One of the main merits of Balbus is that he
is not dominated by a single idea. It is frequently stated that the fundamental error of the negotiators of the 1919 settlement was that their minds were obsessed by the formula of " self-determination " even as the minds of those who negotiated the more durable Vienna treaties of 1814-1815 were obsessed by the doctrines of " legitimacy " and the " balance of power." We went to Paris in that January of 1919 fired by the ideal of " liberation " and convinced that the main cause of war was to be sought in the vague phrase " oppressed nationalities." We felt that if only the new frontiers of Europe could be drawn in such a manner as to group peoples of a given nationality under governments of their own choosing, then the naturally pacific instincts of man would be accorded unrestricted development and an era of peace would be ensured. It was only when we came to work out the details that we discovered that Europe was not a parchment upon which some new pattern could easily be traced as on a palimpsest, but an organism of flesh and arteries and veins. We found, for instance, that the economic structure of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been evolved through centuries, and that to follow the strictly national frontiers would be to sever vital lines of communication and to separate productive areas from both their markets and their sources of supply. All discussions between human beings are subject to the short-circuiting produced by facile phrases. The most dangerous of all the words current during the Paris Conference was the French word " viable." It was essential, we were assured, to render Czechoslovakia "viable," or, in other words, immediately capable of a political and economic existence of her own. Rumania must also be " viable," and so must. be the kingdom of the Serbs, the Croats and the Slovenes. Had we interpreted that word " viable " as meaning " economically prosperous," it might have proved a valuable corrective to our orgy of " self-determination " ; but as we interpreted it as meaning " economically self-supporting," we were tempted to fiddle artificially with the frontier-lines and thereby to create minority-problems more dangerous than those which we were able to solve.
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