The French not Fools What is transparent to the foreign lecturers of his country on either side of the Atlantic must be visible to him. Just as Peace is the Greatest of British Interests, so it is the supreme French interest. Of this every Frenchman is as keenly conscious as, say, the Manchester Guardian or the Evening Standard. He is equally aware that the peace of France primarily depends on Franco-German relations, and there is nothing in reason that France would not do in order to secure and safeguard the priceless blessing of security. But just as we never forget our geographical position, which permits us to indulge in several luxuries denied to a Continental Nation liable to invasion and her capital to occupation by a foreign conqueror, so France remembers her vastly different situation from ours, which abundantly explains the divergent outlook of French Statesmanship and its sensitiveness concerning the safety of the State. Geography explains most Anglo-French differences and dissimilarities, and should help us to understand why the head of a Government standing in M. Poincaré's shoes and charged with his responsibilities is unable to assume the easy nonchalance towards European questions that characterizes his opposite number in Downing Street, who can afford to believe that the mere repetition of such a word as Locarno" solves all outstanding Anglo-Franco-German problems. If they lived next door to Germany neither the British Prime Minister nor his colleague at the Foreign Office would cultivate this illusion any more than dare a French Prime Minister, who has never been accused of lacking courage. The French 66 It was in unveiling a War Memorial at Lunéville, in the Meurthe-et-Moselle Department (June 19th), that M. Poincaré supplied a needed corrective to well-meaning nonsense inspired by that grossly overworked word "Locarno," and temperately restated what we should all regard as the pre-eminently reasonable standpoint of France if we happened to be Frenchmen. And not being Frenchmen, we should try and see things through French eyes, because whether we like it or not the fate of our two countries is indissolubly linked. Any catastrophe to France would be a catastrophe to England, and vice versa. Neither Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Beaverbrook, nor any other Francophobe can alter this fundamental fact which governs all Anglo-French relations, and should never be absent from the minds of those of their citizens who are at once intelligent and patriotic. M. Poincaré, after reviewing the painful war experiences of the district in which he was speaking, declared that the French people had no wish to make their "terrible memories" a cause for "eternal resentment against a neighbouring nation." "If, from the moment of her defeat, Germany had openly disavowed the Government and the military caste which had led her into the war, if she had copied the French nation's repudiation of 1870, if she had not contested against all evidence the crushing responsibilities of the imperial policy, it would never have occurred to anybody to confuse a people with a fallen régime, and to attribute to Germans generally the abominable acts which the French had witnessed." The one and only thing that Germany regrets about the war is that she was on the losing side, and the stupendous whitewashing Campaign in the matter of "War Guilt" now absorbing the Fatherland is designed to create an atmosphere in which another war will appear to be a righteous means of vindicating Germany's reputation and punishing the "war guilty," alias the Allies. It is an ominous outlook which French Statesmen cannot ignore, even if ours think they can afford to do so. There has, as M. Poincaré insisted, been no lack of good will or pacifism on the part of France, who " has never sought anything outside or beyond the Treaties. She has demanded, and will continue to demand, only the security of her frontier and the payment of her reparations." How different had been the demeanour of Germany. Only a fortnight ago, as M. Poincaré reminded his Lunéville audience Germany had "ostentatiously " sent a ship to Lisbon which "she still calls Elsass," and in speeches delivered after Locarno a leading German Minister had declared that "his renunciation of the force of arms by What does Germany had simply been dictated by the fact that Germany no longer possessed any force of arms," and that there was no moral renunciation of any sort whatever of German provinces and populations." And "why did another Minister add, more expressly, that he regarded Alsace as a German province, and that in renouncing violence Germany had not renounced any German country? Can the Berlin Government believe that such an interpretation of the Locarno agreement responds to the sentiments of France?" Then again, why did high financial authorities in Germany suggest that Germany would seek a revision of the Dawes scheme with a view to getting rid of the contemplated payments? Were these wise and conciliatory utterances on questions France was compelled to regard as vital? If Germany said frankly to France: "I have renounced Alsace and Lorraine, which I had taken from you by force in 1871 and which had unanimously protested against the annexation; I will not try to retake them from you either by a fresh violence or by ruse or in any other manner ; if, at the same time, Germany at last consented, as asked by the Conference of Ambassadors on February 10th last, to reorganize her police, to dissolve the military associations, to dispose of the arsenals and barracks