It is inevitable that a settlement made in a
conference of belligerents alone will be shortsighted, harsh, limited by
merely incidental necessities, and obsessed by the idea of hostilities
and rivalries continuing perennially; it will be a trading of advantages
for subsequent attacks. It will be a settlement altogether different in
effect as well as in spirit from a world settlement made primarily to
establish a new phase in the history of mankind.
Let me take three instances of the impossibility of complete victory
_on either side_ giving a solution satisfactory to the conscience and
intelligence of reasonable men.
The first--on which I will not expatiate, for everyone knows of its
peculiar difficulty--is Poland.
The second is a little one, but one that has taken hold of my
imagination. In the settlement of boundaries preceding this war the
boundary between Serbia and north-eastern Albania was drawn with an
extraordinary disregard of the elementary needs of the Albanians of that
region. It ran along the foot of the mountains which form their summer
pastures and their refuge from attack, and it cut their mountains off
from their winter pastures and market towns. Their whole economic life
was cut to pieces and existence rendered intolerable for them. Now an
intelligent Third Party settling Europe would certainly restore these
market towns, Ipek, Jakova, and Prisrend, to Albania.
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