foremost the Americans, who elected him to represent what they themselves want. Still exhausted from the European negotiations, Wilson has to enter into new negotiations with both his own party representatives and his political opponents. Above all, he must retrospectively build a back door into the proud structure of the covenant that he thought he had constructed to be inviolable and impregnable, the dangerous “provision for the withdrawal of America from the League”, allowing the United States to back out at any time they liked. That means the removal of the first stone from the structure of the League of Nations, planned to last for all eternity; the first crack in the wall has opened. It is a fatal flaw that will ultimately be responsible for its collapse.