Peaceless Europe | Page 4

and prepares fresh
conflicts abroad, are nothing but the expression of a status animae or
soul condition. Statesmen are the most directly responsible for the
continuation of a language of violence; they should be the first to speak
the language of peace.
F.S. NITTI.
ACQUAFREDDA IN BASILICATA.
September 30, 1921.
P.S.--"Peaceless Europe" is an entirely new book, which I have written
in my hermitage of Acquafredda, facing the blue Adriatic; it contains,
however, some remarks and notices which have already appeared in
articles written by me for the great American agency, the United Press,
and which have been reproduced by the American papers.

I have repeatedly stated that I have not published any document which
was not meant for publication; I have availed myself of my knowledge
of the most important international Acts and of all diplomatic
documents merely as a guide, but it is on facts that I have solidly based
my considerations.
J. Keynes and Robert Lansing have already published some very
important things, but no secret documents; recently, however, Tardieu
and Poincaré, in the interest of the French nationalist thesis which they
sustain, have published also documents of a very reserved nature.
Tardieu's book is a documentary proof of the French Government's
extremist attitude during the conference, amply showing that the
present form of peace has been desired almost exclusively by France,
and that the others have been unwilling parties to it. Besides his articles
in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Poincaré has recently published in the
Temps (September 12, 1921) a whole secret correspondence between
Poincaré, President of the Republic, Clemenceau, President of the
Council of Ministers, the American Delegation, and, above all, Lloyd
George.

CONTENTS
1. EUROPE WITHOUT PEACE
2. THE PEACE TREATIES AND THE CONTINUATION OF THE
WAR
3. THE PEACE TREATIES: THEIR ORIGIN AND AIMS
4. THE CONQUERORS AND THE CONQUERED
5. THE INDEMNITY
FROM THE DEFEATED ENEMY AND THE ANXIETIES OF THE
VICTORS
6. EUROPE'S POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION AND PEACE

POLICY
INDEX

The author includes in the book numerous secret official documents
that emanated from the Peace Conference and which came into his
hands in his position, at that time, as Italian Prime Minister. Among
these is a long and hitherto unpublished secret letter sent by Lloyd
George to Nitti, Wilson, Clemenceau, and the other members of the
Peace Conference.

I
EUROPE WITHOUT PEACE
Is there anyone who still remembers Europe in the first months of 1914
or calls to mind the period which preceded the first year of the War? It
all seems terribly remote, something like a prehistoric era, not only
because the conditions of life have changed, but because our viewpoint
on life has swerved to a different angle.
Something like thirty million dead have dug a chasm between two ages.
War killed many millions, disease accounted for many more, but the
hardiest reaper has been famine. The dead have built up a great cold
barrier between the Europe of yesterday and the Europe of to-day.
We have lived through two historic epochs, not through two different
periods. Europe was happy and prosperous, while now, after the terrible
World War, she is threatened with a decline and a reversion to brutality
which suggest the fall of the Roman Empire. We ourselves do not quite
understand what is happening around us. More than two-thirds of
Europe is in a state of ferment, and everywhere there prevails a vague
sense of uneasiness, ill-calculated to encourage important collective
works. We live, as the saying is, "from hand to mouth."

Before 1914 Europe had enjoyed a prolonged period of peace, attaining
a degree of wealth and civilization unrivalled in the past.
In Central Europe Germany had sprung up. After the Napoleonic
invasions, in the course of a century, Germany, which a hundred years
ago seemed of all European countries the least disposed to militarism,
had developed into a great military monarchy. From being the most
particularist country Germany had in reality become the most unified
state. But what constituted her strength was not so much her army and
navy as the prestige of her intellectual development. She had achieved
it laboriously, almost painfully, on a soil which was not fertile and
within a limited territory, but, thanks to the tenacity of her effort, she
succeeded in winning a prominent place in the world-race for
supremacy. Her universities, her institutes for technical instruction, her
schools, were a model to the whole world. In the course of a few years
she had built up a merchant fleet which seriously threatened those of
other countries. Having arrived too late to create a real colonial empire
of her own, such as those of France and England, she nevertheless
succeeded in exploiting her colonies most intelligently.
In the field of industry she appeared to beat all competitors from a