Hugendubel.info - Die B2B Online-Buchhandlung 

Merkliste
Die Merkliste ist leer.
Bitte warten - die Druckansicht der Seite wird vorbereitet.
Der Druckdialog öffnet sich, sobald die Seite vollständig geladen wurde.
Sollte die Druckvorschau unvollständig sein, bitte schliessen und "Erneut drucken" wählen.

Peacemaking, 1919

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
334 Seiten
Englisch
Faber & Fabererschienen am04.07.2013Main
'Of all branches of human endeavour, diplomacy is the most protean.' That is how Harold Nicolson begins this book. It is an apt opening. The Paris Conference of 1919, attended by thirty-two nations, had the supremely challenging task of attempting to bring about a lasting peace after the global catastrophe of the Great War. Harold Nicolson was a member of the British delegation. His book is in two parts. In the first he provides an account of the conference, in the second his diary covering his six month stint. There is a piquant counterpoise between the two. Of his diary he writes, 'I should wish it to be read as people read the reminiscences of a subaltern in the trenches. There is the same distrust of headquarters; the same irritation against the staff-officer who interrupts; the same belief that one's own sector is the centre of the battle-front; the same conviction that one is, with great nobility of soul, winning the war quite single-handed.' The diary ends with prophetic disillusionment, 'To bed, sick of life.' As a first-hand account of one of the most important events shaping the modern world this book remains a classic.mehr
Verfügbare Formate
BuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR29,70
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
EUR18,99

Produkt

Klappentext'Of all branches of human endeavour, diplomacy is the most protean.' That is how Harold Nicolson begins this book. It is an apt opening. The Paris Conference of 1919, attended by thirty-two nations, had the supremely challenging task of attempting to bring about a lasting peace after the global catastrophe of the Great War. Harold Nicolson was a member of the British delegation. His book is in two parts. In the first he provides an account of the conference, in the second his diary covering his six month stint. There is a piquant counterpoise between the two. Of his diary he writes, 'I should wish it to be read as people read the reminiscences of a subaltern in the trenches. There is the same distrust of headquarters; the same irritation against the staff-officer who interrupts; the same belief that one's own sector is the centre of the battle-front; the same conviction that one is, with great nobility of soul, winning the war quite single-handed.' The diary ends with prophetic disillusionment, 'To bed, sick of life.' As a first-hand account of one of the most important events shaping the modern world this book remains a classic.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9780571309245
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2013
Erscheinungsdatum04.07.2013
AuflageMain
Seiten334 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse1134 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.1295078
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe




INTRODUCTION TO THE EDITION OF 1943


SINCE this book was first published in 1933 we have experienced a Second German War. Before many months have passed we may be faced with the necessity of negotiating a second peace. These negotiations will take place in circumstances of even greater strain and complexity than those which overwhelmed the peacemakers of 1919. The only value which this study of the Paris Peace Conference possesses is that it is an authentic record, although written with the limited vision of a junior official, of the manner in which knowledge and good intentions were swept away by the torrent of events. That torrent, when the time comes to frame the next settlement, will be ten times more formidable; there is no reason to suppose that the wisdom, integrity and endurance of the statesmen and their electorates will be ten times more solid.

The first misfortune of those who went to Paris in 1919 was that they had not foreseen the forces of fear, ambition and selfishness which victory would unleash. They did not realize that the turbulent waters of any post-war world can be contained only by the concrete of rigid principle and the dykes of a firmly enforced programme. They relied upon the wattle of improvisation and a few hastily gathered sods of compromise; these were quickly overrun by the flood.

It may be useful, therefore, in preparing a new edition of Peacemaking 1919, to reconsider the conclusions which, ten years ago, seemed so obvious; and to suggest some at least of the lessons which the negotiators of future peace treaties can learn from the errors and misfortunes of their predecessors.

To my mind there are twelve main lessons.

1. We have learnt that those who desire to make peace must first understand the causes of war.

I should like to feel that a group of United States scholars, as upright and as intelligent as those who formed the nucleus of Colonel House´s Enquiry´ in 1917, were devoting their combined attention to the study and analysis of the several factors which drove an unwilling Europe towards the catastrophe of 1939. Without some such diagnosis we shall be in danger of applying remedies to the symptoms of the illness rather than to its causes. Even in regard to the symptoms there is no general agreement. There are those who attribute the disaster solely to the monomania of Herr Hitler; there are those who throw all the blame upon the pugnacious temperament of the German people; there are those who, in their ignorance, believe that the whole fault lies with the diplomacy of the Great Powers or more specifically with the iniquities of the Treaty of Versailles. The Germans, on the other hand, have been taught to believe that the instigators of the war were the bankers and capitalists of London or New York who are supposed, in a moment of inconceivable aberration, to have plotted their own destruction. Many serious students concentrate upon the economic and social aspects of the malady and trace its origin to inflation, the depression of 1929, and the unemployment problems which were thereby produced. Others again emphasize the demographic aspect, and define as the most important single factor the denial to over-populated countries of an emigration outlet to Australia and the United States. And the determinists take the simplified view that the poor Powers, observing that the rich Powers were showing signs of decay, supposed that their opportunity had come at last.

