The Project Gutenberg eBook, Where Are We Going?, by David Lloyd George

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

WHERE ARE WE
GOING?

BY

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

O.M., P.C., M.P.

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER 1916-1922

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

WHERE ARE WE GOING? II
——
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

The chapters collected in this book represent a running comment on the European situation during the past ten months. Although in the haze that covers the Continent it is difficult always to see clearly what is happening, and still more difficult to forecast what is likely to occur, I have not deemed it necessary to revise any of the estimates I made from time to time in these periodic reviews on the position. In the period covered by them peace has gone back perceptibly and unmistakably. Of the years immediately after the end of the Great War it may be said that up to the present year each showed a distinct improvement over its predecessor. The temper of the warring nations showed a gradual healing and improvement, and East and West there was a return to reason and calm in their attitude towards each other. In the Cannes discussions of January 1922 the atmosphere of hostility which poisoned the Spa discussions in 1920 had largely disappeared, and the applause which greeted Herr Rathenau's fine speech at Genoa in April 1922 was cordial and general. The electric messages from Paris failed to provoke a thunderstorm, and one of the speakers, at the last meeting of the Assembly, drawing an illustration from the weather outside, said the Conference had broken up under blue skies and a serene firmament.

That was in May 1922. Those words, when used, met with cheering approval: if used to-day they would be greeted with scoffing laughter. The present year has been one of growing gloom and menace. The international temper is distinctly worse all round. A peace has been patched up with the Turkish Empire. No one believes it can endure long. The only question is, How long? There may be other patched-up treaties between struggling nations before the year is out. There is only one prediction concerning them which can at this stage be safely made—they will leave European peace in a more precarious plight than ever. A peace wrung by triumphant force out of helplessness is never a good peace. That is why I view with apprehension the character of the settlement which may soon be wrung out of German despair in the Ruhr and imposed on Greek impotence in the Adriatic. The Fiume settlement may turn out to be more satisfactory in spite of threatening omens. The Jugo-Slavs are a formidable military proposition to be tackled by any Power. The War proved them to be about the best fighting material in Europe. They are also fairly well equipped with modern weapons, and if unhappily the need arose their deficiencies in this respect would soon be supplied from the workshops of Czecho-Slovakia and elsewhere. I am, therefore, still hopeful that Fiume may be remitted for settlement to diplomatists and not to gunmen. International right in these turbulent days seems to depend, not on justice, but on a reckoning of chances. The Slavs are ready to defend their rights and can do so. There is, therefore, some talk of conferences and even arbitration in their case. Germany and Greece cannot put up a fight. Unconditional surrender is, therefore, their lot. All the same, this is not only a wrong but a miscalculation. Unjust concessions, extracted by violence, are not settlements; they are only postponements. Unfortunately, the decisions at the next great hearing of the cause are just as likely to be provisional—and so the quarrel will go on to the final catastrophe unless humanity one day sees the light and has the courage to follow it. But that day must not be too distant, otherwise it will come too late to save civilisation. The last conflict between great nations has exposed the devastating possibilities of modern science. Henceforth progress in the destructiveness of the apparatus of war has been, and will continue to be, so rapid that a conflict to-morrow would spread ten times the desolation caused by the Great War of 1914-18. There is a concentration of much scientific and mechanical skill on strengthening the machinery of devastation. Incredible progress—if progress be the word—has been made within the last three or four years in perfecting and increasing the shattering power of this kind of devilry. What will it be like five, ten, twenty years hence!

Whilst nations are piling up, perfecting and intensifying their explosives, they are also saturating the ground with the inflammable passions which one day will precipitate the explosion. Injustice, insult, insolence, distilled into the spirit of revenge, is everywhere soaking into the earth.

I have never doubted that France could impose terms on Germany. It was clear that she could starve Germany into submission to any conditions dictated to her. It is astonishing that the Germans should have held out so long. What I have steadily predicted in these articles is that those terms will not produce as much reparation as a more conciliatory course would have brought—that to operate them will be a source of constant friction, and that the methods employed to impose and execute them will rouse a spirit of patriotic wrath which will in the end bring disaster to the victor of to-day.

When the invasion of the Ruhr was decided upon, the shortage in the promised coal deliveries upon which default was declared was barely 10 per cent. A little better organisation of the wagon service on the French side would have made up that deficiency in a very short time. During the months of the occupation the French and Belgians have not succeeded in collecting one-sixth the tonnage delivered during the corresponding months last year. It will take weeks after passive resistance has collapsed to restore railways and collieries to working order. The new régime will have to liquidate arrears of at least 15,000,000 tons before it begins its regular monthly deliveries. What about cash payments? It is not too much to say that Germany is much less able to meet her obligations in this respect than she was before the invasion. Her credit has been blown out of sight into infinite space. It will take a long time to pull it back from its wanderings and set its feet once more firmly on European earth. There are only four ways in which the huge sum due from Germany can be liquidated:—

(1) By handing over to the Allies the gold reserves of Germany and of Germans either at home or on deposit abroad. The former is negligible; the amount of the latter is disputable. Much of it is essential to enable Germany to purchase abroad the raw material and food necessary to her existence. The worse German credit becomes the larger must this deposit be. As for the foreign securities and deposits which are not strictly necessary for trading, they cannot all be made available, for nothing will induce some of the depositors to part with the whole of these securities. The sum, therefore, derivable from this source would amount to but a small percentage of the total figure payable for reparations.

(2) Deliveries of coal, timber, potash, dyes and other raw material. With the exception of timber, these deliveries have been, on the whole, satisfactory—since the Spa Agreement. It did not require the pressure of armed invasion to improve these deliveries, including the timber demands of the Allies.

(3) A percentage levied on German exports. These are paid for in gold or its equivalent, and the levy would therefore be remitted in gold. A levy of 20 per cent. on German exports would have produced between £40,000,000 and £50,000,000 a year on the basis of last year's exports. When German trade returned to normal it would yield £100,000,000. This sum, added to the value of the material delivered, would cover interest and sinking fund on the £2,500,000,000 which is now the accepted maximum of German capacity.

(4) The restoration of German credit with a view to the immediate raising of a loan on reparation account. This would help the Allies over their urgent financial difficulties.

These four methods of payment are the only known and knowable means of obtaining reparations. They would have been more immediately fruitful if so much time, money and resource had not been wasted over this ill-judged invasion.

The apologists of French action in the Ruhr contend that France was driven to these extremes by the refusal of Britain to co-operate with her in bringing legitimate pressure to bear on Germany to carry out the Treaty. Those who put forward this contention argue in ignorance of the proposals submitted by the British Government to the Allied Conference in August 1922. These would have exploited all the methods above set forth to the limit of their productiveness. These proposals were substantially accepted by all the Allies except France. Repeated efforts have been made this year in Parliament to induce the Government to publish this scheme. Both the present and the late Prime Minister gave favourable if not definite answers to the request for publication. But so far the August proceedings have not made their public appearance. Why this reluctance to give the whole facts to the public? The discussions at the November and January Conferences have been published in full. These meetings were only adjournments from the August Conference. The story of the fateful Conference is, therefore, incomplete if August is suppressed. Ought not the world to know the proposals which France rejected in August 1922? In the absence of official publication I will take the responsibility now of giving a Summary.

It was proposed:—

(1) That Germany should be called upon to take such measures as the Reparations Commission should stipulate, in order to balance her Budget and restore her financial stability.

(2) That the Reichsbank should be made independent of Government control.

(3) That 26 per cent. of the total value of German exports should be collected in gold or foreign currencies and paid into a separate account in the Reichsbank in the name of the Sub-Committee of the Reparations Commission known as the Committee of Guarantees.

(4) That the produce of all German import and export duties other than the levy should be paid monthly to a special account at the Reichsbank, which should be under the scrutiny of the Committee of Guarantees. The German Government should have the disposal of the sums standing to the credit of this account so long as the Reparations Commission was satisfied that it fulfilled the obligations imposed upon it. If at any time the Commission was not satisfied that this was the case the Committee of Guarantees should have the right to take over the sums standing to the credit of this account and to secure the payment to it of the produce of these duties thereafter.

(5) There were stern provisions for supervision of German finance by the Committee of Guarantees and for preventing the export of German capital.

(6) There were provisions for supervision over State mines and forests in the event of their being a failure in delivery of coal or timber as the case might be.

A Moratorium up to December 1922 was to be given conditionally on the acceptance of the above terms by the German Government, and the Reparations Commission were then to proceed to fix the further annual payments.

Had these drastic proposals been adopted and enforced by the Allies, what would have been the result? Deliveries of coal and timber would have been ensured up to the full quota arranged. By means of the levy on exports, £50,000,000 would have been already collected in gold and paid into Allied account. The mark would have been stabilised, and could have been made the basis of a considerable loan. As German trade gradually recovered the export levy would bring in larger amounts. This year would certainly have produced a yield of between £60,000,000 and £70,000,000. This is what would have been effected for Reparations if the plan put forward by the British Government had been accepted and put into execution in August. By the settlement of this most troublous question, the great cost and the still greater irritation of the Ruhr episode would have been avoided, trade would have continued its convalescence, and the peace of Europe would have been established.

What would have happened if Germany had refused these terms? We should certainly have heard what objections or counter-proposals Germany had to offer. But we were resolved to have a settlement that would put an end to the fiscal chaos inside Germany, and having thus put her in a position to pay we were equally resolved that she should pay up to the limit of her capacity. We, therefore, undertook, if Germany rejected the terms finally agreed upon, to join France and the other Allies in any coercive measures deemed advisable to compel acceptance. M. Poincaré refused to agree. His refusal alone rendered that Conference fruitless. Over a year has elapsed since then. He has pursued a different policy. So far it has brought him nothing. I am bold enough to predict that in future it will bring France considerably less than the August 1922 plan would have yielded.

If he is out for reparations his policy will inevitably fail in comparison with that he so rashly threw over. But if he is out for trouble it has been a great success, and in future it will be an even greater triumph for his statesmanship. A permanent garrison in the Ruhr has possibilities of mischief which it does not require any special vision to foresee.

Enduring peace can only rest on a foundation of justice. It is just that Germany should exert herself to the limit of her strength to repair the damage wrought by her armies. She was the aggressor; she was the invader. Her aggression inflicted serious hurt on her neighbours. By the established precepts of every civilised law in the world she ought to pay up. A peace which did not recognise that obligation would be unjust and provoke a righteous resentment in the breasts of the wronged. That sentiment would have been inimical to the good understanding that is one of the essentials of peace. Moreover, it is not conducive to good behaviour amongst nations that they should be allowed to ravage and destroy without paying the penalty of their misdeeds. That is why I do not agree with those who would wipe out the claim for reparations entirely. On the other hand, civilised jurisprudence has also advanced to the stage where it forbids the creditor to attach his debtor's freedom and independence as security for the payment of the debt. The law that permitted a debtor to be sold into bondage for an unliquidated liability has now been voted barbarous by the more humane usage and wont of the day. That is why I protest against using armed force to occupy and control a country whilst the scourge of starvation is being used to whip its workmen into toiling for payment of a foreign debt. As Mr. Gladstone once said: "Justice means justice to all." The main difficulty of a just settlement of reparations comes from the growing disposition to take sides blindly in this dispute. One party sees nothing but the outrage of 1914-18, the costly vindication of right, and the just claim of the victims to compensation for their losses. The other party sees nothing but the harsh fury with which the victors in the cause press their verdict to execution. Peace can only be restored by a full recognition of the equities as well as the humanities—of the humanities as well as the equities. I have sought in these pages to deal fairly with both.

D. Lloyd George.

September 13th, 1923.

CONTENTS

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

I THE GREAT PERIL

If a man on a bright July morning in 1914 had sailed abroad and had the misfortune to be wrecked on a desert island, returning to civilisation a week ago, the change which Europe presented to him would be sufficient to induce him to believe that his long solitude had unhinged his mind. To him it would have appeared as the stuff of which dreams are made. He would have remembered a German empire with an august head, ruling with autocratic sway a population striding with giant steps into prosperity and wealth, possessing a matchless army, whose tread terrified Europe; with a fleet that provoked articles and novels and agitations about the invasion of England; with vast possessions across the seas. In its place he would see Germany, instead of being a confident, powerful, arrogant empire, a timid, nervous, and apologetic republic presided over by a respectable and intelligent workman, her minister issuing notes to propitiate Belgium, and having them sent back like the stupid exercises of a backward schoolboy to be rewritten in accordance with the pleasure of the taskmaster; the great army reduced to a force one-half the size of that of Serbia; the menacing fleet at the bottom of the sea; the watch on the Rhine kept by French, British, and Belgian soldiers. He would see the Krupp works in French occupation; not a German colony left.

