Romanian Eagle

..Romanian Eagle

Things come and go quickly. When the peace meeting began, no one paid attention to Romania. Each delegation is fighting for its own country's best interests.

The most fierce competition is undoubtedly the top five leaders and foreign ministers of the United States, France, Britain, Italy, and Japan. It is also called the ten-person meeting. All major issues are discussed and decided by them. Because of the regulations of the Peace Conference, the entire conference is divided into three forms: the Supreme Conference, the Special Conference and the Plenary Conference. The Supreme Council is composed of five countries: the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan.

Since the discussion was about competing for the interests of the defeated Allies, apart from China and Japan, Germany's rights in Europe and Africa were also the most fiercely contested.

Among them, Europe, the United States, Britain, France, and Italy, the most important countries, each negotiate an endless quarrel.

Among them, the main purpose of the Italian representative is to obtain the port of Fiume, so that it will become the base of Italian expansion in the Balkans. However, Italy's weak strength can only be regarded as a second-rate country compared with the United States, Britain and France. In addition, it had two boats in the early days of the war, and it did not play much role after entering the war. Therefore, Orlando's request was rejected by the United States, Britain and France. Before the war, Britain, France, and Russia promised Italy that they would give Fiume Port and Dalmacia rights after the war, but they were rejected by the United States, Britain and France after winning.

At the meeting of the top five in February, Orlando insisted that he could not return to China without Fiume, and even threatened domestic riots, while the United States, Britain and France still opposed his demands. Orlando angrily left the venue, while the other attendees simply ignored. Orlando was helpless, and quietly returned to the venue after a few days, continuing to play the role of a trooper.

As for the United States, President Wilson was particularly fascinated by the plan to establish the League of Nations, not only because it was closely related to his political reputation and historical position, but also as the fundamental plan and the only way to replace Britain and France for domination of the world.

Therefore, in his first speech at the Paris Peace Conference, he put forward the priority to discuss the issue of the League of Nations, emphasizing that the League of Nations and the Peace Treaty with Germany should be a unified and inseparable whole, binding on any country. But Britain and France are not interested. They advocated separating the two and prioritized the division of territory and war reparations. The opposing sides insist on their own words and refuse to give in to each other.

Later, after four days of debate, the ten-member committee decided to hand over the League of Nations issue to a special committee headed by Wilson, who was responsible for formulating the draft treaty of the League of Nations. The Anglo-French conspiracy is to take the American plan off the agenda. To this end, they suggested that representatives of all small and medium countries should also participate in the committee, which would make the committee bloated and inefficient to delay time.

Before the special committee began to work, Britain and France proposed to discuss the partition of the German colonies. Wilson woke up from a dream and was very dissatisfied with the tactics of Britain and France, so he again proposed that the Council of Ten should discuss the League of Nations.

"We cannot give the world the impression that the powers first carve up the defenseless parts of the world and then build the League of Nations," he said.

As a result, the ten-member committee began to confront each other again. The meeting was tense, and Wilson was fierce, as were Lloyd George in England and Clemenceau in France. Under these circumstances, Wilson angrily stated that he would withdraw from the meeting if the League of Nations pact was not confirmed first.

The slick Lloyd George countered: "Only God knows when the complex process of making the League of Nations pact will be completed."

Wilson replied: "As long as no one deliberately disturbs, the work of the committee can be over in 10 days."

The American threat worked, and Britain and France had to back down. In fact, as Wilson said, after a series of intense consultations, the special committee finally formulated the draft of the League of Nations on December 18 as scheduled.

On December 19, Wilson reported the content of the draft to the plenary meeting in a solemn atmosphere, and it was unanimously approved. In the first round of struggle, Wilson barely prevailed.

On the British side, its Prime Minister George was scheming and scheming, and in order to maintain the hegemony that Britain had begun to shake, he did his best at the Paris Peace Conference. He sometimes sided with France against the United States, and sometimes formed an alliance with the United States to suppress France. When the U.S. and France were at an inexorable tussle, he often acted as a mediator in the process, thus reaping a lot of benefits for Britain.

