The Geneva Protocol, by David Hunter Miller

CHAPTER VII. 25
As a preliminary, let me say that the Treaties of Peace in this connection cannot include the Treaty of
Lausanne with Turkey. Certainly at the time that that Treaty was negotiated there was {32} no imposed peace
on Turkey; as a matter of fact the Turkish negotiators had things pretty much their own way with the Allies.
So that we are considering merely the Treaties with Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria.
In the first place, the question in many cases as to whether or not there is any such thing as a "just" frontier is
at least a very doubtful one. I put it this way. If you have a situation where reasonable, impartial and informed
minds can differ, you do not have a situation where it can be arbitrarily said by any one that any one frontier is
the just frontier. Of course I am not talking of the type of mind which insists that the particular line that he
would draw is the one and only line, despite the views of anybody else, because to admit such a theory would
mean the admission of the existence of perhaps fifty different frontiers between the same two countries at the
same time.
Now as to the Peace Treaties, we certainly have that situation to a very large extent. I do not see how any one
could contend that the existence of the Polish corridor is a perfect solution, nor do I see how any one could
contend that the absence of the Polish corridor would be a perfect solution. One of the Polish Delegation said
to me in Paris in December, 1918, in substance, that it would be impossible to draw a frontier between
Germany and Poland which would not do an injustice to one country or to the other or to both, and I believe
that his observation is perfectly sound.
The same thing is true as between Roumania and Hungary, and perhaps more true.
My sympathies as to Vilna are rather with the Lithuanians than with the Poles, but no one can read the
documents without seeing that the Poles have a case.
My own view has always been that the frontier between Poland and Russia is too far to the East, but none the
less the Russians, after a fashion, agreed to it.
Most of those whose opinions I respect believe that it was wrong to give the Austrian Tyrol to Italy. Despite
those views, I have always believed that the decision was defensible.
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Different American experts of the highest qualifications, of the utmost sincerity and of complete impartiality
took different views as to Fiume and the Italian-Yugo-Slav frontier generally. In such circumstances, who
could say, what tribunal could decide, the "just" frontier?
I am willing to admit that this uncertainty on the question of justice may not exist in every case. I have always
believed that some of the cessions of territory forced on Bulgaria were utterly indefensible from any point of
view whatsoever. I refer, not to Macedonia, that impossible jumble of contradictions, but more particularly to
Western Thrace.
My own view is that, on the whole and taken by and large, the existing frontiers in Europe are more near to
justice than ever before in modern history.
But I am going to assume for the rest of this discussion that some of these frontiers are wrong and should be
changed. What is our answer to that situation?
Let me point out in the first place that the mere fact that a frontier was imposed by force resulting in a peace
treaty is not necessarily anything against it. Take the case of Alsace-Lorraine, for example; or take a still more
striking case, the case of Germany and Denmark. Admittedly, in and out of Germany, the result as to Slesvig
was just and should continue.