Russia he would have recollected as a powerful autocracy rooted in a superstitious belief by the peasantry in the divinity of its head. He would find it now a revolutionary area ruled by the exiles of yesterday, shunned by the rest of the world because of the violence of its communistic doctrines; tsardom, with its gilded retinue of splendour, flung into a hideous doom, and the sceptre of Peter the Great enforcing the doctrines of Karl Marx. He would see the Austrian empire as much a thing of the past as the empire of Nebuchadnezzar, a poor province lifted out of beggary by the charity of her foes: new states, which had been dead and buried for centuries, risen from the dead, casting off their shrouds, marching in full panoply; Trieste an Italian port; the Dolomites an Italian bastion. The Turk alone quite unchanged, a few more amputating operations performed upon him, but still preserving sufficient vitality to massacre Christians irrespective of denomination or race, and to become a sore trial and perplexity to the rest of the world.

If our returned voyager travelled through Europe he would find even more fundamental changes in the world of finance, trade and commerce. He would find impoverishment, dislocation; the elaborate and finely-spun web of commerce rent to pieces, and its torn threads floating in the wind. With a few sovereigns in his pocket, he would expect in return 25 francs, 20 marks, and about 26 lire. Instead of that, with a paper sovereign he would find that he could buy 70 francs, nearly 100 lire, 250,000 German marks, 300,000 Austrian kronen, and millions of Russian roubles. The money-changers who once prospered on decimal fractions now earning a precarious livelihood in the flights of the multiplication table. That would give him a better indication perhaps of the reality of the change than even the fall of empires. On his journeys he would travel through prosperous provinces rutted and overturned as by a gigantic earthquake; he would pass vast cemeteries where 10,000,000 young men fallen in the Great War were having their last sleep; he would see on all hands signs of mutilation of men who had been engaged in the great struggle. Taxation everywhere quintupled with nothing but debt to show for it; industry with its back bent under a burden of taxation which when he left existed only in the nightmares of the dyspeptic rich. He would then be able to realise something of the tremendous upheaval that had taken place in the world.

But what would surprise him more than all these amazing and bewildering transformations would be the one thing in which there was no change. He would naturally expect that after such terrifying experiences, the world would have learnt its lesson, turned its back finally on war, its crimes and its follies, and set its face resolutely toward peace. It is the one thing he discovers has not changed—the world has not learned one single syllable. Suspicions amongst nations exist just as ever, only more intense; hatreds between races and peoples, only fiercer; combinations forming everywhere for the next war; great armies drilling; conventions and compacts for joint action when the tocsin sounds; general staffs meeting to arrange whether they should march, where they should march, how they should march, and where they should strike; little nations only just hatched, just out of the shell, staggering under the burden of great armaments, and marching along towards unknown battlefields; new machinery of destruction and slaughter being devised and manufactured with feverish anxiety; every day science being brought under contribution to discover new methods to destroy human life—in fact, a deep laid and powerfully concerted plot against civilisation, openly organised in the light of the sun. And that after his experience of four or five years ago! Man the builder, and man the breaker, working side by side in the same workshop, and apparently on the best of terms with each other, playing their part in the eternal round of creation and dissolution, with characteristic human energy. What a complex creature is man! It is little wonder that God gave him up repeatedly in despair. He is unteachable.

I wonder whether it is realised that if war were to break out again, the calamity would be a hundredfold greater than that of the last experience. Next time, cities will be laid waste. Possible, and I am sorry to say, probable enemy nations are more closely intertwined, and the engines of havoc are becoming more and more terrible. I have called attention repeatedly to the developments which took place during the late War, in the variety, the range, and the power of destructive weapons. Compare the aëroplane at the beginning of the war, and its small bomb which could easily be manhandled, with the same machine at the end. By the end of the war machines had been built, and but for the armistice would have been used, the devastating power of which was terrific. Since then the power of the machine, the weight of the explosive, and the incendiary material it drops, have grown, and are still growing. Science is perfecting old methods of destruction, and searching out new methods. One day, in its exploration, it may hit on something that may make the fabric of civilisation rock.

Can anything be done to avert this approaching catastrophe? That is the problem of all problems for those who love their fellowmen. I warn you that it is madness to trust to the hope that mankind, after such an experience, will not be so rash as to court another disaster of the same kind. The memory of the terrors, the losses, the sufferings of the war, will not restrain men from precipitating the world into something which is infinitely worse, and those who think so, and, therefore, urge that it is not necessary to engage in a new crusade for peace, have not studied the perverse, the stubborn, and the reckless nature of man. There is the danger that the last war may even make some nations believe in war.

I have talked to many young soldiers who were fortunate enough to have passed unscathed through some of the worst experiences of the war, to many who suffered mutilation in some of these experiences; they have given me one common impression that the memory of fear is evanescent, and that they cannot now re-create in their own minds the sensations of terror through which they passed. If that is true of those who went through the furnace, what of the multitudes who simply looked on?—the multitudes of those who were too young to take part, and can only recall the excitement produced by the conflict and the glory of victory? The recollection of the headaches of an orgy never lasts as long as that of its pleasures. It is useless to recall memories of the terror and torture of the war, and expect them to crusade for peace. Memory is a treacherous crusader. It starts with a right purpose fresh and hot on its path, but its zeal gets fainter as the days roll past, and it ends by handing over its banner to the foe.

You can only redeem mankind by appealing to its nobler instincts. Fear is base, and you cannot lift mankind by using it as a lever. The churches alone can effectively rouse the higher impulses of our nature. That is where their task comes in.

There is another reason why we cannot regard the danger as having passed away. You have all the elements which made for the Great War of 1914 more potent than ever to-day. The atmosphere of Europe is charged with them.

What made the last war? Armed international dislikes, rivalries, and suspicions. The dislikes were based on age-long racial feuds stimulated by memories of recent wrongs. Celt and Teuton disliking each other; Slav and Teuton suspicious of each other; the hatred of the Slav for the Teuton intensified by the arrogance with which Germany humiliated Russia at the moment of her weakness immediately after the Japanese War, when she was peculiarly sensitive to insult. You will recollect the peremptoriness and the insolence of her gesture over the Bosnian annexation, and insolences are always more painful than wrongs and rankle longer. They corrode the flesh, and burn into the soul of a nation, keeping its anger aflame. I wish nations always remembered that. There was the hatred of the Celt for the Teuton deepened by the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and by the incidents inseparable from the invasion of a foreign soil. There was Germany suspecting that every railway constructed by Russia was aimed at her heart. There was France convinced that Germany was only waiting her opportunity to pick a quarrel which would enable her to deprive France of her much-coveted colonies. There was England watching with vigilant insight and increasing anger the growth of Germany's great fleet, which she was convinced was aimed at her shores. There were great armies in every continental country ready to march at a moment's notice, fully equipped, each commander firmly persuaded that his own legions were irresistible. You had there all the conditions that made for war. Had it come of set purpose? I have read most of the literature concerning the events that led up to that war, and it is full of warning as to how wars happen. They do not come because the majority of those who are concerned are bent upon bloodshed, not even the majority who have the decisive voice if they exercised it in time. Had a plebiscite been taken in every country in Europe a week before war was declared as to whether they wished to engage in a European conflict, the proposal would have been turned down by a majority so overwhelming as to show that the proposition was one that no nation had the slightest idea of entertaining. That is not the reason why it came. But you have always in control of the affairs of nations some men who hesitate; many who are apathetic, many who are merely inefficient and stupid; and then most men, even in a government, have their minds concentrated on their own immediate tasks.

I will give you an illustration of how war is begun, once you have the predisposition to quarrel, without anybody wanting it and with the vast majority of the people who are to be engaged in it opposed to it. Austria issued an ultimatum to Serbia. There is nothing a big bully likes better than to hector a little man who is near the point of his toe. Serbia was so near the boot that Austria was constantly tempted to give it a kick, and it did. It issued an ultimatum, which was a very insolent one. The Serbian reply was a practical acceptance of the Austrian demands. This is the note the kaiser wrote on it: "A brilliant performance this. But with it disappears"—listen to this written by the Kaiser of Germany just a few days before war was declared—"but with it disappears every reason for war, and the Austrian minister ought to have remained quietly in Belgrade. After that I would never have given orders for mobilisation." In three days there was war.

Let me give another illustration. Admiral Tirpitz said he saw Von Jagow two days after the Austrian reply. Von Jagow, the German foreign minister, was so little interested in the Austro-Serbian conflict that he confessed to the German ambassador to Austria on July 27th, two days after the reply had been received, that he had not yet found time to read the Serbian reply to Austria. Here is the document on which ten million young men who had no responsibility for it have been slain, homes have been desolated, and a debt of taxation, confusion and sorrow incurred which will not be wiped out as long as this generation lasts.

It is inconceivable, if one had not some knowledge of the carelessness and the procrastination which are bred in official circles by long practice. That was only three days before war was declared. This high official in the Wilhelmstrasse, who subsequently agreed to the fateful decision to declare war against Russia, had not even read the critical document which ought to have averted the struggle. But there are always the vigilant few, the very few resolute men whose whole mind and energy and skill is engaged ceaselessly in driving forward the chariots of war. Whilst others are asleep, they are craftily dodging the traffic, and stealing along unawares, slowly getting their chariots into position for the next push forward. Whilst others are asleep, they lash the fiery steeds along their destructive course. In the press, on the platform, in the council chambers, in the chancelleries, in society of all kinds, high and low, they are always pressing along. When the precipice is reached, they dash through the feeble resistance of the panic-stricken mob of counsellors and officials, and nations are plunged into the abyss before they know it.

This is the way most wars come.

Read the history of the war of 1870. It came about in the same confused, clumsy, purposeless way. In all these cases there is always in the background the sinister figure of that force for mischief which used to be known by our Puritan fathers as the devil. Have these hatreds and suspicions abated? Are there no rivalries to-day? Are there no men whose one joy is in war? Was the devil numbered amongst the slain in the last war? I have never seen his name in any casualty list. Look around. His agents are more numerous, more active, more pressing and efficient than ever. Europe to-day is a cauldron of suspicions and hatreds. It is well to speak frankly. Celt and Teuton are now interlocked in a conflict which is none the less desperate because one of the parties is disarmed. There is a suppressed savagery which is but ill concealed, and there are new hatreds which, if they have not been brought into existence during the war, have at any rate come to the surface. Mankind has learnt no lesson from the four or five years of war, although it has been scourged with scorpions. There was nothing that contributed more to the last catastrophe than the annexation by Germany of Alsace-Lorraine. As long as that act of folly remained uncorrected there was no real peace possible in Europe. The nations concerned were just abiding their opportunity, and the opportunity came. Now you have two Alsace-Lorraines at least. There is the annexation of Vilna by force; there is the annexation of Galicia by force, by violence, by the use of arms against the will of the population. Elsewhere you have the German and the Pole quarrelling over Silesia; the Russian and the Pole over doubtful boundaries; the Czech and the Magyar; the Serbian and the Bulgarian; the Russian and the Rumanian; the Rumanian and the Magyar. There is the age-long feud between Greek and Turk. All have an air of biding opportunity, all are armed ready for slaughter. Europe is a seething cauldron of international hates, with powerful men in command of the fuel stores feeding the flames and stoking the fires. It is no use blaming the treaty of Versailles. This state of things has nothing to do with treaties. Here it is the spirit that killeth and not the letter. Sometimes wrongs are imaginary. Where the wrongs are imaginary time will heal the sense of hurt, but sometimes they are real, and time will fester the wound, but everywhere and always the hatreds are real enough. Can nothing be done? If it can, let it be done in time. Let it be done at once. Yet, once more I remind you that if the gun is loaded—and it is loaded in every land—when the quarrel begins it is apt to go off, not because the trigger is deliberately pulled, but because some clumsy fellow in his excitement stumbles against it.

In a continent which is nominally Christian, the churches surely are not impotent. When the West was all Catholic, and it had the good fortune to have a high-minded and capable occupant of the throne of St. Peter, many a struggle was averted by his intervention. Can the churches not once more display their power? They can only do so by moving together, not merely every denomination in Britain, but every Christian community throughout Europe—Catholic and Protestant—Catholics even more than Protestants, for the countries where the peril is most imminent are more under the domination of the Catholic churches than of the Protestant faiths. If all the heroism of millions, their sacrifice and their sufferings, are to be thrown away, it will be the most colossal, criminal and infamous waste ever perpetrated in human history. Millions of men endangered their lives willingly. Millions lost their lives for the sake of establishing peace on earth on the basis of international right. A temple to human right was built with material quarried out of all that is choicest in the soul of man. But its timbers are being drenched with the kerosene of hatred, and one day a match will be lit by some careless or malignant hand which will set fire to this magnificent edifice; its splendour will be reduced to black embers, and the hope of mankind will be once more laid in ashes. The task of the churches is to put forth the whole of their united strength to avert that catastrophe.