As for France, it was proposed by Prime Minister Clemenceau, President of the General Assembly. France not only wanted to take back Alsace and Lorraine, but also moved the French border eastward to the Rhine and advocated the merger of the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine into an independent state. France's naked desire to weaken Germany to the greatest extent and establish French hegemonic ambitions on the European continent was rejected by Britain, France and Italy from the very beginning. They did not want to defeat Germany to find a hegemon for the Continent.

In the face of fierce opposition from the United States, Britain and Italy, Clemenceau had to give up this condition. Although he was forced to give up the requirement to establish the Rhine, in exchange, he offered to occupy the left bank of the Rhine by the Allied troops for 30 years and hand over the Saar mines to France. The Saar mining area mentioned by Clemenceau is the city of Saar near the French border, where there is an industrial and transportation center with a huge coal seam. Its factories produced iron and steel, sugar, beer, pottery, optical instruments, machinery and building materials. In particular, the coal industry here can meet one-third of the needs of the Ruhr region, so in order to further pinpoint the strength of Germany, Clemenceau raised the Saar problem.

U.S. President Wilson was annoyed by the new French demand. He said impatiently, "He never heard of another Thrall question."

In this regard, Clemenceau was furious, attacked Wilson as a pro-German element, and firmly declared: "No French Prime Minister will sign a treaty that does not incorporate Saarland into France."

But Wilson did not show weakness. He sneered at Clemenceau coldly and said: "You mean that if France does not get what it wants, it will refuse to cooperate with us? It seems that you want me to return home."

Faced with the threat of the creditor, Clemenceau replied, "I don't want you to go home, but I want to go home myself."

Regarding the question of Thrall, it just broke up like this. Facing the disputes between the United States and France, the old and slick Lloyd George fully exerted his means. He first formed an alliance with President Wilson on the issue, and then privately negotiated with Clemenceau that the United States could not leave the Peace Conference, suggesting that it could move Saar from France to a mandate of time.

Clemenceau was a little powerless to the pressure of the Anglo-American alliance. Considering that France was unable to maintain the European order without the support of the United Kingdom and the United States, he agreed to the conditions given by Prime Minister George. However, the two sides had a dispute over the duration of the mandate.

The French side believes that the time should be 25 years, while the United Kingdom and the United States believe that this time is too long and will provoke Germany to provoke new disputes in Europe in the future, so the proposal is 10 years. After another quarrel, they finally gave a 15-year period acceptable to both parties. After 15 years, the Saar mining area held a referendum to decide its own ownership.

In order to completely weaken Germany, France also put forward three demands: one is to establish a powerful Poland including Poznan and Danzig in the east of Germany. The reason is to deal with the red threat from Russia.

The second is to try to dig out the Germans' pockets and demand that Germany must compensate 600 billion to 800 billion gold marks for war losses.

The third is to completely destroy the German military machine, especially to limit the number of German troops and arms production.

These French demands were opposed to varying degrees by the United Kingdom and the United States. The United Kingdom and the United States believed that the establishment of a new Poland in accordance with the French blueprint meant the strengthening of France's position in Europe, and therefore did not agree with France's claim.

Lloyd George said to Clemenceau: "Don't build a new Alsace-Lorraine."

Neither Britain nor the United States wants to use Germany's reparations to strengthen France's power, especially the United States is more worried that France's excessive demands will kill Germany, the hen that lays eggs.

Lloyd George proposed that the reparations should not be excessive and could only be borne by the generation that fought in the war. Wilson advocated not to determine the amount of compensation, the issue can be resolved by a special committee study.

On the issue of restricting German armaments, Britain and the United States have different intentions from France. Their main interest was to weaken Germany's naval power, while they were lenient with the army, leaving Germany with the force necessary to suppress the Bolsheviks.

When talking about the establishment of Poland, Prime Minister Bretianu, who has been watching this drama, is also involved. Because the Polish delegation pointed out that the Lviv area currently occupied by Romania has always been a gathering place for Poles, and it is hoped that Romania will teach this area to Poland, not the current Ukrainian government. Therefore, Prime Minister Bretianu also had the honor to join the discussion on the Polish issue.

( = )