the general nature of the contents of at
least the European ones--they were pub-
lished in the press in November--and
bad apprised the President; and Secre-
tary of State Lansing knew at least of
the Anglo-Japanese accord of 1915 with
regard to the conquered German islands
in the Pacific. These treaties, which
molded the final peace, were not so bad
as some publicists have painted them.
It is instructive to note that where they
were followed there was no sore point
left in the subsequent peace settlement.
Students of the war have excoriated the
treaties as proof of the naked imperial-
istic designs of the Allies as contrasted
with the hypocrisy of their professions of
fighting for the defense of democracy
and the rights of small nations. That the
treaties were tinctured with imperialism
and selfishness is without question; but
many commentators do not notice the
obvious fact that these treaties were not
the cause of the European War; they
were negotiated after the war bad al-
ready commenced. This holds true at
least for the Allied powers which went
to war in 1914. No spoils treaty ante-
dated the war. In the cases of Italy and
Roumania, the secret treaties by which
they entered the conflict represented
what the Allies bad to promise to them
in advance in order to bring them over.

There were five of these treaties or un-
derstandings, or groups of such, made to
solidify the enthusiasm of the original
Allies and to bring new ones into the
circle.

(1) Russia secured her claims by a
treaty with Great Britain and France
made in March, 1915, at the beginning
of the Allied attack on the Dardanelles
By this the two western Allies agreed
that Russia might annex Constantino-
ple and the Asiatic shore of the Bos-
porus and the Dardanelles, leaving free
transit of the straits for the merchant
ships of all nations. Russia on her part
agreed to the separation of the Caliph-
ate from Turkey and to sharing with
France and Great Britain an influence
over other portions of the Turkish Em-
pire, reserving to England particular in-
fluence in the neighborhood of the Suez
Canal and the Gulf of Persia--the British
buffer of influence in Persia also was to
be extended. These partitions of the
Turkish Empire were marked out with
more precision--conformable to the later
mandates to France and Great Britain--
in supplementary understandings (the
Sykes-Picot agreement of May 16, 1916,
and the agreement at St. Jean de Mau-
rienne, April 17, 1917), reserving for
Italy (in conformance with the Treaty of
London) a share in the region of Adalia
(which the entrance of Greece into the
war later stopped her from taking, after
the European peace). Thus did the Al-
lies imperturbably dispose of the terri-
tory of Germany's Turkish ally, that via
orous "sick man of Europe" near whose
bedside the European powers for a cen-
tury had been waiting either so anxious-
ly or so eagerly.

(2) Italy's claim to expansion had been
recognized in principle by the Treaty of
London (April 26, 1915) which brought,
or bought, that nation into the war. The
Central Powers bad been willing to
promise a redemption of Italy's irreden-
tist population at the end of the war, but
not to deliver immediate occupation of
the territory concerned. Ardent to weak-
en their enemy, the Allies promised the
irredentist territory with strategical con-
trol of the Adriatic and of the Alpine
passage into Austria, specifying a line
which delivered over to Italy a Slavic
and an Austrian irredentum at the
head of the Adriatic and on its eastern
shores.

-2-