Peace is only possible when you introduce into the attitude of nations towards each other principles which govern the demeanour of decent people in a community towards their neighbours. If international methods were introduced into the dealings of neighbours with each other life would become intolerable—the unconcealed suspicions, distrusts and ill-will which rule everywhere, the eternal expectancy of and preparation for blows, the readiness of the strong to use violence, either to enforce his will on his weaker neighbour or to deprive him of his liberty or his possessions, or even his life, to satisfy anger, revenge, or greed. Had this been the rule in private affairs, we should all have to live in caves, or in castles, according to our means. As a matter of fact, man is only half civilised. In international matters he is still a savage, in his heart he recognises no law but that of force. The savage has his restraints. His instinct warns him not to pounce save when he thinks he can do so effectively and with impunity, and for some purpose which he thinks worth his while. Whether he hates or covets, he has no other restraint. I wish I could say that in essence nations to-day obey any other impulse. Man must be civilised in his international relations, otherwise wars will go on as long as mankind remains on this earth.

I have seen a city wrenched from its people. I have seen a whole province appropriated against the protests of its people, and all within the last four years, since the Great War to establish international right. There was no conceivable justification for either of these depredations except that both the city and the province were desirable, were at hand, were very tempting, and that the owners were too feeble to resist their pillagers.

The lesson must be taught that larceny does not diminish in turpitude as it increases in the scale of its operations. A nation that feloniously steals, takes, and carries away a city or province is just as criminal as the thief sentenced to imprisonment for robbery by violence on the high-road. And these national felonies will assuredly bring trouble one day. They invariably do so, and unfortunately international trouble is never confined to the felon. Human retribution, once it begins, is as indiscriminating and uncontrollable as a prairie fire. The flames consume the wheat as well as the tares. Hell fire administered by the hand of man scorches the innocent equally with the guilty. The doom of Germany involved millions in its tortures who were outside her gates, abominated her crimes, and did all they could to prevent their perpetration. That is why it is written: "'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' saith the Lord." It is the supreme duty of the churches to teach nations to understand that the moral law is just as applicable to them in their corporate capacity as it is to the individuals who compose them; to teach them that hatred is just as unseemly between nations as it is between individuals, and far more dangerous. Goodwill must be assiduously cultivated between nations. It must be ingeminated in every way—in schools, in the press, in sermons, in classes. The men who are always sowing distrust and dislike of men of other races and lands should be picked out, condemned, shown up, hunted by the scorn, the contempt and the wrath of their fellowmen. They are more dangerous than the incendiary who burns down an occasional hay-rick or habitation.

Let the best side of every nation be better known. Each nation has made its contribution to the sum of human greatness. Dwell on that, and not on the failings and the deficiencies, the errors, and the crimes which are unhappily common to all nations. Name me the land that has no stain on its record. There is no end to the resourcefulness of hate. Its variety is infinite. I recollect, not so long ago, a time when you were not a patriot if you were pro-French; the fact that you were pro-French stamped you as a Little Englander. France was supposed to be a busy and malignant foe of Britain all the world over, scheming everywhere against British interests. She stood for all that was unpleasant and repugnant to the British mind—in her thought, her literature, her politics, and her manners. France heartily reciprocated our dislike. There were at least two occasions when war between the two countries was apprehended, was openly talked of, and was even likely. The atmosphere of the press in both capitals was charged with brimstone.

Now it is to Germany you must not utter one word of toleration or even fair play. I am not counselling the abandonment of the just measure of our national rights as against either of these two countries, but they are both great nations. They are both nations that have contributed richly of the things that make for the elevation, for the happiness, for the splendour of mankind. If Germany is the land of Bismarck with its blood and iron, all Protestants will remember that she is also the land of Luther and the Reformation. If she fought in the late war for four years to establish a military domination in Europe, she fought for thirty years with enduring valour and much suffering to establish the freedom of conscience in Europe. She has given to the world great literature, great painters, great philosophers, great explorers in all the continents of thought. She is the land of unrivalled song. Even in the middle of the bloody conflict with Germany, every Sunday we praised God in our churches to the notes of German music. Let us give credit for these things in our efforts to reconstitute the reign of goodwill. And if we feel angry with France, let us remember her dazzling array of great writers, her gigantic struggles for liberty, the penetrating imagination devoted to scientific research, which has brought incalculable blessings to humanity. Let us not judge France by the fussy little men that give expression to her petulance in the fits of temper that overtake every nation, but by the great men who have given noble expression to her immortal soul. France is the land of Victor Hugo, of Pascal, of Renan, and many another teacher who has taken humanity by the hand along the upward road.

Everything depends on a consistent, determined, continuous inculcation of the principles and the ideal of goodfellowship, between nations. Goodwill on earth means to think well of and dwell on the best side of others, and goodwill on earth and peace have been linked together. Without the one you will not have the other. Let us, therefore, cultivate the spirit of brotherhood amongst men. The church must appeal to the noblest sentiments of the human heart. Mankind can only be redeemed by an appeal to those higher instincts. Not by an appeal to ignoble fear. War means terror, war means death, war means anguish. That will not prevent war, and never has. Man is the most fearless of God's creatures, and when his passions are roused there is no fear that will restrain him. The fire of his passion burns the restraints of self-preservation like bands of tow, so that fear will not restrain the nations and make peace among them. War destroys trade, it brings unemployment. Look at all the losses, reckoning them up in cash. That will not prevent war: it never has. Selfish interests have a means of deluding themselves. Greed has a blind side. Do not trust to selfishness and selfish interest to ensure peace. Selfishness will ensure nothing which is worth keeping in the world. Selfishness pays good dividends, but it wastes capital. The nation or the individual that makes self-love the managing-director of the soul will end in bankruptcy—bankruptcy of respect, bankruptcy of ideals—bankruptcy of honour—bankruptcy of friendships. What is it that Germany is suffering from now? Her great tragedy is not her indemnity, not even her gigantic casualties, not even the destruction of her trade. The one great tragedy of Germany is that she has lost the respect of mankind. It affects her trade, it affects her business, it makes it difficult for her to climb to the pitch whence she fell. The rope is gone. She has done things of which she herself is now ashamed. Her people—I can see it when I meet them—are ashamed. That is the tragedy. They are a gallant people, they are a brave people, they fought bravely, but they are broken-spirited. Why? They have lost their self-respect because they have done something that they know in their hearts was wrong. These are the things that have to be taught to nations.

A public opinion must be worked up that will be strong enough to sustain international right. No law is possible without an active public opinion for its enforcement, least of all international law. Without it the League of Nations is a farce. You might as well have a wooden cannon; however splendidly mounted it may be, however imposing its appearance, every one knows that the moment it is fired it will burst. Unless the world is taught to respect its authority, it will become a butt of derision. It is no use keeping up pretences. Pretences never delude events. The League of Nations may gather together representatives of all the great powers of the earth, and yet it may be a futile, barren, costly nothing unless it has behind it the spirit of the people who constitute those nations. The real danger of the moment is lest the League of Nations should become a mere make-believe, whilst the same old intrigues, the same old schemes, the same old international greed and hatred, should be working their will freely outside. The decision of the League of Nations has been, within the last two or three years, openly flouted by a member of that league, a member which owes its national independence to the treaty which founded that league. Another nation, one of the principal authors of the league, refuses to refer a question in which is it concerned, and in which Europe is concerned, to the arbitrament of the league. Both these nations prefer to resort to force. The rest of the world looks on feebly with indifference, accepting the rebuff to their league in each case. Why? Because there is no public opinion in the recalcitrant countries to bring pressure to bear on the respective governments, and there is no public opinion strong enough outside to exercise the necessary insistence.

The churches alone can remedy this. There ought to be an international movement of all the churches, Catholic and Protestant, Protestant and Catholic. I know it is difficult to compass. The divisions in Christendom are too often fatal to common action for the attainment of common aims. They ought to be overcome. They must be overcome. There was a time in the Middles Ages when religion exercised a direct as well as an indirect influence in the domain of government and social relations. It helped to win for Englishmen their great charter. It gradually emancipated the serfs. It preserved the peace of Europe many a time when it was gravely imperilled by the quarrels of kings. In the days of Puritanism, and the days of the Covenant, the partnership between religion and politics won for us the two great boons of parliamentary liberty and liberty of conscience. When Methodism spurred the conscience of England, its influence was felt in the political movement that emancipated the slaves throughout the British Empire.

That was one of the greatest feats of disinterested righteousness ever exhibited by a nation. The tasks awaiting religion to-day in the sphere of government are even greater—emancipation of the worker from the tyrannies of economic greed, the saving of the nation from the curse of alcohol, and the spreading of the angels' message heard on the hills of Bethlehem until the obdurate heart of man shall at last re-echo it: "Peace on earth and goodwill amongst men."

II EUROPE STILL ARMING

Marshal Foch once told me that he considered the German army of 1914 the finest army the world ever saw, in numbers, organisation, training, and equipment.

What set that army in motion?

Much has been written and spoken as to the origin of the Great War, and as to who and what was responsible for so overwhelming a cataclysm. No one ever believed that it was the assassination of a royal archduke. Some said it was the working out of the pan-German scheme to rule the earth; some contended it was the German fear of the growing power of Russia, the nervous apprehension of what looked like an encircling movement by Russia, France and Britain.

The great French marshal's dictum is the real explanation. Unless due weight is given to this outstanding fact the diplomatic muddle of July, 1914, becomes unintelligible.

Were it not that the German army was more perfect and more potent than either the French or the Russian army—were it not that every German officer was convinced that the German military machine was superior to all its rivals—there would have been no war, whatever emperors, diplomatists, or statesmen said, thought, or intended.

All nations have their ambitions, but they are not tempted to impose them upon their neighbours if the hazard is too obviously great. But a sense of overpowering force behind national aims is a constant incitement to recklessness, to greed, and to ambitious patriotism.

The more one examines, in the growing calm, the events of July, 1914, the more one is impressed with the shrinking of the nominal rulers of the attacking empires as they approached the abyss, and with the relentless driving onward of the military organisation behind these terror-stricken dummies.

Navies are essentially defensive weapons. No capital in the world can be captured by navies alone, and no country can be annexed or invaded by a fleet. But armies are grabbing machines. A transcendent army has always led to aggression. No country can resist the lure of an easy military triumph paraded before its eyes for two successive generations.

The inference is an obvious one. To ensure peace on earth nations must disarm their striking forces. Without disarmament, pacts, treaties, and covenants are of no avail. They are the paper currency of diplomacy. That is the reason why all the friends of peace are filled with despair when they see nations still arming and competing in armies whilst trusting to mere words and signatures to restrain the irresistible impetus of organised force.

A statistical survey of European armies to-day is calculated to cause alarm. Europe has not learnt the lesson of the war. It has rather drawn a wrong inference from that calamity. There are more men under arms in Europe to-day than there were in 1913-14, with none of the justification or excuse which could be pleaded in those days.

In pre-war times the statesmen of each country could make a parliamentary case for their military budgets by calling attention to the menace of prodigious armies across their frontiers. Germany and Austria built up great armaments because their frontiers were open to the attack of two great military powers who had engaged to pool their resources in the event of war. France and Russia raised huge armies because Germany possessed the most redoubtable army in the world, and could rely in the case of war upon the assistance of the not inconsiderable forces of the Austrian empire. And both Austria and France had always the uncertain factor of Italy, with her army of 3,000,000, to reckon with.

But since the war these mutual excuses no longer exist. The two great military empires of Central Europe have disappeared. Germany, which before the war had a peace establishment of 800,000 men and reserves running into millions, has to-day a total army of 100,000 men—about one-third the size of the Polish army. The formidable German equipment which for four years pounded the cities and villages of northern France to dust is either destroyed or scattered for display amongst the towns and villages of the victors. The Austrian army, which had in 1913-14 a peace establishment of 420,000 men and a reserve of two or three millions of trained men, has to-day been reduced to a tiny force of 30,000 men.

In spite of these facts France has still an army of 736,000 men now under arms, with a trained reserve of two or three millions more. She is strengthening and developing her air force as if she feared—or contemplated—an immediate invasion. In 1914 France had an air force of 400 aëroplanes; to-day she has 1,152.[1] But numbers signify little. The size, the power, and the purpose of the machines signify much. Amongst the 1,152 air machines of to-day will be found bombers of a destructiveness such as was not dreamt of in 1914.