No single explanation can, however, account for the fact that a world which, by a vast majority, was a pacific world, was plunged against its will into the widest and most intense war in history. Much detached study will be necessary if the several explanations are to be stated in their true order of importance. A mistake in diagnosis is certain to create errors of treatment.

I suggest that in their study of this almost unanswerable problem the new United States Enquiry´ will derive but scant assistance from the purely political or historical approach; they will find it more useful to bear constantly in mind the analogy of medicine. Wars, like illnesses, are produced not so much by any identifiable infection, as by the action of some bacillus upon an unhealthy organism. The health or ill-health of an organism, moreover is not to be defined in isolated terms, or ascribed solely to the absence or presence of certain factors. It is the combination of varied elements, (conditioned by the temperament, environment, past history and present stage of development of the victim) which renders an organism either subject or immune to the bacillus of war. To diagnose the condition of an individual (even when given the full advantages of time, apparatus and co-operation) is a task requiring immense scientific experience; to diagnose the condition of a nation is a task which may well exceed the capacity of the human brain.

Yet unless we understand the real causes which induced the German people (as distinct from the National Socialist party) to go to war, then we shall not found the future peace upon conditions which shall eliminate from the German body this apparently endemic disease.

2. After a long war it is impossible to make a quick peace.

The negotiation of a reasonable peace-treaty requires calm and time. Calm is denied to the negotiators owing to the passions aroused by victory after war; time is also denied to them owing to the impatience of their electorates to return to civilian life. However compelling may be the wisdom possessed by the statesmen who negotiate the next peace treaty, the popular pressure to which they will be exposed will be even more embarrassing than that which hampered statesmen at the Paris Peace Conference. The present war is likely to be longer, and has certainly been more atrocious, than that of 1914-18. On the one hand the desire for retribution, especially in the occupied countries of Europe, will be even more intense than before; on the other hand the clamour for demobilization and a rapid peace is unlikely to be less insistent. The probability that war with Japan will continue after the defeat of Germany will not ease the problem, although it may present it in a different form. The attention of the United States will be diverted away from Europe towards the Pacific: the difficulty of mobilizing large British forces for the Far East will not be diminished if other large British armies have to remain mobilized for garrison duties in central Europe. Yet although the strain of maintaining energy over a wide area will be even greater than before, the need for time will be more essential. We shall be dealing with a Europe racked by hatred, fear, nationalism and hunger. It will take many months of intensive relief work before Europe recovers her sanity. But until she does so, we cannot hope to make a sound or lasting peace.

It will thus be the duty of all responsible people, the duty of Parliament and of the Press, to risk unpopularity by telling the people that they cannot hope to pass in a single night from war to peace. The Armistice will have to be followed by a long and weary period of rehabilitation and reconstruction; peace will have to be created gradually and in different ways in different areas; only after months, perhaps even years, of preparation can the final Congress be assembled. That is a lesson which we must both learn and teach.

3. It is not enough for the victorious Powers to agree in advance upon their general aims and principles: they must also agree as to the means by which these aims shall be secured and these principles established.

The delays and confusion to which the Paris Peace Conference was exposed were due, not to difficulties between the conquerors and the conquered, but to a clash of interest and principle between the conquerors themselves.

Of the five Great Powers, three (namely the United States, France and Great Britain) desired above all things to obtain peace and security. Two of them, however-namely Italy and Japan-desired to increase their power and possessions. This led from the outset to a divergence of purpose. Even the three western Powers, whose aim was security above all things, had conflicting conceptions as to the means by which this security could be achieved. The Americans, and to some extent the British, imagined that peace could be founded upon the reasonableness of democratic institutions: the French believed that it could only be achieved by concrete guarantees against any future German aggression. The compromise which resulted was not sufficiently reasonable to carry consent and not sufficiently forcible to facilitate compulsion.

It is possible that at the next Peace Conference the same differences of conception will not occur. All parties may be agreed that practical steps must be taken to deprive Germany of the prospect of waging a successful war. The fact that modern warfare depends for its success less upon man-power than upon machines will do something to simplify this problem. When once this central aim is accepted and agreement reached as to the concrete methods by which it can be attained, it can be hoped that the Powers will be able to...


mehr