Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/175½
Statement of Professor R. J. Kerner to the Commissioners Plenipotentiary
Bolshevism and the States of Central Europe
The writer, having just returned from Central Europe where he was a member of Professor Coolidge’s commission for two months, presents the following memorandum.
The conclusions reached are:
- (1)
- To curb Bolshevism on the one side and to prevent a German
revanche from developing on the
other, the western allies should
- (a)
- proclaim publicly their adherence to a policy of economic and social amelioration;
- (b)
- give immediate and effective economic assistance (and actually deliver it) in food, raw materials and capital to the newly founded states, i. e., to the Czecho-Slovak Republic, to Jugo-Slavia, Poland, Finland and the Ukraine (?) and make it possible for these states to engage in commerce with the allies.
- (c)
- send political advisers to the same to assist in guiding these states so that they can be organized on a sound basis.
- (2)
- The Allies should outline a public policy toward Germany, German Austria, and Magyaria, which would offer them economic assistance in return for their adoption of a policy which will frankly admit their defeat, which will publicly disavow the idea of a revanche, and which will disavow and discontinue their participation in Bolshevist propaganda whose purpose it is to wreck the new states.
Explanation of conclusions:
Bolshevism is a political party with an economic and social platform. It can flourish permanently only where the educated classes (i. e., the intellectuals and entrepreneurs) are separated from the working classes by great economic and social differences and where the former can be isolated and destroyed by a determined minority which has obtained control of the technical equipment of war. The spread of Bolshevism cannot be checked by force, except by a tremendous undertaking in men and materials. It can best be attacked by a programme of radical economic and social amelioration initiated in a people as yet sound. Its cure, or rather, its defeat in the countries where it has already manifested itself on a sufficiently large scale is a gradual one, depending upon the amount of economic assistance which such countries or peoples absolutely need from without, and upon the number of educated people left behind among them or which can be developed among them for purposes of arousing a progressive leadership. [Page 353] In such countries a leadership which is founded on monarchic reaction is doomed to failure.
Germany is a republic without republicans, just as Russia, or German Austria or Magyaria. In each of these, excepting in Russia, the old bureaucracy still remains. There men who are not really socialists are trying to socialize the state. Meanwhile the feeling of the radical leaders (i. e. those inclined to Bolshevism) is that another and more thorough revolution must come before the old foundations are uprooted.
The Germans, as a whole, do not consider themselves to have been defeated in this war. Neither do the German Austrians nor the Magyars. They argue they were merely misled by their monarchs, and that in face of the fact that the war was greeted in 1914 with a tremendous enthusiasm by the people of the Central Powers. Now they are indignant that they should suffer at the Congress of Versailles at the hands of the Allies for the sake of their kings.
Two definite currents of solution for their difficulties are moving among the German people. One is that of preparation for a revanche of all the Germans. It is the aristocratic solution of reaction. The other is Bolshevism, i. e. to Bolshevize Central Europe and then overwhelm the rest. Neither is acceptable to the Entente. The intellectual leaders of the middle and aristocratic classes in German life do not see their possible role of a middle stand between the Entente and Bolshevism, and since an immediate policy of revanche is impossible, the Bolsheviks are seeking to marshal the common indignation of the German people—their secret desire for a revanche—along with the cry that the Peace of Versailles will be unacceptable. They will lay down their arms as did the Russian Bolsheviks at Brest-Litovsk but declare a war of revolution, public or secret—a revolution which is to sweep away every vestige of middle class government in Central and Western Europe, and which it is hoped will overwhelm the rest of the world in due time. In this is seen the tactical advantage which the German Bolsheviks will have over the middle and aristocratic class revanche which must work its way on a foundation of reaction and which can not offer the people an economic and social paradise but merely another great war, albeit it be a national one pure and simple this time. Thus Bolshevism has the better chance in Germany in the immediate future.
The bourgeois west must meet the problem in a direct manner. It was the refusal of the absolutist and centralistic central and eastern Europe after 1815 under the guidance of Metternich and Nicholas I which created the fruitful basis for present day Bolshevism. They met the spread of liberalism in the west with the application of force and terror and the prevention of free political education in the east. [Page 354] The result has been the wide gulf between their thinking and their laboring classes.
The present Bolshevist wave cannot be held back by reaction, but it may be gradually tempered by an intelligent and progressive policy of economic and social reform in those countries as yet sound. It is necessary for those who determine the policies of these states to distinguish between three types of shibboleths which have become and will be a part of the catechism of every statesman, namely: (1) a radical and progressive democracy in which all elements may still work out their existence on lines of moderate economic and social self-interest; (2) socialism, which is a state of society in which a smaller number of class elements can find room in which to exist; and (3) Bolshevism, which has already been defined as a political party ruled by a small aristocratic cast of leaders (most of them bourgeois in origin) and the proletariat in which the latter are supposedly the gainers, but in both of which in reality a small minority (largely Jewish) really rules and which makes organized social and political life an impossibility.
The west can meet this onrushing current by two methods, first, by putting its own house in order, i. e. adopting the shibboleths of the radical and progressive democracy and advocating a series of gradual but fundamental economic reforms, and second by giving immediate and effective economic and political assistance to those states or nations which are as yet sound or which are in a measure sound. It will be found that this will answer the highest dictates of sound and upright policy for the Allies. Thus the Entente should give immediate and effective economic and political assistance to the Czecho-Slovak republic, which bids fair to remain, if assisted, a bastion of sound democratic ideas in Rurope and where the nation is as yet untainted with Bolshevism. From the point of view of Bolshevism next in order of soundness is Jugo-Slavia, then Poland, then Finland and finally the Ukraine. By economic assistance is meant the immediate moving, over all obstacles of transportation, etc., of large quantities of food, raw materials and money and the immediate opening of these states to trade so that they may begin to function as soon as possible. By political assistance is meant the sending of political advisers to guide the young states to a sound point of view, to give confidence to the new statesmen, to counteract Bolshevist, German national and Magyar national propaganda, and to introduce now and then small detachments of soldiers, often only a hundred or more men, to be stationed at strategic places, but to be used largely to overawe the aforementioned propaganda.
For the west to ignore the need of setting itself sternly to the realization of some such plan of internal house-cleaning and of immediate [Page 355] and effective economic and political assistance to the new states will be to court quick and permanent disaster to themselves and the new states and to lose the victory which they had at last won.
As regards Germany, the German Austrians, and the Magyars, a strict policy of justice (not of military terror or of starvation) should be followed in which the offer will be made that they will be taken back into the family of states or nations only when the groups which rule these countries recognize the defeat of the Germans and Magyars in the war, when they frankly give up their not too secret policy of a future revanche and when they openly join hands for the extirpation of Bolshevism. They must also be required to give up supporting Bolshevist movements in neighboring states.
P. S. This memorandum can be amplied [amplified?], if desired.