Should human folly drift once more into war these preparations are full of evil omen as to the character of that conflict. A single bomb dropped from one of the new bombers contains more explosive material than one hundred of those carried by the old type. And the size of the machine and of its bombs is growing year by year. Where is it to stop? And what is it all for? Where is the enemy? Where is the menace which demands such gigantic military developments? Not one of the neighbours of France has to-day a force which reaches one-fourth the figures of her formidable army. Germany no longer affords a decent pretext. The population of Germany is equal to the aggregate population of Poland, Rumania, Jugo-Slavia, and Czecho-Slovakia, but her army barely numbers one-seventh of the aggregate peace establishment of these four countries. Rumania alone, with a population of 15,000,000, has an army twice the size of that allowed by the Treaty of Versailles to Germany with her population of 60,000,000. These countries have in addition to their standing armies reserve forces of millions of trained men, whilst the young men of Germany are no longer permitted to train in the use of arms. Her military equipment is destroyed, and her arsenals and workshops are closely inspected by Allied officers lest a fresh equipment should be clandestinely produced. An army of 700,000 is, therefore, not necessary in order to keep Germany within bounds.

The only other powerful army in Europe is the Russian army. It is difficult to gather any reliable facts about Russia. The mists that arise from that unhealthy political and economic swamp obscure and distort all vision. The statistics concerning her army vary according to the point of view of the person who cites them. The latest figure given by the Russians themselves is 800,000. On paper that indicates as formidable a force as that possessed by the French. But the events of the past few years show clearly that the Russian army is powerful only for defence, and that it is valueless for purposes of invasion. It has neither the transport that gives mobility nor the artillery that makes an army redoubtable in attack. The Polish invasion of 1923 was a comedy, and as soon as the Poles offered the slightest resistance the Bolsheviks ran back to their fastnesses without striking a Parthian blow at their pursuers. The state of Russian arsenals and factories under Bolshevism is such that any attempt to re-equip these armies must fail. The Russian army, therefore, affords no justification for keeping up armaments in Europe on the present inflated scale. The fact is that Europe is thoroughly frightened by its recent experience, and, like all frightened things, does not readily listen to reason, and is apt to resort to expedients which aggravate the evils which have terrified it.

Militarism has reduced it to its present plight, and to save itself from a similar disaster in future it has become more militarist than ever. Every little state bristles with guns to scare off invaders. Meanwhile no country in Europe pays its way, except Britain, with her reduced army and navy. But by means of loans and inflated currencies they all, even the smallest of them, contrive to maintain larger armies than Frederick the Great or the Grand Monarque ever commanded in their most triumphant years. And the cost of armaments to-day has grown vastly out of proportion to the numbers of the units that compose them. France—in many ways the richest country in Europe—displays a gaping and a growing rent in her national finance which has to be patched up by paper. The deficit grows in spite of the fact that a large part of her army is quartered on Germany to the detriment of reparations, and that the German contribution conceals much of the cost of that large army.

A good deal of the borrowing is attributable to the cost of repairing her devastated area, but the burden of maintaining so huge an army is responsible for a considerable share of the deficiency. The economic recovery of Europe is seriously retarded by the cost of the new militarism. The old continent is throwing to the dogs of war with both hands the bread that should feed her children. One day those dogs will, in their arrogant savagery, turn upon the children and rend them.

Algeciras, December 26th, 1922.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] 1,152 refers to when this chapter was written, i. e., January 6th, 1923. The figure has increased since then.

III THE ERUPTION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

The shores of the Mediterranean have from time immemorial been the scene of eruptions and earthquakes. They generally break out without warning. Sometimes they are devastating in their effects, destroying life and property over wide areas and on a vast scale. Sometimes they provide a brilliant spectacular display, terrifying in appearance, but not causing much destruction. To which of these two categories does the last eruption of Mussolini belong? To drop hot cinders in the Balkans is a dangerous experiment. The soil is everywhere soaked with naphtha and it floats about in uncharted pools and runlets which easily catch fire. A cinder flung from Vienna started a conflagration which spread over continents. That was only nine years ago. The ground is still hot—the smoke blinds and stifles. You cannot see clearly or breathe freely. Now and again there is a suspicious ruddiness in the banks of smoke which proves that the fire is not yet out. And yet there are statesmen flinging burning faggots about with reckless swagger.

The temper of Europe may be gauged from the reception accorded to these heedless pyrotechnics on the part of national leaders by their own countrymen. Every time it occurs, whether in France, Italy or Turkey, and whether it be Poincaré, Mussolini, or Mustapha Kemal who directs the show, applause greets the exhibition. I remember the first days of the Great War. There was not a belligerent capital where great and enthusiastic crowds did not parade the streets to cheer for war. In those days men did not know what war meant. Their conception of it was formed from the pictures of heroic—and always victorious—feats, hung in national galleries and reproduced in the form of the cheap chromos, engravings, and prints, which adorn the walls in every cottage throughout most lands. The triumphant warriors on horseback with the gleaming eye and the flourishing sabre are their own countrymen; the poor vanquished under the crashing hoofs are the foe. Hurrah for more pictures! The Crown Prince denies that he ever used the phrase "This jolly war." His denial ought to be accepted in the absence of better proof than is yet forthcoming as to the statement ever having been made. But the phrase represented the temper of millions in those fateful days. It used to be said that in wars one lot cheered and the other fought. But the cheering mobs who filled the streets in August were filling the trenches in September, and multitudes were filling graves ere the year was out. But when they cheered they had no realisation of the actualities of war. They idealised it. They only saw it in pictures.

But the cheerers of to-day know what war means. France lost well over a million lives in the last fight. Italy lost 600,000, and there are men in every workshop in both countries who know something of the miseries as well as the horrors of war and can tell those who do not. What, then, accounts for the readiness, at the slightest provocation, to rush into all the same wretchedness over again? The infinite capacity of mankind for deluding itself. Last time, it is true, it was a ghastly affair. This time it will be an easy victory. Then you had to fight a perfectly armed Germany, or Austria; now it is a very small affair indeed—in one case a disarmed Germany which cannot fight, or, in the other case, a miserable little country like Greece with no Army or Navy to talk of. So hurrah for the guns! A bloodless victory, except, of course, to the vanquished. More pictures for the walls to show our children what terrible people we are when provoked!

This episode may end peaceably, but it was a risk to take, and quite an unnecessary risk under the circumstances of the case. Italy was indignant, and naturally indignant, at the murder of her emissaries in cold blood on Greek territory and, although it took place in a well-known murder area—on the Albanian border where comitadjis and other forms of banditti reign—still, Greece was responsible for giving adequate protection to all the Boundary Commissioners who were operating within her frontiers. Italy is, therefore, entitled to demand stern reparation for this outrage. This Greece promptly concedes. Not merely has Greece shown her readiness to pay a full indemnity, but she has offered to salute the Italian flag by way of making amends for the offence involved to the Italian nation in this failure to protect Italian officers transacting legitimate business on Greek soil. Mussolini's answer to the Greek acknowledgment of liability is to bombard a defenceless town, kill a few unarmed citizens, and enter into occupation of a Greek island. Does any one imagine, if the incident had occurred on French soil, and the French Government had displayed the same willingness to express regret and offer reparation, that, without further parley, he would have bombarded Ajaccio? Or, had it been Britain, would he have shelled Cowes and occupied the Isle of Wight? But Greece has no Navy. That, I suppose, alters the merits of the case! Force is still the supreme arbiter of right and wrong in international affairs in Europe. It is worth noting how a new code of international law is coming into existence since the War. The French armies invade a neighbour's territory, occupy it, establish martial law, seize and run the railways, regulate its Press, deport tens of thousands of its inhabitants, imprison or shoot down all who resist, and then proclaim that this is not an act of war. It is only a peaceful occupation to enforce rights under a peace treaty. Signor Mussolini shells a town belonging to a country with whom he is at peace, and forcibly occupies part of its territory, and then solemnly declares that it is not an act of war, but just a reasonable measure of diplomatic precaution. Once force decides the issue it also settles the rules. There was a time when English and Spaniards fought each other in the West Indies whilst their Governments at home were ostensibly at peace. And French and English fought in India without any diplomatic rupture between Versailles and St. James's. But in those days these lands were very remote and the control of the centre over events at these distances was intermittent and occasionally feeble. And sometimes it suited Governments to ignore what was taking place on the fringe of Empire. But even in those days an attack on the homeland meant war, and it would mean war to-day were the attacked countries not powerless. I have heard it said that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. There is no doubt one international law for the strong and another for the weak.

What about the League of Nations? This is pre-eminently a case for action under the Covenant. Italy and Greece are both parties. How can they, consistently with the terms of the Treaty they so recently signed, refuse to leave this dispute to be dealt with by the League? Italy had a special part in drafting the Treaty and in imposing it upon Germany and Austria. She cannot now in decency repudiate its clauses. It is suggested in some quarters that, the dignity of Italy being involved in the dispute, she cannot possibly consent to leave it in the hands of the League. That surely is a fatal limitation on the activities of the League of Nations. Every dispute involving right implicates the national honour and as every nation is the judge of its own honour, ultimately all differences would be ruled out of the Covenant which it did not suit one country or the other to refer. The League is not allowed to touch Reparations. If this quarrel also is excluded from the consideration of the League, it is no exaggeration to say that this valuable part of the Treaty of Versailles becomes a dead letter. It is one of the gross ironies of the European situation that the Treaty of Versailles is being gradually torn to pieces by the countries which are not only the authors but have most to gain by its provisions. France has already repudiated the first and most important part of the Treaty by declaring that it will refer no question arising between herself and her neighbours under the Treaty itself to the League of Nations. She has further invaded and occupied her neighbour's territory in defiance of the provisions of the Treaty. If Italy also declines to respect the first part of that Treaty, then nothing is left of it except what it suits nations to enforce or obey. And if the framers do not owe allegiance to the Treaty they drafted, why should those who only accepted it under duress bow to its behests? The victors are busily engaged in discrediting their own charter. It would have been a more honourable course for the nations to pursue if they had followed the example of America by refusing to ratify the whole Treaty. To sign a contract and then to pick and choose for execution the parts of it that suit you is unworthy of the honour of great nations which profess to lead the world towards a higher civilisation.

There are ugly rumours of possible complications arising out of this unfortunate incident. It does not need a vivid imagination to foretell one or two possible results of a disastrous character. In this country they would be deplored, not only for their effect on European peace, but for the damage they must inevitably inflict on the best interests of Italy. She has had enough of victory. What she needs now—what we all need—is peace. There is no country which has more genuine goodwill for Italy's prosperity and greatness than Great Britain. It is an old and tried friendship. The two nations have many common interests: they have no rivalries. Hence, the deep anxiety of Britain that Italy should not commit a mistake which will mortgage her future even if it does not imperil her present.

There are no doubt strategic advantages for Italy in holding Corfu. It enables them to "bottle up" the Adriatic. But it is Greek and it menaces Slavonia, and this introduction of foreign elements into the body of a State for strategic reasons always provokes inflammatory symptoms injurious to the general health of a community. They tend to become malignant and sooner or later they bring disaster. Bosnia ultimately proved to be the death of the Austrian Empire. When the Bosnian cancer became active the evil of Italia Irredenta broke out once more, and between them they laid the Empire of the Hapsburgs in the dust. Italy has played a great part in the work of civilisation, and so has Greece. They have still greater tasks awaiting them—one on a great and the other necessarily on a smaller scale. It would be a misfortune to humanity if they spent their fine enthusiasm on hating and thwarting each other.

London, September 3rd, 1923.

IV IS THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS A SUCCESS?

Is the League of Nations a success? It is impossible to answer the question candidly without giving offence to rival partisans. If you indicate successes already placed to the account of the League, opponents deny or minimise these triumphs, and suggest that you are blinded by attachment to a chimera. If you point to shortcomings, the extreme zealots of the League get angry and hint that you are a secret enemy.

I mean nevertheless to attempt an answer, for much depends on a fearless examination of progress made or missed.

My first answer would be that it is scarcely fair to pose this question just yet. The League was founded only three years ago—much too short a period to afford a test of the working of a gigantic, complex, but very delicate and sensitive human machine. There has been hardly time enough even to catalogue and chart the myriads of nerves that thread its system. You cannot move a finger at the councils of Geneva without touching some hidden nerve and setting it in a condition of quivering protest. The League has, however, been long enough in existence to reveal its strength and its weaknesses, its power, its potentialities and its perils.

It has already achieved triumphs of which its founders may well be proud. The restoration of Austria to life when it seemed to have been hopelessly submerged in the deluge of economic, financial and political disaster which had overwhelmed it, is a notable feat of artificial respiration. The successful effort organised by the League to stamp out typhus in Eastern Europe and prevent its spread to the West is also a success worthy of record. But for this intelligently conducted campaign that terrible disease would have ravaged Russia and Central Europe and laid low millions out of populations so enfeebled by hunger and privation as to become easy victims to its devastating assaults.

The Labour branch of the League has also been specially active and energetic, and its persistent endeavours to raise and co-ordinate the standards of toil in all countries are producing marked and important results. In addition great credit is due to the League for the splendid work it has accomplished in alleviating the distress which prevailed amongst the famine-stricken areas of Eastern Europe and amongst the refugees who fled from the horrors of victorious Bolshevism in Russia, and the still greater horrors of Turkish savagery in Asia Minor.

