'the Public Conscience.' Britain would have intervened to reestablish order on the continent. Since the action of France was approved in every country by all right-thinking men, by intelligent political leaders, by former fighting men, the British Government had to content itself with putting a few spokes in the wheels.

In the House of Commons it gave France a friendly warning that she was making a mistake, and sadly prophesied her failure. The whole attitude was an encouragement to Germany to stand out against us. Even at the present moment the Government at Berlin is holding off the inevitable outcome a little while by deceiving the German people as to the chance of a break between France and England.

But France must win France is going to win! Her victory will gain for her a privileged position in Germany, which will checkmate the premature and selfish combinations of the British business men. The Englishmen who counted on Germany will not forgive Mr. Bonar Law for having let us win. The Englishmen who looked only to the interests of England will not pardon ■ Mr. Bonar Law for having let us win alone.

If he had really had better intentions toward us than his predecessor it would have been easy to show them as soon as he came to power. He need not have done anything but replace Mr. Bradsbury on the Reparations Commission, and Lord D'Abernon in the Embassy at Berlin. These two were - well enough known as creatures of Mr. Lloyd George, whose purpose they served without scruple or reserve.

Now Mr. Bonar Law kept Mr. Bradsbury on the Reparations Commission, in order to place an obstacle in the way of our rights, and he kept the

indescribable Lord D'Abernon at Berlin, in order to organize, sustain, and develop the German resistance. So much was clear.

Everyone understands that we do not hold the British nation responsible for the blunders of its Government. We know how favorable British opinion is to us as a whole. Though we may lack an economic understanding, we shall always retain toward the people of Great Britain those feelings that arose from the display of so much heroism and the endurance of so many sacrifices in common on the soil of France.

The Daily Mail, whose sympathy for our country everyone knows, insists solemnly that the Entente must be maintained; but however great its good-will, however cordial its wishes, it would be hard to work out a programme that would reconcile our irreconcilable interests in any practical way. We are right then when we reproach M. Clemenceau's principal ministers here with having 'foreseen nothing, stopped nothing.' The difficulties with which France and Europe are struggling are their work. They must never hope for anything better than oblivion, and one is amazed at their stupidity when they attempt to enter the political arena and presume to replace the men who are struggling to atone for their blunders.

The task of saving the country belongs to new men better qualified. As for allies, we must look for them elsewhere. New men with a realistic spirit, new alliances founded on a reciprocity of interests though this does not preclude good feelings, but rather strengthens them and a definite and resolute policy will enable France to look with assurance beyond her frontiers and beyond the trials of the present.

THE previous article in Figaro, on the relations of France and England, has caused some commotion in sections of the British press. This is surprising, for we have simply described facts which are true and which all the world knows.

This commotion would have been more in place on the various occasions when English Governments have occupied themselves in preventing France from obtaining what is her due. The Entente which to-day they are so anxious to maintain then had to be defended even against the English Ministers.

When they remind us of the brotherhood in arms which led us together to victory, our friends on the other side of the Channel do not find us insensible; an appeal to our sentiments touches us all the more since, in matters of sentiment, agreement between England and France is rare enough. As we have already said quite sincerely in these columns, we do not hold the British nation responsible for the treatment that its Governments, one after another, have inflicted upon us. We have not lost the memory of the heroism exhibited and the sacrifices borne in common on the soil of France. Never should we have taken the initiative toward separation. It is a tradition with us not to be the first to fire.

But this precious Entente, the wreck of which our Allies are sadly contemplating, who is it that has unceasingly shaken, undermined, ruined it?

Even during the course of hostilities, on the Somme, on the Marne, or in the councils held on the subject of Saloniki, plenty of incidents occurred which it has not been thought wise to divulge.

Since the Armistice, after Mr. Lloyd George had proclaimed the justice and the moderation of the French claims,

II

not a conference has been held where those claims have not suffered adjustment and reduction, where France has not been forced to disastrous renunciations, where our rights, admitted in principle, have not been annulled in fact.

