Liberals in America Flee Wilson,

Shocked By Treaty.

Can Germany Survive?

Special to The Great War Project.

(20 May) The Germans rush a copy of the translated treaty to Berlin, according to historian Thomas Fleming’s account of these days a century ago.

“Over night,” he reports, “Wilson went from the most admired to the most hated man in Germany.”

In their rage and despair, the Germans printed several thousand copies of the treaty, and distributed them all over Berlin.

The president of Germany, Friedrich Ebert, calls it “a monstrous document.”

The head of the German defense machine roars that “it was time to tell America to go to hell. The German Chancellor called Wilson a hypocrite, and said the treaty was the vilest crime in history.”

A crowd gathers at the American Embassy, and chants: “Where is Wilson’s peace? Where are the Fourteen Points?”

The German Chancellor orders his delegates in Versailles “to inform the Allies that the treaty is unbearable and unfulfillable.”

A copy of the treaty quickly reaches American shores, where it immediately sparks sharp discussion in American newspapers.

Liberals in America do not welcome its terms. They are already distressed by the treaty’s handling of the League of Nations, with its implicit support for the British Empire in perpetuity. They are appalled when they see the League linked to the punitive treaty.

They too, Fleming writes, “lost all confidence in Wilson.”

One newspaper editor writes: “The League’s tilt to the conservative side of things was bad enough.

But now it was tied to a peace of intrigue, selfish aggression, and naked imperialism.”

One editor describes the peace conference as “the madness at Versailles,” and dismisses Wilson, whom he and his colleagues had supported until now.”

On May 24^th the Nation Magazine publishes a special edition titled “This Is Not Peace.” It is a document that states baldly, Wilson’s supporters had made a terrible mistake… backing Wilson and his war. The magazine called the treaty “an inhuman monster.”

Americans would be fools to support a treaty “that could not last.”

The writer sees only one solution, an American withdrawal “from the whole sordid mess.”

The famous columnist Walter Lippman, who had supported Wilson’s war for the past two years, put it this way: The League of Nations is fundamentally diseased. He begins denouncing it everywhere, even going so far as to say it was all Wilson’s fault.

Much of the mainstream media is hardly more understanding. In a mocking tone, the Cleveland Press for one, taunts:

“It’s a hard bed Heinie, but who made it? “

The New York Times editorializes: “It is a terrible punishment the German people and their mad rulers have brought upon themselves. Can Germany live under these conditions? All the world can see that they are terribly severe.“

The world knows too that they are just.”

And the reaction is much harsher among the Allies.

In Britain, editors gloat that that the treaty would leave Germany an unrecognizable ghost of the empire, bloated as it was with criminal annexations, arrogant with wealth, and crazed with the consciousness of unparalleled military power.”