But these humanitarian tasks, praiseworthy though they be, were not the primary objects of the foundation of the League. Its main purpose was the averting of future wars by the setting up of some tribunal to which nations would be bound by their own covenant and the pressure of other nations to resort in order to settle their differences. Its failure or success as an experiment will be judged by this test alone. How does it stand in this respect?

It succeeded in effecting a settlement of a dangerous dispute between Sweden and Finland over the possession of the Aaland Islands. That success was on the line of its main purpose. Here the methods of the League gave confidence in its complete impartiality.

So much can, unfortunately, not be said of another question where it was called in and gave its decision. Its Silesian award has been acted upon but hardly accepted by both parties as a fair settlement. That is due to the manner adopted in reaching judgment. Instead of following the Aaland precedent in the choice of a tribunal, it pursued a course which engendered suspicion of its motives. It created a regrettable impression of anxiety to retain a certain measure of control over the decision. There was a suspicion of intrigue in the choice of the tribunal and the conduct of the proceedings. In the Aaland case no great power was particularly interested in influencing the conclusions arrived at either way. But here two powers of great authority in the League—France and Poland—were passionately engaged in securing a result adverse to Germany. The other party to the dispute had no friends, and was moreover not a member of the League.

Britain stood for fair play, but she was not a protagonist of the claims of Germany. Poland had a powerful advocate on the League—a country with a vital interest in securing a pro-Polish decision. In these circumstances the League ought to have exercised the most scrupulous care to avoid any shadow of doubt as to its freedom from all bias. Had it chosen distinguished jurists outside its own body to undertake at least a preliminary investigation as it did in the Aaland case, all would have been well. It preferred, however, to retain the matter in its own hands. Hence the doubts and misgivings with which the judgment of the League has been received not only by the whole of Germany, but by many outside Germany.

This decision, and the way Poland has flouted the League over Vilna served to confirm the idea which prevails in Russia and Germany that France and Poland dominate the League. The Silesian award may be just, but the fact remains that it will take a long series of decisions beyond cavil to restore or rather to establish German and Russian confidence in the League.

It is unfortunate that countries which cover more than half Europe should feel thus about a body whose success depends entirely on the confidence reposed in its impartiality by all the nations which may be called upon to carry out its decrees, even though these may be adverse to their views or supposed interests. The Vilna fiasco, the Armenian failure, the suspicions that surround the Silesian award, the timidity which prevents the tackling of reparations, which is the one question disturbing the peace of Europe to-day, the futile conversations and committees on disarmament which everyone knows, will not succeed in scrapping one flight of aëroplanes or one company of infantry. All these disappointments arise from one predominating cause. What is it?

Undoubtedly the great weakness of the League comes from the fact that it only represents one half the great powers of the world. Until the others join you might as well call the Holy Alliance a League of Nations.

The ostensible purpose of that combination was also to prevent a recurrence of the wars that had for years scorched Europe, and to establish European peace on the firm basis of a joint guarantee of delimited frontiers. But certain powers with selfish ambitions dictated its policy. They terrorised Europe into submission and called that peace.

No historical parallel is quite complete, but there is enough material in the occurrences of to-day to justify the reference. The League to be a reality must represent the whole civilised world. That is necessary to give it balance as well as authority. That was the original conception. To ask why that failed is to provoke a bitter and a barren controversy.

I do not propose to express any opinion as to the merits of the manœuvres which led to the defeat of the treaty in America. Whether the Senate should have honoured the signature of an American President given in the name of his country at an international conference, or whether the commitment was too fundamentally at variance with American ideas to justify sanction—whether the amendments demanded as the condition of approval would have crippled the League and ought to have been rejected, or whether they were harmless and ought to have been accepted—these are issues which it would serve no helpful purpose for me to discuss.

But as to the effect of the American refusal to adhere to the League, there can be no doubt. It robbed that body of all chance of dominating success in the immediate future. It is true that three great powers remained in the League, but Russia was excluded, Germany was not included, and when America decided not to go in, of the great powers, Britain, France and Italy alone remained.

The effect has been paralysing. Where these three powers disagree on important issues upon which action is required, nothing is done. The smaller powers cannot, on questions where one or more of the great powers have deep and acute feeling, impose their will; and no two great powers will take the responsibility of overruling the third.

Hence questions like reparations which constitute a standing menace to European peace are not dealt with by the League. Had America been in, even with an amended and expurgated constitution, the situation would have been transformed. America and Britain, acting in concert with an openly sympathetic Italy and a secretly assenting Belgium, would have brought such pressure to bear on France as to make it inevitable that the League should act.

The success of the League depends upon the readiness of nations great and small to discuss all their differences at the council table. But no great power has so far permitted any international question in which it has a direct and vital interest to be submitted to the League for decision.

It has been allowed to adjudicate upon the destiny of the Aaland Islands, over the fate of which Sweden and Finland had a controversy. It has taken cognisance of disputes between Poland and Lithuania about Vilna, although even here its decision has been ignored by the parties. But the acute and threatening quarrel which has broken out between France and Germany over the question of reparations the former resolutely declines to submit to consideration by the League.

The Treaty of Versailles is so wide in its application and so comprehensive and far-reaching in its character that it touches international interests almost at every point. So that the French refusal to agree to a reference of any problems in which they are directly concerned which may arise out of this treaty has had the effect of hobbling the League. As long as that attitude is maintained, the League is impotent to discharge its main function of restoring and keeping peace.

The dispute over reparations clouds the sky to-day, and until it is finally settled it will cause grave atmospheric disturbances for a whole generation. It is not an impossibility that it may end in the most destructive conflict that ever broke over the earth. It is churning up deadly passions. If ever there was an occasion which called for the intervention of an organisation set up for the express purpose of finding peaceable solutions for trouble-charged international feuds, surely this is pre-eminently such a case. Not only do the French government decline to entertain the idea of putting the covenant which constitutes the first and foremost part of the Treaty of Versailles into operation: they have gone so far as to intimate that they will treat any proposal of the kind as an unfriendly act. The constitution of the League stipulates that it will be the friendly duty of any power to move that any international dispute which threatens peace shall be referred to the League. Nevertheless, one leading signatory rules out of the covenant all the questions which vitally affect its own interests. This is the power which has invaded the territory of another because the latter has failed to carry out one of the provisions of the same treaty!

This emphatic repudiation of a solemn contract by one of its promoters has been acquiesced in by all the other signatories. Repudiation and acquiescence complete the electrocuting circuit. This limitation of the activities of the League is the gravest check which it has yet sustained in its career. I do not believe it would have occurred had America, with or without Article 10, been an active member of this body. Its great authority, added to that of Britain and Italy, would have made the pressure irresistible, and its presence on the council would have helped materially to give such confidence in the stability and impartiality of the League that Germany would have accepted the conclusions arrived at without demur and acted upon them without chicane. A rational settlement of the reparations problem by the League would have established its authority throughout the world. Germany, Russia and Turkey, who now treat its deliberations with distrust and dislike tinctured with contempt, would be forced to respect its power, and would soon be pleading for incorporation in its councils. The covenant would thus become a charter—respected, feared, honoured and obeyed by all. There would still be injustice, but redress would be sought and fought for in the halls of the League. There would still be oppression, but freedom would be wrung from the clauses of the covenant. Argument, debate and intercession would be the recognised substitutes for shot, shell and sword. Wars would cease unto the ends of the earth, and the reign of law would be supreme.

Wherein lies the real power of the League, or to be more accurate, its possibility of power? It brings together leading citizens of most of the civilised states of the world to discuss all questions affecting or likely to affect peace and concord amongst nations. The men assembled at Geneva do not come there of their own initiative, nor do they merely represent propagandist societies engaged in preaching the gospel of peace. They are the chosen emissaries of their respective governments. They are the authorised spokesmen of these governments. When in doubt they refer to their governments and receive their instructions, and the proceedings are reported direct to the governments. They meet often and regularly, and they debate their problems with complete candour as well as courtesy.

It is in itself a good thing to accustom nations to discuss their difficulties face to face in a public assembly where reasons have to be sought and given for their attitude which will persuade and satisfy neutral minds of its justice and fairness. It is a practice to be cultivated. It is the practice that ended in eliminating the arbitrament of the sword in the internal affairs of nations. It is only thus that international disputes will gradually drift into the debating chamber instead of on to the battlefield for settlement. Wars are precipitated by motives which the statesmen responsible for them dare not publicly avow. A public discussion would drag these emotives in their nudity into the open where they would die of exposure to the withering contempt of humanity. The League by developing the habit amongst nations of debating their differences in the presence of the world, and of courting the judgment of the world upon the merits of their case, is gradually edging out war as a settler of quarrels. That is the greatest service it can render mankind. Will it be allowed to render that service? If not, then it will perish like many another laudable experiment attempted by mankind in the effort to save itself.

But if it dies, the hope of establishing peace on earth will be buried in the same tomb.

London, April 2nd, 1923.

V THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES AND ITS CRITICS

I have had recently special opportunities for appreciating the extent to which the Treaty of Versailles has not been read by those who have formed very definite opinions concerning its qualities. There is no justification for a failure to peruse this great international instrument. It is the most important document of modern times. It has reshaped for better or for worse much of the geography of Europe. It has resurrected dead and buried nationalities. It constitutes the deed of manumission of tens of millions of Europeans who, up to the year of victory, 1918, were the bondsmen of other races. It affects profoundly the economics, the finance, the industrial and trade conditions of the world; it contains clauses upon the efficacy of which may depend the very existence of our civilisation. Nevertheless there are few who can tell you what is in the Treaty of Versailles. You might have thought that although men differed widely as to its merits, there would have been no difficulty in securing some measure of agreement as to its actual contents. Every endeavour was made to give full publicity to the draft when it was first presented to the Germans, and to the final document when signed. Even before the form of the draft was ever settled, the actual decisions were reported from day to day. Never was a treaty so reported and so discussed in every article and every particle of its constitution, and to-day you can procure an official copy of it from any bookseller for the moderate price of 2s. 6d. In spite of that no two men who happen to profess diverse opinions as to its justice or injustice can agree as to its contents.

A visitor to England in the year 1713 probably experienced the same perplexity in seeking information from a Whig and a Tory respectively as to the Treaty of Utrecht. So this treaty has become one of those fiercely debated subjects, as to which the contestants deliberately refuse to regard any testimony, or recognise the existence of any fact, which is in the least inconsistent with their particular point of view. It has come to pass that the real Treaty of Versailles has already disappeared, and several imaginary versions have emerged. It is around these that the conflict rages.

In France there exist at least two or three schools of thought concerning the Versailles Treaty. There is one powerful section which has always regarded it as a treasonable pact, in which M. Clemenceau gave away solid French rights and interests in a moment of weakness under pressure from President Wilson and myself. That is the Poincaré-Barthou-Pertinax school. That is why they are now, whilst in form engaged in enforcing the treaty, in fact carrying out a gigantic operation for amending it without consulting the other signatories. This has come out very clearly in the remarkable report from a French official in the Rhineland which was disclosed in the London Observer. It is obvious from this paper that whilst the French government have worked their public into a frenzied state of indignation over the failure of Germany to carry out the Treaty of Versailles, they were the whole time deliberately organising a plot to overthrow that treaty themselves. Their representative on the Rhine was spending French money with the consent of the French government to promote a conspiracy for setting up an independent republic on the Rhine under the protection of France. It was a deliberate attempt by those who disapproved of the moderation of the Treaty of Versailles to rewrite its clauses in the terms of the militarist demands put forward by Marshal Foch at the Peace conference. Marshal Foch, the soul of honour, wanted to see this done openly and straightforwardly. What he would have done like the gentleman he is, these conspirators would have accomplished by deceit—by deceiving their Allies and by being faithless to the treaty to which their country had appended its signature. That is one French school of thought on the Treaty of Versailles. It is the one which has brought Europe to its present state of confusion and despair.

There is the second school which reads into the treaty powers and provisions which it does not contain, and never contemplated containing. These critics maintain stoutly that M. Briand, and all other French prime ministers, with the exception of M. Poincaré, betrayed their trust by failing to enforce these imaginary stipulations. They still honestly believe that M. Poincaré is the first French minister to have made a genuine attempt to enforce French rights under the treaty.

In the background there is a third school which knows exactly what the treaty means, but dares not say so in the present state of French opinion. Perhaps they think it is better to bide their time. That time will come, and when it does arrive, let us hope it will not be too late to save Europe from the welter.