Ah! if only France had imposed her conditions at the moment when, almost alone, she bore the brunt of the terrible struggle — at the moment of the great thrust at Verdun, for example-England would not have haggled. Read again the English newspapers of that period: France and her heroes are there lauded to the skies; France is sublime; our men are 'splendid'; our country is the bulwark of civilization against German Kultur, the bulwark of liberty against Prussian despotism, the the bulwark of everything that makes life worth living against the savagery of the 'Hun' and the barbarism of the 'Boche.'

The orators and writers of the British Empire vied with each other in their admiration and love of France. They vied with each other in expressing the regret which England felt in not being yet in a state to support the superhuman effort of the French. At that moment certainly England had the feeling very clearly that France, by herself, was defending the existence of two nations. If France had then named her price, whatever it might have been, England would have agreed to it.

But France, absorbed by her immense task, was not thinking then of diplomatic chicane. She said, truly, 'I am making war.' She threw everything into the fight. She did not exploit, at the psychological moment, the anguish and gratitude of the Allies whom she saved.

When the anguish was dissipated, gratitude declined. 'Le péril passé,

adieu le saint.' In 1915 or 1916 they would have given us everything. In 1919 they opposed us in everything. We received vain promises, endured bitter affronts. And England was herself served handsomely: she took the German Colonies, the German Navy in order to sink it, the German Merchant Fleet in order to exploit it, Mesopotamia and its oil, Palestine, in order to control the Suez Canal and the Near East. What has she not taken? It was truly the lion's share. France was permitted only a distant hope of picking up some crumbs.

Since the Treaty of Versailles, where is the Entente?

Where was the Entente in the ten Conferences which ten times have diminished our proper share, and in the shabby dealings which they have repeatedly resorted to against us? Where is the Entente when they confiscate our gold, when they keep Mr. Bradsbury at the Reparations Commission to check our demands, when they establish Lord D'Abernon at Berlin to strengthen the resistance of the Germans?

If our Allies appreciate the value of the Entente, it is in the Ruhr that it should be affirmed and consolidated. In England, as in the United States, the pick and the majority of the nation approve of the action of France; why does not the British Government associate itself with them? Why does it not help us to assure the execution of the treaty which it signed with us? Noble Belgium has given it the example; so small in numbers and so great of heart, the Belgian people has felt that, even though it were detrimental. to its immediate interests, its place was always at the side of bruised France.

Powerful England has not had the same impulse of chivalry, but if there remains with her any desire to preserve the Entente, she has only to make a gesture; to cut short German resistance

by an unequivocal intervention, and guarantee security to France by means other than the suspect means of Mr. Lloyd George.

But England has not willed it. She accords us only a 'benevolent' neutrality; and this neutrality, which they represent to us every day as a favor, Mr. Bonar Law or Lord Curzon periodically disturbs by declarations which cannot have any other effect than to encourage Germany to resistance.

The occupation of the Ruhr is our last resource. It ought to succeed; it will succeed. And it will be the triumph of the will of France alone, tardily asserted after four years of deception. We have waited four years, been patient for four years; did they hope that France could be duped for longer than that?

The Entente in which we placed our trust has thus, in fact, been repudiated by the British Government before we ourselves had thought of abandoning it. Entente on this side of the Channel, mésentente on that side: result, France sacrificed.

England, like France and like Germany, has lost men; but England and Germany have kept their soil intact, their factories and their machinery intact. They are ready for intensive production, for exportation to establish their national finances, for the conquest of world markets, while France, bled white, remains with ten departments devastated. France has been the field of battle where all the nations have settled their quarrel, and her factories, her workshops, her machines, her mines have been destroyed by the Allied armies as well as by the enemy armies. If the Allies were just they would contribute, like Germany, to the reconstruction of our provinces; they would be fulfilling only the minimum of their duty in forcing Germany to pay promptly.

All the energy and all the resources of France being occupied in the restoration of her fields and her industries in the region which represents a fifth part of her (national) wealth, she finds herself hampered in the economic struggle.

And everywhere her interests are in conflict with the political interests, the economic interests, and the financial interests of England. Antagonism is inevitable, inasmuch as England produces and seeks to sell that which France can produce and endeavors to sell. French exporters have not forgotten the implacable boycott which the English shipowners waged against French merchandise during the war in the ports served exclusively by English lines. While English goods were dispatched without delay to overseas markets, French goods waited, by thousands of tons, four, five, or six months. Is it thus that one observes an entente?

