Presentation of the Peace Treaty Terms to the German Delegation on May 7, 1919, 3 p.m.
Session Held at the Trianon Palace Hotel, Versailles
Source: Norman H. Davis, box 44, Paris Peace Conference.
Communication of the Preliminaries of Peace to the German Delegates.
M. CLEMENCEAU said: The Session is open.
(The German plenipotentiaries were announced and entered the room.)
M. CLEMENCEAU speaks in French:
M. MANTOUX interprets the foregoing:
Gentlemen, Plenipotentiaries of the German Empire. It is neither the time nor the place for superfluous words. You have before you the accredited plenipotentiaries of all the Small and Great Powers united to fight together in the war that has been so cruelly imposed upon them. The time has come when we must settle our accounts. You have asked for peace. We are ready to give you peace.
We shall present to you now a book which contains our conditions. You will be given every facility to examine these conditions, and the time necessary for it. Everything will be done with the courtesy that is the privilege of civilised nations.
To give you my thought completely, you will find us ready to give you any explanation you want, but we must say at the same time that this Second Treaty of Versailles has cost us too much not to take on our side all the necessary precautions and guarantees that that peace shall be a lasting one.
The above was thereupon translated into German.
M. CLEMENCEAU speaks in French.
M. MANTOUX interprets the foregoing:
I will give you notice of the procedure that has been adopted by the Conference for discussion and if anyone has any observation to offer they will have the right to do so. No oral discussion is to take place, and the observations of the German Delegation will have to be submitted in writing. The German plenipotentiaries will know that they have the maximum period of 15 days within which to present in English and French their written observations on the whole of the Treaty, the headings of which are as follows:
League of Nations
Geographical frontiers of Germany
Political clauses for Europe (Belgium, Luxemburg, Sarre, Alsace-Lorraine, Austria, Czecho-Slovachia, Poland and Eastern Prussia, Denmark, Heligoland)
Clauses concerning Russia and the Russian States
Recognition of new European States
Political clauses for countries outside Europe
General clause of renunciation colonies, Siam, Liberia, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey and Bulgaria, Shantung
Military, naval and aerial clauses
War prisoners
Responsibilities and punishments
Reparations and restitutions
Financial clauses
Economical clauses
Ports, waterways, rivers and railways
Aerial navigation
Organisation of Labour
Guarantees and occupation of territories
Final clauses
Execution of the armistice, end of the war, state of Peace
Before the expiration of the aforesaid period of fifteen days the German Delegates will be entitled to send their reply on particular headings of the Treaty or to ask questions in regard to them.
After having examined the observations presented within the aforementioned periods, the aforementioned periods, the Supreme Council will send their answer in writing to the German delegation, and determine the period within which the final global answer must be given by this delegation.
The President wishes to add that when we receive, after two or three or four or five days any observation from the German delegation on any point of the Treaty we shall not wait until the end of the fifteen days to give our answers. We shall at once proceed in the way indicated by this document.
The foregoing was translated into German.
M. BROCKDORFF-RANTZAU speaks in German
Translation of the foregoing:
Gentlemen, we are deeply impressed with the sublime task which has brought us hither to give a durable peace to the world. We are under no illusion as to the extent of our defeat and the degree of our want of power. We know that the power of the German arms is broken. We know the power of the hatred which we encounter here, and we have heard the passionate demand that the vanquishers may make us pay as the vanquished, and shall punish those who are worthy of being punished.
It is demanded from us that we shall confess ourselves to be the only ones guilty of the war. Such a confession in my mouth will be a lie. We are far from declining and responsibility that this great war of the world has come to pass, and that it was made in the way in which it was made. The attitude of the former German Government at the Hague Peace Conference, its actions and omissions in the tragic 12 days of July, have certainly contributed to the disaster. But we energetically deny that Germany and its people, who were convinced that they were making a war of defense, were alone guilty.
Nobody will want to contend that the disaster took its course only in the disastrous moment when the successor of Austria-Hungary fell the victim of murderous hands. In the last 50 years Imperialism of all European States has chronically poisoned the international situation. The policy of retaliation and the policy of expansion and the disregard of the rights of peoples to determine their own destiny, has contributed to the illness of Europe which saw its crisis in the world war.
Russian mobilisation took from the statesmen the possibility of healing and gave the decision into the hands of the Military Powers. Public opinion in all the countries of our adversaries is resounding with the crimes which Germany is said to have committed in war. Here also we are ready to confess wrong that may have been done.
We have not come here to belittle the responsibility of the men who have waged the war politically and economically, and to deny any crimes which may have been committed against the rights of peoples. We repeat the declaration which has been made in the German Reichstag, at the beginning of the War, that is to say, "Wrong has been done to Belgium", and we are willing to repair it.