In America there are also two or three divergent trends of opinion about this treaty. One regards it as an insidious attempt to trap America into the European cockpit, so as to pluck its feathers to line French and English bolsters. If anything could justify so insular an estimate it would be the entirely selfish interpretation which is put upon the treaty by one or two of the Allied governments. The other American party, I understand, defends it with vigour as a great human instrument second only in importance to the Declaration of Independence. There may be a third which thinks that on the whole it is not a bad settlement, and that the pity is a little more tact was not displayed in passing it through the various stages of approval and ratification. This party is not as vocal as the others.

In England we find at least three schools. There are the critics who denounce it as a brutal outrage upon international justice. It is to them a device for extorting incalculable sums out of an impoverished Germany as reparation for damages artificially worked up. Then there is the other extreme—the "die-hard" section—more influential since it became less numerous, who think the treaty let Germany off much too lightly. In fact they are in complete agreement with the French Chauvinists as to the reprehensible moderation of its terms. In Britain also there is a third party which regards its provisions as constituting the best settlement, when you take into account the conflicting aims, interests, and traditions of the parties who had to negotiate and come to an agreement.

But take all these variegated schools together, or separately, and you will find not one in a thousand of their pupils could give you an intelligent and comprehensive summary of the main principles of the treaty. I doubt whether I should be far wrong in saying there would not be one in ten thousand. Controversialists generally are satisfied to concentrate on the articles in the treaty which are obnoxious or pleasing to them as the case may be, and ignore the rest completely, however essential they may be to a true judgment of the whole. Most of the disputants are content to take their views from press comments and denunciatory speeches. Unhappily the explanatory speeches have been few. Some there are who have in their possession the full text—nominally for reference; but you will find parts of the reparations clauses in their copies black with the thumb-marks which note the perspiring dialectician searching for projectiles to hurl at the object of his fury. The clauses which ease and modify the full demand are treated with stern neglect, and the remainder of the pages are pure as the untrodden snow. You can trace no footprints of politicians, publicists, or journalists, in whole provinces of this unexplored treaty. The covenant of the League of Nations is lifted bodily out of the text, and is delivered to the public as a separate testament for the faithful so that the saints may not defile their hands with the polluted print which exacts justice. They have now come to believe that it never was incorporated in the Treaty of Versailles, and that it has nothing to do with that vile and sanguinary instrument.

And yet the first words of this treaty are the following:

"The High Contracting Parties,

"In order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security,

"By the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war,

"By the prescription of open, just and honourable relations between nations,

"By the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments, and

"By the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organised peoples with one another,

"Agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations."

Then follow the articles of the debated covenant.

A speaker who took part recently in a university debate on the subject told me that the undergraduates exhibited the greatest surprise when he informed them that the League of Nations was founded by the Versailles Treaty. A few days ago I had a similar experience at the Oxford Union. I was speaking against a motion framed to condemn the principles of the treaty as unwise and unjust. In its defence I recalled some of its outstanding features. But as most of my narrative had no bearing on reparations it was greeted with impatience and cries of "Question" from a group of anti-Versaillists. They honestly thought I was travelling outside the motion in giving a short summary of the other sections of the treaty. To them it is all condensed in Mr. Keynes's book, and other hostile commentaries. Anything which is inconsistent with these, or supplements the scanty or misleading statements they make, is deemed to be tainted and biassed. To refer to the text itself they regard as unfair, and as playing into the hands of the defenders of a wicked and oppressive pact. The actual treaty has been already put by them out of bounds, and you wander into its forbidden clauses on pain of being put into the guardroom by one or other of the intolerant factions who patrol the highways and byways of international politics.

In all the debates on the subject in the House of Commons I have only once heard the treaty itself quoted by a critic, and strangely enough that was by way of approval.

I have indicated one important section of the treaty to which is accorded something of the reverence due to Holy Writ by an influential section of the public. This group would be shocked were they reminded that their devotion is given to a chapter in the hateful treaty. There is yet another large and important section which is completely ignored by the critics—that which reconstructs Central Europe on the basis of nationality and the free choice of the people instead of on the basis of strategy and military convenience. This is the section that liberated Poland from the claws of the three carnivorous empires that were preying on its vitals, and restored it to life, liberty and independence. It is the section that frees the Danes of Schleswig and the Frenchmen of Alsace-Lorraine. For these oppressed provinces the Treaty of Versailles is the title-deed of freedom. Why are these clauses all suppressed in controversial literature? Here is another of the ignored provisions—that which sets up permanent machinery for dealing with labour problems throughout the world, and for raising the standard of life amongst the industrial workers by means of a great international effort. No more beneficent or more fruitful provision was ever made in any treaty. It is so momentous and so completely overlooked in general discussion, that I think it worth while to quote at length the general principles laid down by a provision which will one day be claimed as the first great international charter of the worker.

"The High Contracting Parties recognise that differences of climate, habits and customs, of economic opportunity and industrial tradition, make strict uniformity in the conditions of labour difficult of immediate attainment. But, holding as they do, that labour should not be regarded merely as an article of commerce, they think that there are methods and principles for regulating labour conditions which all industrial communities should endeavour to apply so far as their special circumstances will permit.

"Among these methods and principles, the following seem to the High Contracting Parties to be of special and urgent importance:—

"First.—The guiding principle above enunciated that labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or article of commerce.

"Second.—The right of association for all lawful purposes by the employed as well as by the employers.

"Third.—The payment to the employed of a wage adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of life as this is understood in their time and country.

"Fourth.—The adoption of an eight-hour day or forty-eight hour week as the standard to be aimed at where it has not already been attained.

"Fifth.—The adoption of a weekly rest of at least twenty-four hours, which should include Sunday wherever practicable.

"Sixth.—The abolition of child labour and the imposition of such limitations on the labour of young persons as shall permit the continuation of their education and assure their proper physical development.

"Seventh.—The principle that men and women should receive equal remuneration for work of equal value.

"Eighth.—The standard set by law in each country with respect to the conditions of labour should have due regard to the equitable economic treatment of all workers lawfully resident therein.

"Ninth.—Each State should make provision for a system of inspection in which women should take part, in order to ensure the enforcement of the laws and regulations for the protection of the employed."

It will take long before the principles propounded in the covenant of the league under the labour articles are fully and faithfully carried out, but in both a good deal of quiet and steady progress have already been attained. M. Albert Thomas is an admirable chief for the labour bureau. He has zeal, sympathy, tact, energy and great organising talent. He is pressing along with patience, as well as persistence. But that is another question. It raises grave issues as to the execution of the treaty. What I have to deal with to-day is the misunderstandings which exist as to the character of the treaty itself. The British public are certainly being deliberately misled on this point. Why are those sections which emancipate oppressed races, which seek to lift the worker to a condition above destitution and degradation, and which build up a breakwater against the raging passions which make for war, never placed to the credit of the Treaty of Versailles? The type of controversialist who is always advertising his idealism has made a point of withholding these salient facts from the public which he professes to enlighten and instruct. There is no more unscrupulous debater in the ring than the one who affects to be particularly high-minded. I do not mean the man who is possessed of a really high mind, but the man who is always posing as having been exalted by grace above his fellows. He is the Pharisee of controversy. Beware of him, for he garbles and misquotes and suppresses to suit his arguments or prejudices in a way that would make a child of this world blush.

That is why I venture to put in a humble, although I fear belated, plea for the reading of the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text, of the Treaty of Versailles. Herein lies the only fair way of arriving at a just conclusion on the merits of a treaty which holds in its hands the destiny of Europe for many a generation.

VI 1922

The year nineteen hundred and twenty-two witnessed a genuine struggle on the part of the nations to re-establish peace conditions in the world.

During 1919-20 and 1921 "the tarantella was still in their blood." The mad war dance was still quivering in their limbs and they could not rest. The crackle of musketry was incessant and made needful repose impossible. There was not a country in Europe or Asia whose troops were not firing shots in anger at some external or internal foe.

America rang down the fire curtain until this hysterical frenzy had burnt itself out. Was she right? It is too early yet to give the answer. The case is but yet "part heard"—many witnessing years whose evidence is relevant have not yet entered the box: it will, therefore, be some time before the verdict of history as to her attitude can be delivered.

But 1922 testifies to many striking symptoms of recovering sanity on the part of the tortured continents. Before 1922 you had everywhere the querulity of the overstrained nerve. The slightest offence or misunderstanding, however unintentional, provoked a quarrel, and almost every quarrel was followed by a blow. It was a mad world to live in. The shrieks of clawing nations rent the European night and made it hideous. A distinguished general declared that at one period—I think it was the year of grace 1920—there were thirty wars, great and small, proceeding simultaneously. Who was to blame? Everybody and nobody. Mankind had just passed through the most nerve-shattering experience in all its racking history, and it was not responsible for its actions. Millions of young men had for years marched through such a pitiless rain of terror as had not been conceived except in Milton's description of the battle scenes when the fallen angels were driven headlong to the deep. And when the Angel of Peace led the nations out from the gates of hell, no wonder it took them years to recover sight and sanity. Nineteen twenty-two was a year of restored composure.

The outward visible sign was seen in the changed character of the international conferences held during the year. The ultimatum kind of conference gave way to the genuine peace conference. The old method insisted upon by French statesmen was to hammer out demands on the conference anvil and send them in the form of an ultimatum to nations who, in spite of peace treaties, were still treated as enemies; the new method was to discuss on equal terms the conditions of appeasement.

Germany, having no fleet in the Pacific, was not invited to the Washington conference, and Russia was excluded for other reasons. But at Cannes Germany was represented, and at Genoa both Germany and Russia had their delegates.

The Washington conference was, in some respects, the most remarkable international conference ever held. It was the first time great nations commanding powerful armaments had ever sat down deliberately to discuss a voluntary limitation of their offensive and defensive forces. Restrictions and reductions have often been imposed in peace treaties by triumphant nations upon their beaten foes. The Versailles treaty is an example of that operation. But at Washington the victors negotiated a mutual cutting-down of navies built for national safety and strengthened by national pride. The friends of peace therefore have solid ground for their rejoicing in a contemplation of substantial reductions already effected in the naval programmes of the most powerful maritime countries in the world—Britain, the United States of America, and Japan—as a direct result of the Washington negotiations.

American statesmanship has given a lead of which it is entitled to boast, and 1922 is entitled to claim that this triumph of good understanding has brought a measure of glory which will give it a peculiar splendour amongst the years of earth's history.

The gatherings at Cannes and Genoa can also claim outstanding merit in the large and growing family of international conferences. At Washington the Allies alone foregathered. At Cannes and Genoa nations came together which had only recently emerged out of deadly conflict with each other. At each conference I met on both sides men who had but just recovered from severe wounds sustained in this struggle. At Cannes French, Belgian, Italian, Japanese, as well as British ministers and experts, sat down in council with German ministers and experts to discuss the vexed question of reparations without taunt or recrimination. There was a calm recognition not only of the needs of the injured countries, but also of the difficulties of the offending state. Outside and beyond the German problem there was a resolve to eliminate all the various elements of disturbance, political and economic, that kept Europe in a ferment and made its restoration impossible.

Here it was decided to summon all the late belligerent nations to a great conference at Genoa to discuss reconstruction. To these were added the neutral nations of Europe. It was a great decision. There were three obstacles in the way of realising the programme. The first was the stipulation of France that the specific problems raised by the treaty of Versailles should be excluded altogether from the purview of the conference. This was a grave limitation of its functions and chances. Still, if the Cannes sittings had continued, an arrangement might have been arrived at with the Germans which would have helped the deliberations of Genoa. The second obstacle was the refusal of America to participate in the discussions. Why did the American government refuse? There were probably good reasons for that refusal, but the recording angel alone knows them all fully and accurately. The third obstacle was the fall of the Briand ministry, and the substitution of a less sympathetic administration. In spite of all these serious drawbacks Genoa accomplished great things. It brought together into the same rooms enemies who had not met for years except on the battlefield. They conferred and conversed around the same table for weeks—at conferences, committees, and sub-committees. They broke bread and drank wine together at the same festive boards. Before the conference came to an end there was an atmosphere of friendliness which was in itself a guarantee of peaceable relations, for the delegates who represented the nations at Genoa were all men of real influence in their respective countries.

But however important the intangible result, there was much more achieved. The thirty nations represented in the assembly entered into a solemn pact not to commit any act of aggression against their neighbours. When they entered the conference there were few of them who were not oppressed with suspicions that these neighbours meditated violence against their frontiers. When they arrived at Genoa they were all anxious for peace, but apprehensive of impending war. Genoa dispelled those anxieties.

One of the most promising results of the pact and the improved atmospheric conditions out of which it arose is the substantial reduction in the Bolshevik army. It has already been reduced to the dimensions of the French army, and we are now promised a further reduction. That removes a real menace to European peace. If the reduction of armies in the East of Europe is followed by a corresponding reduction in the West the reign of peace is not far distant.

