African Entrepreneurship Record

Chapter 1387: Chapter 370: Second Peace Conference (Part 3)

But now that Russia has undergone a complete change of regime, if the former Tsarist Russia diplomats were present, they probably wouldn’t be drifting about as leisurely as they are now.

As for France, it was probably feeling stifled; after all, France knew very well it no longer had the strength to keep fighting, but the French hatred of Germany had sunk into their bones, which made the French delegation’s mood extremely complicated.

Frier chose to turn a blind eye to all this; so long as the two sides didn’t start shouting at each other or come to blows, things were not too bad. At the last conference, the delegates on both sides had had terrible tempers, and it had taken quite an effort to break up their quarrels.

Frier walked up to the rostrum and said, ”Gentlemen, welcome once again to The Hague for the second peace conference. But before we begin, I hope you will first adjust your personal emotions; after all, anger only intensifies contradictions and cannot solve problems, in which case this conference of ours would be meaningless. So I hope everyone can show mutual understanding and help bring about peace in Europe.”

Having set the tone and diverted the attention of the various delegations, Frier waited a moment, and only after making sure both sides’ emotions had temporarily stabilized did he continue his speech.

”I still remember that the last conference was four months ago. In peacetime, that would pass in the blink of an eye, but in wartime it is enough to change many things.”

”And I believe these four months have once again deepened an impression for all of you: if the war goes on, the situation at the front will be hard to alter in any fundamental way, while the mutual confrontation between your countries will do nothing but create more slaughter and at the same time sharpen the social contradictions in your own states.”

”So there is no longer any need for this war to continue; it will only create opportunities for the Labor Party, or for other ambitious figures in your countries.”

”Let me briefly lay out the predicament we are all facing. The war in Europe has fallen into a stalemate. If no one is willing to take the initiative to stop, this war will last at least another two years, and I do not think many countries can hold out that long.”

”Two years from now, the greatest danger for you may not be changes at the front, but rather demonstrations and protests at home, even popular riots and revolution...”

In 1919 the Allies and the Allies each had their share of victories and defeats, but neither side had been able to break the deadlock. On the Allies’ side, although they had recently reopened the Persian Gulf route and restored their access to external supplies, they still found it hard to break through the Allies’ blockade on the Western Front, and the pressure was actually growing.

The Allies, however, were in the opposite situation. The United Kingdom had suffered a major defeat in the Persian Gulf; among its tangled host of a million men there were far too many troops from India and other colonies, and when faced with the elite formations of Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, seasoned on the Eastern Front, they were simply unable to organize an effective counterattack.

Large numbers of routed Indian soldiers fled into Persian territory, which meant that on the southern front the Allies had torn open a gaping hole. On that front the Allies now held only the strip of positions along the Red Sea coast.

And once the material blockade of the Allies was lifted, even with the United States entering the war, the Allies found it hard to gain an advantage. After all, for U.S. troops to reach Western Europe they had to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and the U.S. Army’s fighting power was not particularly strong to begin with, whereas the Allies’ manpower pressure had already been eased to some extent.

More precisely, it was Germany’s manpower that had been relieved. The Western Front had once been a case of Germany struggling alone, but now that Austria-Hungary had freed up its hands from the Eastern Front, it could not only launch offensives on the southern front, but also spare forces to support the Western Front.

Of course, although the manpower gap of the Allies on the Western Front had been partially filled, their situation was still uncomfortable. However poor the American soldiers’ combat performance might be, they could still tie down part of the Allies’ forces, and as further U.S. contingents arrived, this only increased the pressure on the Allies.

In sum, the Allies and the Allies still could not break the deadlock. Their respective grand moves had, to a certain extent, canceled out each other’s advantages, and the front remained stalemated. This was also why Frier stressed the significance of the four months that had passed since the first peace conference.

After all, at the first peace conference, the four powers of the UK, France, Germany, and Austria might still have harbored illusions—what if the other side suddenly collapsed? Yet the fighting of the past four months had instead proven that there was no end in sight to this war, and that only negotiations could bring an end to a conflict with no visible conclusion.