Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [179]
Unfortunately, Belgium had few champions. Wilson, who had made the restoration of the country one of his Fourteen Points, was preoccupied with bigger issues. The French suspected the Belgians of trying to annex the little duchy of Luxembourg, and the British thought they were being greedy. Lloyd George had a furious scene with the Belgian prime minister over Belgium’s “preposterous” demands: “I had to tell him quite plainly that the Belgians lost comparatively few men in the war, and that, when all was said, Belgium had not made greater sacrifices than Great Britain.”14
Belgium’s cause was not helped by its foreign minister. A neat, clever little man, convinced of the justice of his cause, Paul Hymans lectured the Council of Four and complained loudly and at length when he felt that he or his country had been slighted. On one occasion, when he was in full spate, he exclaimed, “I wish there was something I could do for Belgium.” Clemenceau roused himself. “The best thing you can do for Belgium is die or resign.”15
The Belgians had hoped that the powers would put pressure on the Dutch to sort out unsatisfactory borders between their two countries, especially along the river Scheldt, which flowed out to the sea from the great Belgian port of Antwerp through Dutch territory. The Dutch, with their own port in Rotterdam, had done little before the war to improve navigation by, for example, dredging. The Netherlands, which as a neutral power was not taking part in the Peace Conference, firmly refused to give up an inch of its soil, even in return for gains elsewhere from Germany. The powers remained silent. 16
Belgium also wanted to improve its borders with Germany. The Commission on Belgian Affairs recommended that Belgium get a scrap of land between the little towns of Eupen and Malmédy. It was not much, after all, under four hundred square miles with a population of about sixty thousand, but it did contain valuable forests to make up for Belgium’s losses during the war. The experts also threw in an extra square mile known as neutral Moresnet, which had been floating in a legal limbo because the relevant clauses in a treaty of 1815 had been badly worded. The Council of Four agreed.17
The Four were not as sympathetic when it came to reparations. Belgium asked for special permission to include war costs in its demands. This was not as unreasonable as it sounded because, with most of its country occupied, the Belgian government had been obliged to finance itself entirely through borrowing. The Belgians also asked for priority when it came to handing out the payments received from Germany. The Americans were sympathetic. The British and the French, who had their own plans for reparations, were not. But on April 29, they backed down, and over the next few days a deal was hammered out. Belgium would get $500 million as soon as Germany paid up and a percentage, to be determined, of the total reparations. Britain and France did their best to whittle down Belgian claims in subsequent years, and Germany did its best not to pay at all. It took until 1925 for Belgium to get its priority payment in full; in the end, like its allies, it only received a fraction of what it had wanted.18
22
Italy Leaves
ON APRIL 20, nine days before the Belgian ultimatum, Frances Stevenson was at the window of Lloyd George’s flat in the Rue Nitot looking across to Wilson’s house to see whether an emergency meeting of the Council of Four was still going on. It was Easter Sunday, a lovely spring day, and Lloyd George had promised her a picnic. “Suddenly Orlando appeared at the window, leaned on