Proposals for the Reconstruction of Europe (1919)

Are any constitutional means open to us for altering the Treaty? President Wilson and General Smuts, who believe that to have secured the Covenant of the League of Nations outweighs much evil in the rest of the Treaty, have indicated that we must look to the League for the gradual evolution of a more tolerable life for Europe. ‘There are territorial settlements’, General Smuts wrote in his statement on signing the Peace Treaty, ‘which will need revision. There are guarantees laid down which we all hope will soon be found out of harmony with the new peaceful temper and unarmed state of our former enemies. There are punishments foreshadowed over most of which a calmer mood may yet prefer to pass the sponge of oblivion. There are indemnities stipulated which cannot be exacted without grave injury to the industrial revival of Europe, and which it will be in the interests of all to render more tolerable and moderate…I am confident that the League of Nations will yet prove the path of escape for Europe out of the ruin brought about by this war.’ Without the League, President Wilson informed the Senate when he presented the Treaty to them early in July 1919, ‘…long-continued supervision of the task of reparation which Germany was to undertake to complete within the next generation might entirely break down; the reconsideration and revision of administrative arrangements and restrictions which the Treaty prescribed, but which it recognised might not provide lasting advantage or be entirely fair if too long enforced, would be impracticable’.