This is not the time to dwell upon the important agreements effected at Genoa on questions of exchange, credit, and transport. All the recommendations made depend for their successful carrying out on the establishment of a real peace and a friendly understanding between nations. Peace and goodwill on earth is still the only healing evangel for idealists to preach and statesmen to practise. Without it plans and protocols must inevitably fail.

Where does peace stand? The weary angel is still on the wing, for the waters have not yet subsided. She may perhaps find a foothold in the Great West, and Britain is fairly safe—not yet Ireland.

But the continent of Europe is still swampy and insecure. The debate in the French Chamber on reparations is not encouraging. The only difference of opinion in the discussion was that displayed between those who advocated an advance into the Ruhr, and the seizure of pledges further into German territory, and those who preferred "developing" the left bank of the Rhine. Occupying, controlling, developing, annexing—they all mean the same thing; that the province to the left bank of the Rhine is to be torn from Germany and grafted into France.

There is no peace in this talk. It is a sinister note on which to end the pacific music of 1922. You must interpret it in connection with another event of 1922—the Russo-German agreement. Since then Chicherin—a spirit of mischief incarnate—has almost made Berlin his abode. The men who are devoting their ingenuity to devising new torments for Germany are preparing new terrors for their own and their neighbours' children.

The year ends with rumours of great American projects for advancing large sums of money to all and sundry in the hope of settling the vexed question of German reparation. The loan, it is surmised, will be accompanied by guarantees on the part of France not to invade further German territory. Some go so far as to conjecture that it is to be an essential condition of participation in this Christmas bounty of Madame Rumour that France is to reduce her armies and to undertake not to exceed Washington limits for her navies.

Nobody seems to know, and I am only repeating the gossip of the press. But if the £350,000,000 loan is likely to materialise, its projectors are wise in imposing conditions that would afford them some chance of receiving payment of a moderate interest in the lifetime of this generation.

No prudent banker would lend money on the security of a flaming volcano.

London, December 20th, 1922.

VII WHAT IS FRANCE AFTER?

1. The Rhine

M. Clemenceau, in the remarkable series of speeches delivered in the United States of America, implies a breach of faith on the part of Britain in reference to the pact to guarantee France against the possibility of German aggression. England has no better friend in the whole of France than M. Clemenceau. Throughout a strenuous but consistent career he has never varied in his friendship for England. Many a time has he been bitterly assailed for that friendship. French journalists are not sparing of innuendo against those they hate. They hate fiercely and they hit recklessly, and M. Clemenceau, a man of scrupulous integrity, at one period in his stormy political life was charged by certain organs of the Paris press with being in the pay of England. If, therefore, he now does an injustice to Britain I am convinced it is not from blind hatred of our country, but from temporary forgetfulness of the facts.

He states the facts with reference to the original pact quite fairly. It was proffered as an answer to those who claimed that the left bank of the Rhine should be annexed to France.

There was a strong party in France which urged M. Clemenceau to demand that the Rhine should be treated as the natural frontier of their country, and that advantage should be taken of the overwhelming defeat of Germany to extend the boundaries of France to that fateful river. For unknown centuries it has been fought over and across—a veritable river of blood. If French Chauvinism had achieved its purpose at the Paris conference the Rhine would within a generation once more overflow its banks and devastate Europe. The most moderate and insidious form this demand took was a proposal that the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine should remain in French occupation until the treaty had been fulfilled. That meant for ever. Reparations alone—skilfully handled by the Quai d'Orsay—would preclude the possibility of ever witnessing fulfilment. The argument by which they supported their claim was the defencelessness of the French frontier without some natural barrier. France had been twice invaded and overrun within living memory by her formidable neighbour. The German military power was now crushed, and rich and populous provinces of the German Empire had been restored to France and Poland, but the population of Germany was still fifty per cent. greater than that of France and it was growing at an alarming rate, whilst the French population was at a standstill. German towns and villages were clamant with sturdy children.

You cannot talk long to a Frenchman without realising how this spectre of German children haunts France and intimidates her judgment. These children, it is said, are nourished on vengeance: one day the struggle will be resumed, and France has no natural defence against the avenging hordes that are now playing on German streets and with the hum of whose voices German kindergartens resound.

We were told the Rhine is the only possible line of resistance. Providence meant it to play that part, and it is only the sinister interference of statesmen who love not France that deprives Frenchmen of this security for peace which a far-seeing Nature has provided.

The fact that this involved the subjection to a foreign yoke of millions of men of German blood, history, and sympathies, and that the incorporation of so large an alien element, hostile in every fibre to French rule, would be a constant source of trouble and anxiety to the French Government, whilst it would not merely provide an incentive to Germany to renew war but would justify and dignify the attack by converting it into a war of liberation—all that had no effect on the Rhenian school of French politics.

This school is as powerful as ever. In one respect it is more powerful, for in 1919 there was a statesman at the head of affairs who had the strength as well as the sagacity to resist their ill-judged claims.

But what about 1922? Where is the foresight and where is the strength? There is a real danger that the fifteen years' occupation may on one pretext or another be indefinitely prolonged. When it comes to an end will there be a ministry in France strong enough to withdraw the troops? Before the fifteen years' occupation is terminated will there be a ministry or a series of ministries strong enough to resist the demand put forward without ceasing in the French press that the occupation should be made effective?

Upon the answer to these questions the peace of Europe—the peace of the world, perhaps the life of our civilisation—depends. The pressure to do the evil thing that will once more spill rivers of human blood is insistent. The temptation is growing, the resistance is getting feebler. America and Britain standing together can alone avert the catastrophe. But they can do so only by making it clear that the aggressor—whoever it be—will have the invincible might of these two commonwealths arrayed against any nation that threatens to embroil the world in another conflict.

There are men in Germany who preach vengeance. They must be told that a war of revenge will find the same allies side by side inflicting punishment on the peace-breakers. There are men in France who counsel annexation of territories populated by another race. They must be warned that such a step will alienate the sympathies of Britain and America, and that when the inevitable war of liberation comes the sympathies of America and Britain will be openly ranged on the side of those who are fighting for national freedom.

The time has come for saying these things, and if they are not said in high places humanity will one day call those who occupy those places to a reckoning.

The pact was designed to strengthen the hands of M. Clemenceau against the aggressive party which was then and still is anxious to commit France to the colossal error of annexing territory which has always been purely German.

M. Clemenceau knows full well that Britain has been ready any time during the last three years up to a few months ago to take upon herself the burden of that pact with or without the United States of America. At Cannes early this year I made a definite proposal to that effect. It was a written offer made by me on behalf of the British government to M. Briand, who was then prime minister of France.

I was anxious to secure the co-operation of France in a general endeavour to clear up the European situation and establish a real peace from the Urals to the Atlantic seaboard. French suspicions and French apprehensions constituted a serious difficulty in the way of settlement, and I thought that if it were made clear to France that the whole strength of the British Empire could be depended upon to come to her aid in the event of threatened invasion French opinion would be in a better mood to discuss the outstanding questions which agitate Europe.

International goodwill is essential to the re-establishment of the shattered machinery of international commerce. With a great country like France, to which the issue of the war had given a towering position on the continent of Europe, in a condition of fretfulness, it was impossible to settle Europe.

Hence the offer which was made by the British government. M. Briand was prepared to welcome this offer and to proceed to a calm consideration of the perplexities of the European situation. It was agreed to summon a conference at Genoa to discuss the condition of European exchange, credit and trade. It was also resolved that an effort should be made to establish peace with Russia and to bring that great country once more inside the community of nations. A great start was made on the path of genuine appeasement. The German Government were invited to send their chief Minister to the Cannes conference in order to arrive at a workable settlement of the vexed question of reparations. The invitation received a prompt response, and Dr. Rathenau, accompanied by two or three leading ministers and a retinue of financial experts, reached Cannes in time to take part in the discussions.

The negotiations were proceeding helpfully, and another week might have produced results which would have pacified the tumult of suspicious nations and inaugurated the promise of fraternity. But, alas, Satan is not done with Europe. A ministerial crisis in France brought our hopes tumbling to the ground. The conference was broken up on the threshold of fulfilment.

Suspicion once more seized the tiller, and Europe, just as she seemed to be entering the harbour of goodwill, was swung back violently into the broken seas of international distrust. The offer made by Britain to stand alone on the pact of guarantee to France was rejected with disdain. We were told quite brutally that it was no use without a military convention. This we declined to enter into. Europe has suffered too much from military conventions to warrant the repetition of such a disastrous experiment.

The pact with Britain lies for the moment in the waste-paper basket. But we never flung it there. M. Clemenceau ought to have made his complaint in Paris against men of his own race and not in New York against Englishmen. With the pact went the effort to make peace in Europe.

The history of Genoa is too recent to require any recapitulation of its features. The new French ministry did not play the part of an inviting government responsible for pressing to a successful end the objects of Cannes, but rather that of the captious critic who had to be persuaded along every inch of the road and who threatened at every obstacle to turn back and leave the rest of Europe to struggle along with its burden, amid the mocking laughter of France.

I am not complaining of M. Barthou. He did his best under most humiliating conditions to remain loyal to the conference which his government had joined in summoning. But his task was an impossible one. He was hampered, embarrassed and tangled at every turn. Whenever he took any step forward he was lassoed by a despatch from Paris. I have good authority for stating that he received over eight hundred of these communications in the course of the conference!

What could the poor man do under such bewildering conditions? The other European countries were perplexed and distracted. They were anxious that Genoa should end in a stable peace. There was no doubt about the sincerity, the passionate sincerity, of the desire for peace throughout Europe, but European nations could not help seeing that one of the great powers was working for a failure. They had a natural anxiety not to appear to take sides.

It is a marvel that in spite of this unfortunate attitude adopted by the French Government a pact was signed which has, at any rate, preserved the peace in Eastern Europe for several months.

Before the conference we heard of armies being strengthened along frontiers and of movements of troops with a menacing intent from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Genoa at least dispelled that cloud. But a permanent peace has not yet been established and the pact with Russia will soon expire. I am, however, hopeful that the spirit of Genoa will stand between contending armies and prevent the clash of swords.

All this, however, is leading me away from an examination of M. Clemenceau's suggestion that Britain did not keep faith in the matter of guaranteeing France against German aggression.

The offer was definitely renewed at Cannes, and M. Poincaré has not accepted it.

I have my own opinion as to why he has not done so. It is not merely that he does not wish to set the seal of his approval upon a predecessor's achievement. I am afraid the reason is of a more sinister kind. If France accepts Britain's guarantee of defence of her frontier every excuse for annexing the left bank of the Rhine disappears.

If this is the explanation, if French ministers have made up their minds that under no conditions will they, even at the end of the period of occupation, withdraw from the Rhine, then a new chapter opens in the history of Europe and the world, with a climax of horror such as mankind has never yet witnessed.

The German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine are intensely German—in race, language, tradition and sympathies. There are seventy millions of Germans in Europe. A generation hence there may be a hundred millions. They will never rest content so long as millions of their fellow-countrymen are under a foreign yoke on the other side of the Rhine, and it will only be a question of time and opportunity for the inevitable war of liberation to begin.

We know what the last war was like. No one can foretell the terrors of the next. The march of science is inexorable, and wherever it goes it is at the bidding of men, whether to build or to destroy. Is it too much to ask that America should, in time, take an effective interest in the development along the Rhine? To that extent I am in complete accord with M. Clemenceau. Neither Britain nor America can afford to ignore the manœuvres going on along its banks. It is a far cry from the Rhine to the Mississippi, but not so far as it used to be.

There are now graves not far from the Rhine wherein lies the dust of men who, less than six years ago, came from the banks of the Mississippi, with their faces towards the Rhine.

London, December 2nd, 1922.

VIII WHAT IS FRANCE AFTER?

2. The Rhine (Continued)

The breakdown of the London conference, and especially the reason for that breakdown, proves the warning I uttered in my last chapter was necessary and timely.

M. Poincaré demanded the occupation of the only rich coalfield left to Germany as a guarantee for the carrying out of impossible terms.

It is because I am profoundly convinced that the policy represented by this project will lead to trouble of the gravest kind for Europe and the world that I felt moved to sound a note of warning. I knew it would provoke much angry misrepresentation. I am accustomed to that. I deemed it to be my duty to face it.

The statement I made in my last chapter about the existence of a strong party in France which regarded the Rhine as the natural barrier of that country has provoked a storm of denial, repudiation and indignation. It is denounced as a wicked invention. Some are amazed at the impudence of the calumny. Where is the party? France knows nothing of it. Is it not a monster which has emanated from the brain of the enemy of France?

Repudiations have their value, especially if they come from men of authority, and I shall bear invective with the fortitude to which all men who wish to be happy though politicians should be hardened provided I elicit denials which may render future international mischief difficult.

But a further perusal of the evidence on which I based my statement has served to deepen my apprehensions. What was the statement? Let me quote the actual words I used:—

"There was a strong party in France which urged M. Clemenceau to demand that the Rhine should be treated as the natural frontier of their country, and that advantage should be taken of the overwhelming defeat of Germany to extend the boundaries of France to that fateful river.

