The border-land: When peace treaties institutionalize 'war in disguise'

“ Art. I. There shall, from the day of the exchange of the ratifications of the present treaty, be peace and friendship between his majesty the emperor of the French, king of Italy, protector of the League of the Rhine; and his majesty the emperor of Austria, king of Hungary and Bohemia, their heirs and successors, their states and subjects respectively, for ever. ”

“ I.—There shall be from this day forward perpetual peace and friendship between his Britannic majesty and his allies on the one part, and his majesty the King of France and Navarre on the other, their heirs and successors, their dominions and subjects respectively.
The high contracting parties shall devote their best attention to maintain, not only between themselves, but, inasmuch as depends upon them, between all the states of Europe, that harmony and good understanding which are so necessary for their tranquillity. ”

“ That this Union, which is the more real and durable, inasmuch as it depends on no separate interest or temporary combination, can only have for its object the Maintenance of general Peace, founded on a religious respect for the engagements contained in the Treaties, and for the whole of the rights resulting therefrom.
3. That France, associated with other Powers by the restoration of the legitimate Monarchical and Constitutional Power, engages henceforth to concur in the maintenance and consolidation of a System which has given Peace to Europe, and which can alone insure its duration. ”

“ The Sovereigns, in forming this august Union, have regarded as its fundamental basis their invariable resolution never to depart, either among themselves, or in their Relations with other States, from the strictest observation of the principles of the Right of Nations; principles, which, hi their application to a state of permanent Peace, can alone effectually guarantee the Independence of each Government, and the stability of the general association. ”

“ They will not cease to labour for its confirmation and perfection. They solemnly acknowledge that their duties towards God and the people whom they govern make it peremptory on them to give to the world, as far as it is in their power, an example of justice, of concord, and of moderation; happy in the power of consecrating, from henceforth, all their efforts to protect the arts of peace, to increase the internal prosperity of their States, and to awaken those sentiments of religion and morality, whose influence has been but too much enfeebled by the misfortune of the times. ”

“ VI. The provinces which are to be restored to his majesty the emperor of Austria, shall be administered for his behoof by the Austrian constituted authorities, from the day of exchanging the ratification of the present treaty ; and the imperial domains, wheresoever situated, from the 1st of November next. It is nevertheless understood, that the French army in this country shall take for their use whatever articles cannot be supplied by their magazines for the subsistence of the troops and the wants of the hospitals ”

“ The predatory incursions to which I have alluded have been attended in one instance with the breaking up of the courts of justice, by the seizing upon the persons of the judges, jury, and officers of the court and dragging them along with unarmed, and therefore noncombatant, citizens into a cruel and oppressive bondage, thus leaving crime to go unpunished and immorality to pass unreproved. A border warfare is evermore to be deprecated, and over such a war as has existed for so many years between these two States humanity has had great cause to lament. ”

“ XVII.—The native inhabitants and aliens, of whatever nation or condition they may be, in those countries which are to change sovereigns, as well in virtue of the present treaty as of the subsequent arrangements to which it may give rise, shall be allowed a period of six years, reckoning from the exchange of the ratifications, for the purpose of disposing of their property, if they think It, whether it be acquired before or during the present war; and retiring to whatever country they may choose. ”

“ You may call it peace; but it will be war in disguise, ready to break forth in perpetual, chronic, bloody battle. Such an extended inland border, over which Slavery and Liberty scowl at each other, will be a constant temptation, not only to enterprises of smuggling, but to hostile incursions, so that our country will be obliged to sleep on its arms, ready to spring forward in self-defence. Every frontier town will be a St. Albans. [409] Military preparations, absorbing the resources of the people, will become permanent instead of temporary, and the arts of peace will yield to the arts of war. ”

“ And those poor creatures who in their thousands have been driven through the town and the neighbouring districts into the desert; nearly all of them are women and children, and what becomes of them? They are driven on from place to place, until the thousands dwindle into hundreds and until the hundreds dwindle into insignificant remnants. ”

“ Between 1993 and 1999, ethnic violence between Hutu and Tutsi factions in Burundi created hundreds of thousands of refugees and left at least 250,000 dead. Although many refugees have returned from neighboring countries, continued ethnic strife has forced others to flee. Burundian troops, seeking to secure their borders, have intervened in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ”

“ This engagement shall in no respect affect the Stipulations which the several Powers have already contracted relative to the number of Troops to be kept against the Enemy ; and it is understood that the Courts of England, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, engage by the present Treaty to keep in the field, each of them, 150,000 effective men, exclusive of garrisons, to be employed in active service against the common Enemy.
II. The High Contracting Parties reciprocally engage not to negotiate separately with the common Enemy, nor to sign Peace, Truce, nor Convention, but with common consent. ”

“ ART. I. The composition of the Army of 150,000 Men, which, in virtue of the Vth Article of the Treaty of this day, is to occupy a Military Line along the Frontiers of France; the force and nature of the Contingents to be furnished by each Power, as well as the choice of the Generals who are to command those troops, shall be determined by the Allied Sovereigns.
ART. II. This army shall be maintained by the French Government in the manner following:
The lodging, the fuel and lighting, the provisions and forage, are to be furnished in kind. ”

“ Art. I. The High Contracting Parties above named solemnly engage by the present Treaty, and in the event of France refusing to accede to the Conditions of Peace now proposed, to apply all the means of their respective States to the vigorous prosecution of the War against that Power, and to employ them in perfect concert, in order to obtain for themselves and for Europe a General Peace, under the protection of which the rights and liberties of all Nations may be established and secured. ”