But in the manner of making war, also, Germany is not the only guilty one. Every nation knows of deeds and of people which the best nationals only remember with regret. I do not want to answer by reproaches to reproaches, but I ask them to remember, when reparation is demanded, not to forget the armistice. It took you six weeks till we got it at last, and six months till we came to know our conditions of peace. Crimes in war may not be excusable, but they are committed in the struggle for victory, and in the defence of national existence, and passions are aroused which make the conscience of peoples blunt.
The hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who have perished since the 11th of November by reason of the blockade were killed with cold deliberation, after our adversaries had conquered and victory had been assured to them. Think of that when you speak of guilt and punishment.
The measure of guilt of all those who have taken part can only be stated by impartial inquest before a Neutral Commission before which all the principal persons of the tragedy are allowed to speak, and to which all the archives are open. We have demanded such an inquest and we repeat this demand. In this Conference also where we stand towards our adversaries alone and without any allies we are not quite without protection. You yourselves have brought us an ally, namely, the right which is guaranteed by the Treaty, by the principles of peace.
The Allied and Associated Governments have foresworn in the time between the 5th of October and the 5th of November 1918, a peace of justice on their banner. On the 5th October, 1918, the German Government proposed the principles of the President of the United States of North America as the basis of peace, and on the 5th of November their Secretary of State, Lansing, declared that the Allied and Associated Powers agreed to this basis, with two definite deviations. The principles of President Wilson have thus become binding for both parties to the war: for you as well as for us and also for our former allies. The various principles demand from us heavy national and economic sacrifices, but the holy fundamental rights of all peoples are protected by this treaty. The conscience of the world is behind it. There is no nation which might violate it without punishment. You will find us ready to examine, upon this basis, the preliminary peace which you have proposed to us, with a firm intention of re-building, in common work with you, that which has been destroyed, and repairing any wrong that may have been committed, principally the wrong to Belgium, and to show to mankind new aims of political and social progress.
Considering the tremendous quantity of problems which arise, we ought, as soon as possible, to make an examination of the principal tasks by special Commissions of experts on the basis of the Treaty which you have proposed to us.
In this it will be our chief task to re-establish the devastated vigour of mankind, and of all the people who have taken part, by an international protection of life, health and liberty of the working classes.
As our next aim I consider the reconstruction of the territories of Belgium and of Northern France which have been occupied by us and which have been destroyed by War.
To do so we have taken upon ourselves the solemn obligation, and we are resolved to execute it to the extent which will have been agreed upon between us. This task we cannot do without the cooperation of our former adversaries. We cannot accomplish the work without the technical and financial participation of the victorious peoples, and you cannot execute it without us.
Improverished Europe must desire that the reconstruction shall be fulfilled with the greatest success, and with as little expense as is in any way possible. This desire can only be fulfilled by a clear understanding about the best methods to be employed. It would be the worst method to go on and have the work done by German prisoners of war. Certainly this work is cheap, but it would cost the world dear if hatred and despair shall seize the German people, when they consider that their brothers and sons and fathers, who are prisoners, are kept prisoners beyond the preliminary peace in the former penal work.
Without any immediate solution of this question, which has been drawn out too long, we cannot come to a durable peace. Our experts of both sides will have to examine how the German people may come up to their financial obligations to repair without succumbing under the heavy burden. A crash would bereave those who have a right to repair of the advantages to which they have a claim, and would draw after it an irretrievable disorder of the whole European economical system. The vanquishers, as well as the vanquished people, must guard against this menacing danger with its incalculable consequences. There is only one means of banishing it: - unlimited confession of the economical and social solidarity of all peoples in a free and rising League of Nations.
Gentlemen, the sublime thought to be derived from the most terrible disaster in the history of mankind is the League of Nations - the greatest progress in the development of mankind has been pronounced and will make its way. Only if the gates of the League of Nations are thrown open to all who are of good will, can the aim be attained, and only then the dead of this war will not have died in vain.
The German people in their hearts are ready to take upon themselves their heavy lot if the bases of peace which have been established are not any more shaken. The peace which may not be defended in the name of right before the world always calls forth new resistances against it. Nobody will be capable of subscribing to it with good conscience for it will not be possible of fulfillment. Nobody could be able to take upon himself the guarantee of its execution which ought to lie in its signature.
We shall examine the document handed to us with good will and in the hope that the final result of our interview may be subscribed to by all of us.
M. CLEMENCEAU: Has anybody any more observations to offer? Does no one wish to speak? If not, the meeting is closed.
Thereupon, at 4:05 p.m. the meeting closed.