Page 200 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

interwar years (1918–1939) 1019

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can.
Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving. • Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885)

tected by an association of independent nations that wounding 1,200. After hearing that the Versailles Treaty
would cooperate to maintain order. Although the desire awarded Germany’s concession rights in the Shandong
for peace and international cooperation was fairly wide- Peninsula to Japan, thousands of Chinese students
spread, most delegates tried to push the settlement in a demonstrated in Beijing and continued to boycott
direction that optimized their own national interests. Japanese goods. In the midst of all this political unrest,
Despite Wilson’s continuing insistence on the universal an influenza epidemic was circling the globe. It spread
right of self-determination, the Allied powers (Russia, via trade routes, and outbreaks occurred in North
France, England, Italy, and the United States but espe- America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil, the South Pacific,
cially France and England) emerged from the peace set- and in India, where the mortality rate was particularly
tlement with more territories than ever before.The vast devastating. The epidemic only intensified the sense of
spoils included oil fields in the former Ottoman Middle worldwide unease.
East and mineral-rich territories in what had been Ger- Despite such unease, in many ways the Treaty of Ver-
man East Africa. To appease Wilson, the victorious sailles and the establishment of the League of Nations
powers had agreed to manage the territories as “man- were a great victory. They filled the advocates of inter-
dates” until they were ready to govern themselves rather nationalism with hope that peace through disarmament
than simply annexing them. and cooperation might yet be possible. However, the
peace left nearly as many loose ends as the war had.
Unrest and Revolt The harsh reparation terms that the peace inflicted
The Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations—the upon Germany, along with the contentious ways that it
intergovernmental organization that Wilson envisioned had accorded statehood to some territories and denied
—went into effect on 10 January 1920. However, even it to others, all but guaranteed that further contention
before the treaty was officially signed, dissatisfaction, would accompany efforts to create international stabil-
malaise, and revolt emerged all over the map. Following ity. People widely felt that the treaty had not granted
in the footsteps of the Russian Revolution (whose lead- many people the recompense they desired for the losses
ers thought the League of Nations was a bourgeois they had suffered.Woodrow Wilson could not get even
sham), revolutionary politics were brewing in Hungary his own country to agree to the treaty’s terms; on 19
under the leadership of Bela Kun (1835–1939), in March 1920, the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the Treaty
Bavaria under the leadership of Eugene Levine, and in of Versailles and in doing so refused to participate in the
Germany under the leadership of Karl Liebknech League of Nations. This shocking event did not augur
(1871–1919) and Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919). well for the fate of the Fourteen Points and the world
Labor and/or race riots broke out in Bolivia, Brazil, that Wilson envisioned.
Argentina, and the United States, while Mexico was Despite the absence of Germany, Russia, and the
locked in a civil war that had begun in 1910. Further- United States the League of Nations set about fulfilling
more, fear of the socialist call for worldwide revolution its aims and functions. In 1921–1922 a conference in
spurred counterrevolutionary forces, and informal Washington drew up a naval treaty limiting the capital
armies or vigilante groups set out to take revenge on ships of Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and
left-wing activism in the name of nationalism. Italy. Furthermore, a conference on disarmament met in
Revolutionary activity and social unrest were taking Genoa in 1922, and in 1925 in Locarno, Switzerland,
place in south and east Asia. On 13 April 1919, Indian treaties were drawn between Britain, France, Germany,
civilians were protesting British policies at Armistar in Italy, and Belgium guaranteeing the western European
Punjab when the British general Reginald Dyer ordered boundaries against violation. However, while the
soldiers to fire on the crowds, killing 379 Indians and Europe-led League of Nations was trying to “make the