“ Nobody knows what will happen when those fellows get together and begin to bargain. They may throw away all the results of the war for all we can tell. It’s happened more than once that the party that’s been licked on the field has got off almost scot free, if not actually gaining, when the peace treaty came to be signed.”
“Well, you old croaker,” laughed Frank, “we’ll have to leave all that to the diplomats and take our chances on their not letting the Huns put anything over on them. In the meantime, all we’ve got to do is to fight.” ”

“ ART. XII. Every individual possessing property under both governments, having once declared his place of abode, shall nevertheless retain, during the term of eight years, dating from the day of the ratification of the present Treaty, the liberty of settling under another government, upon making a new declaration of his abode, and upon producing the permission of the power, under whose government he wishes to settle. ”

“ We have been driven from our lands on the Mohawk, the Gennessee, the Chemung and the Unadilla. And from our western door we have been pushed, from the Susquehanna, then over the great mountains, then beyond the Ohio, the Allegheny and the Conewango; and now we are here on the borders of the great lakes, and a further push will throw me and my people off the log. If I ask, where is our land? a bird whispers in my ear, the Great King over the water has made peace with Washington and the thirteen fires, and divided the land between them by a line through the great lakes. ”

“ I wish the Latter-day Saints, who live in these mountains, to understand that we are here through necessity, and that hundreds and thousands of Latter-day Saints are coming here now, and hundreds and thousands who are not Latter-day Saints are also passing through from the east to the regions north and west of us, or to other regions where they may hope to make their homes, and all through necessity; they are fleeing from trouble and sorrow. ”

“ Obliged to wander from land to land, from sea to sea, to gain a livelihood; everywhere declared incapable of possessing any landed property, or holding any office, they have been obliged to disperse, and roam from place to place, unable to establish themselves permanently in any country, for want of support, of power to maintain their ground, and of knowledge in the art of war. ”

“ Now, it is notorious that millions live thus on the border-land. Granted that after the harvest border-landers may for a time get two good meals a day. Yet as the reserve store dwindles down and long before harvest-time comes round, again, they get but one, and that frequently a scanty one. They do live, multitudes of them, it is true, amidst conditions that seem to us impossible. ”

“ Men and women, boys and girls, are thus exposed to more than all the debasing and demoralizing influences which haunt the worst dwellings of our agricultural labourers, without a single antagonistic agency to prevent their lapse into the lowest depths of brutish immorality. With scarcely an exception, wherever salt manufactories on a large scale have existed, the population employed in them has been the disgrace and pollution of the neighbourhood, a community almost unapproachable by philanthropy and irreclaimable by religion. ”

“ You are young here yet; you are flushed with the success of your teaching; you have lived a short time in this quiet village, where, until the last few days, all has been serene. You know nothing of the strife, of the necessity of fighting, of the cruelty which makes up this border existence. Only two years have hardened me so that I actually pant for the blood of the renegade who has robbed me. A frontiersman must take his choice of succumbing or cutting his way through flesh and bone. Blood will be spilled; if not yours, then your foe's. The pioneers run from the plow to the fight ”

“ It goes on for weeks with the effect of being quite sane and intended and the right thing, and then, then suddenly it comes whacking into one's head, 'But this—this is utterly mad!' This going to and fro and to and fro and to and fro; this monotony which breaks ever and again into violence—violence that never gets anywhere—is exactly the life that a lunatic leads. ”

“ INVADING THE WAR ZONE PARIS, August 8, 1916.
rance to-day is sharply divided into two sections; within the greater you can come and go almost as freely as before the war. All that is necessary is a sauf conduit easily obtained from your commissaire de police, which you are never called upon to exhibit. But the other, the Zone des Armées, in common parlance the war or military zone! There is only one thing in France more difficult of contact, and that is a member of the middle or lower bourgeoisie. ”

“ Traveling by automobile in the war zone is far more complicated than by train. Even in a gray military car, with two men in horizon blue on the front seat, you are held up at the entrance and exit of every town and hamlet, and often half way between, by the sudden appearance of a sentinel in the middle of the road, holding his gun horizontally above his head. ”

“ But they seem to think that the explosion of an American woman, especially if she happened to be “of a prominence,” would make too much noise in the world to be agreeable. They have trouble enough on their hands.
THE WAR ZONE BY AUTOMOBILE PARIS, August 18.
nce more I was summoned to the War Office, this time to be informed that although they wanted me to feel satisfied and really see something of the great drama, they would not take the responsibility of sending me so far into the military zone unless I obtained the personal escort of an American Army officer. ”

“ No one who has not been in those gray barren towns and villages of the war zone can imagine how sad a tarrying place they are for wounded men too ill to be sent to Paris.
But if the military machine was forced to appear callous, individually it recognized the necessity for a supplementary kitchen, if many of its best men were to be saved to France. Last Spring the Service de Santé (Health Department of the Ministry of War) asked Mme. ”

“ Of the Law of Nations amongst People who do not cultivate the Earth.
AS these people do not live in limited and circumscribed boundaries, many causes of strife arise between them; they dispute the uncultivated land, as we dispute about inheritances. Thus they find frequent occasions for war, in defence of their hunting, their fishing, the pasture for their cattle, and the taking of their slaves; and having no territory, they have many things to regulate by the law of nations, and but few to decide by the civil law. ”

“ War becomes a universal disaster, blind and monstrously destructive; it bombs the baby in its cradle and sinks the food-ships that cater for the non-combatant and the neutral. There can be no peace now, we realize, but a common peace in all the world; no prosperity but a general prosperity. But there can be no common peace and prosperity without common historical ideas. Without such ideas to hold them together in harmonious co-operation, with nothing but narrow, selfish, and conflicting nationalist traditions, races and peoples are bound to drift towards conflict and destruction. ”