The Revision of Treaties O UT of the obscurity which still
enshrouds the con- versations between Mr. MacDonald and Signor Mussolini at Rome one fact definitely emerges. The revision of the Peace Treaties of 1919 and 1920 was discussed and is to be discussed further as a matter of immediate urgency. Assuming—and it is a considerable assumption—that this is a propitious moment for advocating revision as a practical proposition, what sections of the treaties may be held to stand most in need of reconsideration? The Treaty of Versailles may be taken as typical. Its provisions were in part temporary, in part permanent. The former related mainly to econonic restrictions, and as their term of validity has expired no question of revision, of course, arises. Among the temporary restrictions the three principal classes are financial (reparations), military (disarmament) and terri- torial. Of these the reparation issue is cleared up. It was settled once for all, actually if not formally, at Lausanne last summer. The disarmament issue is merged finally in the disarmament discussions at Geneva.
There remain the territorial clauses. And at this point the other three treaties, of St. Germain, Neuilly and the Trianon, must be brought in, for if the map of Europe is to be re-drawn Hungary certainly, and Austria and Bulgaria probably, will join Germany in claiming the return of territories taken from them by. the Paris decisions. It is a sobering prospect, and the proposal could not well have had a worse introduction. For the idea which by misfortune or design gained currency was that in the first instance Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany should consider the revision question together, and even now all the indications are that that is the method which commends itself to Mr. MacDonald, Signor Mussolini, and presumably to Herr Hitler, though definitely not to M. Daladier. The four Powers, if they ever do open conversations a quatre, will consist of one which will be asking a great deal and three others which while surrendering nothing themselves (unless indeed this country and France are ready to give up mandated areas and Italy to give up the Southern Tyrol) will call on smaller nations to make extensive surrenders. It is not surprising that Czech°, slovakia, Jugoslavia, Rumania and Poland view that proposal not merely without enthusiasm but with antagonism and suspicion.
The revision of treaties cannot be burked indefinitely. It may be that the wisest course—or rather the least dangerous course—is to face it now. If so the first need is to dispel once for all the idea that there are certain obvious changes in the map of Europe against which no reasonable man could find a word to say. The plain fact is that there is hardly a single one of the contested areas in which the correction of an existing injustice by a change of frontiers would not create other injustices hardly, if at all, less extensive and acute. It is the fashion . to malign the framers of the Treaty of Versailles, and to some extent they deserve it, but the difficulties they had to face will only be appreciated fully_ when the attempt to remodel their handiwork begins. At least the revision must be based on definite prin.. ciples, and it is necessary to agree at the outset what they are. Is it suggested—to take an obvious example —that Germany should regain some part of the Polish Corridor because Germans outside the Corridor are demanding it, or because the population in the Corridor (mainly non-German) desires it ? Is Czechoslovakia's tenure of various territories on the Danube to be called in Question because Hungarian propaganda has been astute and insistent, or for some more convincing reason t These are questions that must be answered, for one unfortunate but inevitable result of raising hopes of revision is that every nation that lost territory as a result of the War will be encouraged to put in claims for the return of practically all of' it.
One principle at any rate stands firm and can be contested by no signatory of the League of Nations' Covenant. Whatever territory a State has acquired by treaty it holds in full legal right. Neither the four Western Powers, nor the whole League of Nations by unanimous vote, has the power to take a square mile of Poland's territory from her. The much discussed Article XIX lays it down that the League Assembly may " advise the reconsideration " of treaties, but a treaty stands unalterable, except by force, till its sig- natories agree by free consent to alter it. The object of Article XIX is to enable the public opinion of the world to find friendly expression, which no State is justified in resenting. That may well be of great value. It is a serious matter for any country to withstand continuously the considered opinion of the world, as Japan may yet discover. But the question is manifestly one to' be handled with great delicacy and with a particular regard for the feelings of those nations from which a surrender of territory which they hold under sound title at present is expected. Nowhere ought such considerations to be given greater weight than in these islands, where it is easy to see a dozen reasons why Poland should give up part of the so-called Corridor, or Czechoslovakia the Grosse Schutt, or Rumania part of Transylvania, but where a thousand objections to the much more plausible proposition that we should surrender a colonial mandate leap immediately to the eye. It is as well to recognize that if revision is to be discussed questions like the future of Tanganyika and Togoland cannot be excluded. There was never either wisdom or justice in stripping Germany of all her colonies.
There is another very pertinent consideration. Frontiers and consequently territorial questions generally—would matter far less if the tariff barriers erected along them disappeared, if minorities populations living behind them received the treatment they are entitled to receive, and if war were effectively exorcised, so that the' demand for a strategic frontier was no longer heard. A claim for readjustment based on the existence of removable grievances is open to serious challenge. Frontier revision will be at the best a difficult and dangerous business, raising all kinds of =false hopes and stimulating all kinds of lin, reasonable demands. If the fruits of the Disarmament and the Economic Conferences are not to be garnered till treaties have-been revised they will rot where they hang. The process should be just the opposite of that. Every endeavour should be exerted, by the drastic reduction of armaments, and by the removal of artificial restric- tions on trade, to make frontiers much less important than they are to-day. After that some Commission of the League of Nations, or of the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles—certainly not a close committee of four Great Powers—might be appointed to consider what changes if any in the territorial dispositions made by the 1919 and 1920 treaties should be recommended. To establish the commission would be to give the principle of revision a recognition such as it has never had. If it worked without haste and in a spirit of manifest im- partiality any unanimous recommendations it might reach would. have a compelling moral authority.
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