The English boast of practising fair play, a struggle on honest and equal terms; let them help our country to equality in the competition. There is no fair play for France if she is not, before everything and at all costs, restored to her pre-war financial position, as are England and Germany.

The article in Figaro, which has provoked this debate, suggests a new orientation of French policy, and our suggestions are being as much discussed as our grievances. They even attribute to us ideas which have never entered our heads; newspapers notoriously under English influence those which those which have never ceased to exert themselves against France-imagine that we incline toward a German alliance. We repudiate the insinuation, as we have repudiated others of the same kind.

A Franco-German alliance is certainly not the solution we recommend, but it is certainly the solution which our Allies of yesterday most dread. They dread it so intensely that they

have left no stone unturned to prevent France from settling her affairs directly with Germany. Germany has the greatest interest in coming to an understanding with her principal creditor. If she has not done it, it is because she has found support elsewhere. The degree of resistance of Germany has been constantly regulated by the attitude of the British Government. This manœuvre has been going on for four years; it cannot last forever.

We have said that, in order to meet the combinations of English traders and financiers, it is necessary to preserve intact the soil of Germany and to husband her finances. But, while France exhausts herself in vain discussion with the Government of Great Britain, the German capitalists find shelter in the banks of neutral countries; they thus escape from our control. they have built up vast reserves, on which Germany can draw at her will, to pay for raw materials with which Great Britain is ready to furnish her. Thus Germany, who could have paid us two or three years ago, is given the appearance of not being able to pay. England is the cause. She has widened and deepened the ditch which she has feared to see us leap across.

We have never had the presumption to recommend an alliance with this or that country. Our only object is to enlighten the nation, on whose behalf candidates are always demanding full information from the Government, but from whom all Governments in office conceal the essential aspects of the truth.

We shall draw soon a picture of the actual situation of France, and we shall do it with the utmost precision and exactitude. We shall then proceed to a similar examination of the great European States, whose economic and political situation accords best with our own. And it is France who will say which countries have her preference.

WHEN I first heard of this proposal to give me a complimentary dinner a proposal which, proceeding from this club, had all the force of a commandI was exercised as to what there was to be complimentary about. Did it turn upon that little affair at the last General Election, when I escaped the mediocrity of the other Socialist candidate- who called himself a Liberal - by coming out bottom of the poll? That seemed slightly ironical, and then I found a better reason for congratulation in that I have recently been elected a member of the University of London Club. After all, one must have dinners. I was reminded of the old song:

and in any case I see that I have proved an excuse for a very pleasant and interesting gathering.

I learned from the form of the invitation that I had promised to speak 'on some aspect of the political situation,' and since I don't want to have a dispute with Major Church about this alleged promise I will do my best. I was casting about for a suitable aspect when this Snowden-Mond debate in the House of Commons cropped up, and seemed to me to be the very peg I needed on which to hang the reason why I asked and why I am going to ask again the teachers, the scientific

workers, the medical, legal, and other professional men in this University to distinguish themselves by returning a Labor Member to Parliament.

I must confess that the sort of discussion that has hovered over the House of Commons between abstract Socialism and individualism seems to me in its absolute form very empty. I suppose that in theory all of us are Communists; we all repudiate selfishness; we all say, in theory, 'Each for all and all for each,' and justify almost every political attitude we take up by an appeal to the greatest common benefit. And I suppose also that in theory we are all extreme individualists; we all believe that we do our best work when we are free to choose the work we want to do, and free to do it each in the way we think best. We all believe that of our own work, and some of us believe it of the work of others. The aim of social organization is the maximum of economy and the minimum of controlled action: I suppose we should all be able to join hands upon that proposition.

You see that Socialism carried even to the extreme degree of Communism and individualism in its extreme are not necessarily antagonistic. It is an unsound issue. And if you will follow the House of Commons debate, you will detect all the phases of all the distortions of argument that are produced by an unsound issue. You will find the