which she is keeping in violation of the Treaty, and to complete the destruction of the forbidden fortifications, she would give the world pledges of peace which would dissipate all uneasiness and would render easy a rapprochement which we are not the last in desiring. Monsieur Poincaré concluded with an unimpeachable statement of France's position vis-à-vis her neighbour, which gains authority from the fact that it embodied the views of, and had been approved by, the present very representative French Cabinet in which "Locarno" Briand is Foreign Minister: Not only do we detest war, because this region has suffered still more horribly from it than other parts of France, but we also have, more than the rest of our country, an interest in resuming good relations with our neighbours. We wish to be able to resume them in full mutual confidence and without arrière-pensée. Our dead fought not for the annihilation or humiliation of a foreign people, but for the independence of their country. France has nothing more to desire than peace in the observation of the Treaties. She did not want anything else yesterday, does not to-day, and will not to-morrow. POST-WAR Germany threatens to become as disturbing a factor in the European system as was pre-war Germany. This concerns us no less than France, because we are equally responsible with her for the Peace Treaties of 1919, which Germany seeks to scrap unless she Disturbing is allowed to re-write them. In one respect the situation is decidedly worse than it was before 1914. Imperial Russia was then the ally of Republican France and, moreover, an ally who could be relied upon at any grave crisis. But Bolshevist Russia is so far from being any ally of France that she is in suspicious communion with Germany and in implacable enmity to England. How can her relations with Germany be a matter of indifference to us, with the Soviet openly conducting hostilities wherever its paid agents can damage a British interest or a British national? And is "Locarno "-the fetish of Downing Street-anything more than so much eyewash " for the beguilement of simpletons? To put it mildly, it seems somewhat strange that if Herr Stresemann, the German Foreign Minister, is imbued with "the true spirit of Locarno " and adores his two Locarno colleagues (Sir Austen Chamberlain and M. Briand) as ardently as they obviously adore him, that he should be on close and cordial terms with the Moscow Camarilla, who have demonstrated afresh during the past month that they are nothing but a gang of assassins-indeed, they are much worse than common or garden" murderers, who frequently take the risk of the gallows, while these miscreants, from the security of their offices, calmly order the butchery of innocent, harmless, and helpless hostages in their blood-lust, but apparently without suffering any loss of esteem with official Germany. On the contrary, Moscow and Berlin seem more intimate than When at long last a long-suffering British Government is compelled to break off diplomatic relations with the Moscow murder gang, it is as a matter of course to "Locarno" Stresemann and his agents in this country that Russian interests are handed over as to "a next best friend," and when Moscow needs either cash or credit for her world-wide anti-British operations, it is to Herr Stresemann and German Finance that it looks, nor looks in vain; and if we may believe the German Foreign Minister, he is ever. even prepared to use the good offices, which "Locarno has enabled him to establish in London, to induce "British " Banks to join in the good work of subsidizing Bolshevism! WE have long suspected that the British Government's protracted tolerance of the outrages, indignities, and humiliations heaped upon anything British any "Repercussion' Soviet agent could reach were part of the price of Locarno. Amiable British Statesmen are always willing to oblige any hostile or competitive nation who is trying to "best" or "down" us. It was immensely convenient to Germany to enter the League of Nations and enjoy all the privileges and opportunities of intrigue that Geneva affords, while her quasi ally, Soviet Russia, remained outside denouncing and threatening the League and affecting fury with the Fatherland for fraternizing with "Locarno Powers and participating in the League's deliberations. But the rest of the world could not all forget that Berlin had entered upon a "re-insurance" treaty with Moscow of the approved Bismarckian type, and discounted her entry into the League to her Eastern neighbour, as to everybody else who was not dazed with emotionalism, on the ground that she would be thereby able the more effectually to look after Russian interests at Geneva. There is really no excuse for being humbugged by the Germans, whose moves are as transparent as their motive. There is no concealment as to the meaning of such episodes as Locarno " or their membership of the League of Nations except to those who are determined to be deceived. "Locarno" was chiefly an asset to market in Moscow. Just as Germany threatens the Western Powers to let loose the Bolshevist hordes upon them unless they do whatever she wants, so she threatens Russia with an anti-Bolshevik" combination which Germany claims to be able to engineer or to restrain as she pleases-and there are innocents in England who are taken in by German professions of anti-Bolshevism and pretence of associating herself with Western Civilization against "the common enemy"! Important Germans drift over to England (with the knowledge and probably on the suggestion of the 66 |