"The most moderate and insidious form this demand took was a proposal that the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine should remain in French occupation until the treaty had been fulfilled. That meant for ever. Reparations alone—skilfully handled by the Quai d'Orsay—would preclude the possibility of ever witnessing fulfilment.

"The pact was designed to strengthen the hands of M. Clemenceau against the aggressive party which was then, and still is, anxious to commit France to the colossal error of annexing territory which has always been purely German."

What was the basis on which I made this assertion? It was thoroughly well known to all those who were engaged in the operations of the Peace conference. The Rhine was the background of all manœuvre for weeks and months. Whether the subject matter was the League of Nations, the German fleet, or the status of Fiume, we knew that the real struggle would come over the Rhine.

On one hand, How much would France demand? on the other, How much would the Allies concede? There was a subconscious conflict about the Rhine throughout the whole discussion, however irrelevant the topic under actual consideration happened to be.

But unrecorded memories are of little use as testimony unless corroborated by more tangible proofs. Do such proofs exist? I will recall a few.

There was a party which considered the Rhine to be the only natural frontier of France. It was a strong party, with a strong man as its spokesman—in many ways the strongest in France—Marshal Foch. His splendid services in the war gave him a position such as no soldier in France or in any other country could command. The soldier who, by his genius, leads a nation to victory, possesses a measure of influence on the public opinion of the people he has saved from destruction such as no other individual can aspire to—as long as his services are fresh in the memory of his fellow-countrymen. That, I admit, is not very long. Gratitude is like manna—it must be gathered and enjoyed quickly, for its freshness soon disappears. But in the early months of 1919 Marshal Foch was still sitting at the banquet table of popular favour enjoying the full flavour of grateful recognition. His word on all questions affecting the security and destiny of France was heard with a deference which no other man in France could succeed in securing. He has also a quality which is not usually an attribute of generalship: he is a lucid, forceful and picturesque speaker. He was, therefore, listened to for what he was, for what he said, and for the way he said it.

What did he say? He said a good deal on the subject of the Rhine frontier and I cannot quote it all. I will take a few germane sentences out of his numerous utterances on the subject. On the 19th day of April, 1919, there appeared in the London Times an interview with Marshal Foch. From that interview I take these salient passages:—

"'And now, having reached the Rhine, we must stay there,' went on the Marshal very emphatically. 'Impress that upon your fellow-countrymen. It is our only safety, their only safety. We must have a barrier. We must double-lock the door. Democracies like ours, which are never aggressive, must have strong natural military frontiers. Remember that those seventy millions of Germans will always be a menace to us. Do not trust the appearances of the moment. Their natural characteristics have not changed in four years. Fifty years hence they will be what they are to-day.'

* * * * * * *

"From the table at the other end of the room Marshal Foch brought a great map, six or eight feet square, on which the natural features of this part of western Europe were marked. The Rhine was a thick line of blue. To the west of the river the Marshal had drawn in pencil a concave arc representing the new frontier that France will receive under the Peace treaty. It was clearly an arbitrary political boundary conforming to no natural feature of the land.

"'Look at that,' said Marshal Foch. 'There is no natural obstacle along that frontier. Is it there that we can hold the Germans if they attack us again? No. Here! here! here!' and he tapped the blue Rhine with his pencil.

"'Here we must be ready to face our enemies. This is a barrier which will take some crossing. If the Germans try to force a passage over the Rhine—ho! ho! But here'—touching the black pencilled line running north-west from Lorraine past the Saar valley to the Belgian frontier—'here there is nothing.'

* * * * * * *

"'No; if you are wise you insist on having your locks and your wall, and we must have our armies on the Rhine. Some people object that it will take many troops to hold the Rhine. Not so many as it would take to hold a political frontier. For the Rhine can be crossed only at certain places, whereas the new political frontier of France can be broken anywhere and would have to be held in force along its entire length.'"

He expounded his doctrine in greater detail in an official memorandum which, as commander-in-chief of the Allied armies, he submitted to M. Clemenceau:—

"To stop the enterprises towards the west of this nation, everlastingly warlike, and covetous of the good things belonging to other people, only recently formed and pushed on to conquest by force regardless of all rights and by ways the most contrary to all law, seeking always the mastery of the world, Nature has only made one barrier—the Rhine. This barrier must be forced on Germany. Henceforward the Rhine will be the western frontier of the Germanic peoples...."

He repeated this demand in a subsequent memorandum. Many of us recall his dramatic irruption into the placid arena of the Peace conference in May, 1919, still brandishing the same theme.

It may be said that Marshal Foch is not and does not pretend to be a statesman. He is only a great soldier. Nevertheless, his political influence was so great that even in 1920 he overthrew the most powerful statesman in France within a month of his triumphant return at the polls with a huge supporting majority in the French Parliament. It was Marshal Foch who, by his antagonism, was responsible for M. Clemenceau's defeat at the presidential election of 1920. But for Marshal Foch's intervention M. Clemenceau would have been to-day president of the French republic.

Why was he beaten, at the height of his fame, by a candidate of infinitely less prestige and power? The wrath of Marshal Foch and his formidable following was excited against M. Clemenceau because the latter had, under pressure from the Allies, gone back on the agreed French policy about the Rhine. M. Tardieu, as is well known, was one of the two most prominent ministers in M. Clemenceau's administration, and closely associated with his chief in the framing of the Peace treaty. He has written a book, and in that book he gives at length a document which he handed to the Allies on March 12th, 1919, containing the following proposal:—

"In the general interest of peace and to assure the effective working of the constituent clause of the League of Nations, the western frontier of Germany is fixed at the Rhine. Consequently Germany renounces all sovereignty over, as well as any customs union with, the territories of the former German empire on the left bank of the Rhine."

There is a sardonic humour about the words "in the general interest of peace and to assure the effective working of the constituent clause of the League of Nations."

But it demonstrates that at that date M. Clemenceau and his minister had become converts to the doctrine of the Rhine as the natural boundary of Germany. American and British pressure subsequently induced him to abandon this position and, as I said in a previous chapter, the pact was part of the argument addressed to him. But the party of the Rhine never forgave. Hence his failure to reach the presidential chair. It was an honourable failure and will ever do him credit.

The reasons assigned for that defeat by the Annual Register, 1919-20—certainly not a partisan authority—prove that even an unexcitable chronicler laboured then under the delusion—if it be a delusion—which possessed me when I wrote the offending article. Explaining the remarkable defeat the Annual Register says:—

" ... Clemenceau's supporters contended that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were satisfactory from the French point of view; his opponents declared that he had given way too much to the American and British standpoints and that the peace was unsatisfactory, particularly in respect of the guarantees for the reparations due to France and in the matter of the French eastern frontier. It will be remembered that a large body of French opinion had desired that France should secure the line of the Rhine as her eastern frontier."

I can if necessary quote endless leading articles in French journals and writings and speeches of French politicians. Men of such divergent temperaments and accomplishments as M. Franklin Bouillon and M. Tardieu gave countenance to this claim that Germany should be amputated at the Rhine. One carried the theme along on the torrent of his clattering lava and the other on the dome of an iceberg. Later on at the reception of Marshal Foch when he was elected a member of the French Academy, M. Poincaré, turning at one moment in his discourse to the Marshal, said in reference to the veteran General's well-known attitude on the Peace treaty, "Ah, Monsieur le Maréchal, if only your advice had been listened to." Has he also gone back on an opinion so histrionically expressed? Let us hope for the best.

I know it will be said that although the boundaries of Germany were to end at the Rhine, the province on the left bank was not to be annexed, but to be reconstituted into an "independent" republic. What manner of independence and what kind of republic? All German officers were to be expelled; it was to be detached by special provision from the economic life of Germany upon which it is almost entirely dependent for its existence. It was not to be allowed to associate with the fatherland.

The Rhine which divided the new territory from Germany was to be occupied in the main by French troops: the territories of the independent republic were to be occupied by foreign soldiers. Its young men were to be conscripted and trained with a view to absorbing them into French and Belgian armies to fight against their own countrymen on the other side of the Rhine. The whole conditions of life in the "free and independent republic" were to be dictated by an "accord" between France, Luxemburg and Belgium, and, in the words of Marshal Foch, "Britain would be ultimately brought in."

But I am told that these proposals did not mean annexation. Then what else did they mean? You do not swallow the oyster. You only first give it an independent existence by detaching it from its hard surroundings. You then surround it on all sides and absorb it into your own system to equip you with added strength to prey on other oysters! What independence! And what a republic! It would have been and was intended to be a sham republic. Had the plan been adopted it would have been a blunder and a crime, for which not France alone but the world would later on have paid the penalty.

In the face of these quotations and of these undoubted facts, can any one say that I calumniated France when I said there was a powerful party in that country which claimed that the Rhine should be treated as the natural barrier of Germany, and that the Peace treaty should be based upon that assumption?

Let it be observed that I never stated that this claim had the support of the French democracy. The fact that the treaty, which did not realise that objective, secured ratification by an overwhelming majority in the French parliament and subsequently by an emphatic verdict in the country, demonstrates clearly that the French people as a whole shrank with their invincible good sense from following even a lead they admired on to this path of future disaster. But the mere fact that there are potent influences in France that still press this demand, and take advantage of every disappointment to urge it forward, calls for unremitting vigilance amongst all peoples who have the welfare of humanity at heart.

In conclusion I should like to add that to denounce me as an enemy of France because I disagree with the international policy of its present rulers is a petulant absurdity.

During the whole of my public career I have been a consistent advocate of co-operation between the French and British democracies. I took that line when it was fashionable in this country to fawn on German imperialism.

During the war I twice risked my premiership in the effort to place the British army under the supreme command of a French general. To preserve French friendship I have repeatedly given way to French demands, and thus have often antagonised opinion in this country. But I cannot go to the extent of approving a policy which is endangering the peace of the world, even to please one section of a people for whose country I have always entertained the most genuine affection.

London, December 9th, 1922.

IX WHAT IS FRANCE AFTER?

3. The Paris Conference

The third conference with M. Poincaré over reparations has ended, like its two predecessors, in a complete breakdown.

The first was held in August, the second in December, and the third fiasco has just been witnessed.

I congratulate Mr. Bonar Law on having the courage to face a double failure rather than agree to a course of policy which would in the end prove disappointing, and probably disastrous.

Agreement amongst allies is in itself a desirable objective for statesmen to aim at, but an accord to commit their respective countries to foolishness is worse than disagreement.

France and Britain must not quarrel, even if they cannot agree; but if French ministers persist in the Poincaré policy, the companionship of France and Britain over this question will be that of parallel lines which never meet, even if they never conflict.

What is the object of this headstrong policy? Reparations?

There is no financier of repute, in any quarter of the globe, who will agree that these methods will bring the Allies any contributions towards their impoverished resources.

At the August conference all the experts were in accord on this subject, but whilst these methods will produce no cash, they will produce an unmistakable crash.

My recollections of the August discussions enable me to follow with some understanding the rather confused reports which have so far reached me here.[2]

It is common ground amongst all the Allies that Germany cannot under present conditions pay her instalments.

It is common ground that she must be pressed to put her finances in order, and by balancing her budget restore the efficiency of her currency, so as to meet her obligations.

But M. Poincaré insisted that, as a condition of granting the moratorium, pledges inside German territory should be seized by the Allies.

These pledges consisted of customs already established, and of new customs to be set up on the Rhine and around the Ruhr, so that no goods should be permitted to pass from these German provinces into the rest of Germany without the payment of heavy customs dues.

The other proposed pledges were the seizure of German forests, of German mines, and of 60 per cent. of the shares in certain German factories.

Mr. Bonar Law, judging by his official communiqué after the breakdown of the conference, seems to have raised the same objections to these pledges as I put forward at the August conference.

They would bring in nothing comparable to the cost of collection;

They would provoke much disturbance and irritation and might lead to consequences of a very grave character.

In fact, these pledges are nothing but paper and provocation.

The customs barrier on the Rhine was tried once before, and was a complete failure.

It was tried then as a sanction and not as a means of raising money. For the former purpose it may have achieved some measure of success, but from the point of view of collecting money it was a ludicrous fiasco.

There are at the present moment hundreds of millions of paper marks collected at these new tollhouses still locked up in the safe of the Reparations Commission. They are admittedly worthless.

As long as these tolls lasted, they were vexatious; they interfered with business; they dealt lightly with French luxuries working their way into Germany, but laid a heavy hand on all useful commodities necessary to the industry and life of the people.

They were ultimately withdrawn by consent. M. Poincaré now seeks to revive them.

The seizure of German forests and mines will inevitably lead to even more serious consequences. The allied control established in the far interior of Germany would require protection.