TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHAT MIGHT AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
IN the Ruhr France is pursuing to its logical conclusion the unhappy policy which she adopted in opposition to the wise advice of Mr. Bonar Law. Every so-called triumph is, in truth, but a step further down a road which is not only slippery but which grows yard by yard more precipitous. France is wasting her own money and her own energy in the maintenance of her troops. She is wasting ours, and the common stock of European wealth and commerce, by the dislocation of that essential link, the iron and coal industries of the Rhineland.
While this financial disintegration is taking place, a disintegration marked by the fact that the franc, in spite of the heroic efforts of the Bank of France, is declining in value, there is a moral and political disintegration which is quite as serious. Suspicion is rising in France and in Britain, and, inevitably, there is beginning in Germany a very undesirable and injurious form of hope. This hope is vindictive—the hope that if France and Britain fall out Germany's opportunity will have come. That is growing to be the aspirition of the mass of the German people. At the same time, the extremists are suffering from a far more injurious stimulation. The militarists are whispering their remedy on one side, while the Communists and Bolshevists pour out as insidious and quite as perilous advice on the other. And all this when what was wanted, and wanted by France more than any other country, was the restoration of confidence 1 The restora- tion of credit, in Germany, would have meant the possi- bility of France getting a considerable part of her reparation claims satisfied without the destruction of the patient.
The only hope now is in a revision of the reparation terms coupled with a serious attempt to settle the in- debtedness of France to Britain and America. That, whatever the French may think or say, is rapidly becoming one of the questions of the hour. We take no pleasure in this fact. On the contrary, we regret it. We should have much preferred to deal very gently with France in the matter of our loans to her. But the Ruhr, alas! has changed all that, and the temper of the British people is hardening. We, the most-heavily taxed people in Europe, have settled our debt with America. Why should not the French taxpayers, who are in essentials richer than we are and much less burdened, do the same by us ? That is what people are saying here. The full considera- tion of the Debt by us must, however, be deferred to another occasion. Here we must take the opportunity of noting the course of that injurious diplomacy which has brought Europe to the tragic impasse of the Ruhr.
In our review columns we have dealt with Signor Nitti's strange and deeply interesting and, in a sense, very valuable book, The Decadence of Europe. There we have acted mainly as summarizers and inter- preters for those who will not have time to read the Italian statesman's " Lamentations" for themselves. Our task in this column is a different one. We want to consider what might and should have been done if the Treaty-making at Versailles had been conducted with wisdom and sincerity and foresight.
The way to remedy a mistake, to get back on to the right road, and to prevent error in the future is to examine the facts, to see where one went wrong, and next—and most effective of all—to envisage what one ought to have done. Here, then, is our attempt to draw the picture required. Whether successful or not as a delineation it is, at any rate, not a Monday morning repentance after an orgy. It merely repeats the opinions which the Spectator expressed at the beginning of the War, throughout the War, and at the end.
Germany did the world a great injury and she deserved punishment, provided it was not too cruel or too destructive. She also had to make some reparation —full reparation was, of course, impossible for mis- feasance on so vast a scale—to those she had injured. One of the chief and greatest causes of her wrong- doing was that her people had shown too slavish a nature. If, instead of trying to conquer the world, they had insisted on the establishment of a true democratic Government in their own land they would have restored confidence in Europe. But, alas, they stooped to serfdom and accepted the bribe, "You may be slaves at home ; but we will make you kings abroad." Therefore after the War it was, in the first place, necessary to see to it that Germany should have a permanent democratic Government for the future and not one that was militaristic and autocratic. But of such simple things they took no heed at Versailles.
Next, it was necessary to make Germany repair the damage she had done, provided that in making her reparation she was not destroyed, nor demoralized, nor vindictively treated—above all, not so treated that in her agony she might go back to serving the false gods of Junkerism. But to enable a nation already half ruined to pay large sums in reparation requires care and man- agement. What you have got to do primarily is not to calculate what is the amount of damage done, and then in a blind fury say " That is what he owes us and, by Heaven, that is what he shall pay, no matter how he shrieks and bleeds. Let our sufferings be the measure of his." The proper way to calculate when you want to get money out of a man for the damages obtained against him in a law court is to ascertain what he can pay without ruining himself absolutely. You do not ask him for so huge a sum that it will take away from him all hope of permanent recovery and cause him to feel that it is not worth while to make an effort to clear off an impossible load of debt. The way to get money out of another nation, as out of a man, is to do what Bismarck did. He estimated what he thought the French could pay without being ruined, and that sum he exacted. But he saw, like an astute landowner, that if you have a semi-bankrupt tenant and want to get a big sum out of him for the damage he has done to the land, the first thing is to fix upon a definite sum which the man can strive to get together with some degree of success. Next, in order to make him try to clear off his indebtedness quickly, you must put some kind of a carrot in front of his nose.
Bismark realized this also. Therefore he said in effect to France, " The indemnity fixed is a final charge. What- ever you make over this fixed sum you keep for your- selves, and I shall not raise my claim even if it turns out that I was too lenient." Next he agreed—and that was his " long suit " carrot—that as each instalment of the indemnity was paid off the occupied land would be vacated. Therefore the French had a tremendous incentive to prompt payment. Now, the Allies in arranging their indemnities did none of these things. We did not make it worth while for the Germans to keep a democratic form of Government ; we did not, that is, make them realize that it would always be cheaper and better for them to keep the soldiers and Junkers out of the picture. Next, we did not adopt a fixed and reasonable sum for reparations, but named sums which would make it impossible for Germany to restore her credit and so be able to mobilize her resources. We deprived her of the ability to borrow and so to pay, for vast payments of money can only be based on credit. Finally, we ought to have insisted that whatever we did in the settlement of Europe—not an easy job, remember !—we would refuse to sow the dragon's teeth—that fatal crop which comes up as armed men. We ought, that is to say, to have done what the Spectator ventured to preach on the first day of the War ; we ought to have determined to have no more Alsace-Lorraines. To give the French the grievance of the lost provinces was the fatal blunder of 1871. Bismarck, it will be remembered, did not want to annex the Provinces. Though a brutal man, he was a wise man, and he did not want to see Europe and Germany herself kept in hot water for half a century, with a great war at the end. Unfortunately, however, our representatives and President Wilson, though, of course, they did not want dragon's teeth, were too feeble and too unwise to prevent the seed being sown. They consented to terms which have made possible the occupation of the Ruhr and of the additional pieces of German territory which have been seized in the last few days. At this very moment France is hard at it sowing the crop which will come up as armed men in the near future.
Incidentally, we may say that it is the business of Britain to prevent France doing this, not because we do not sympathize with her, not because we think we made a mistake in becoming her Ally or now believe that the Germans were not the aggressors—that is the most fantastic piece of political sophistry ever invented— but because we want to save the world, and France with it, in her own despite.
We are no blind defenders of the rest of the Treaty of Versailles, though we must remind the people who are now so angry with the map-making at Versailles that it was the outcome of a principle that they once admired—the principle of self-determination. They forgot, alas ! the alternatives. In problems like those of Upper Silesia, Transylvania, the coasts of the Adriatic, and the Pusterthal, whatever side you might take some- body was sure to feel hurt. When populations are mixed up as they are in Central Europe you cannot draw a frontier without injury to some nationality. The fact is, Mr.- Lansing was quite right when he declared that the ill-analysed, ill-thought-out dream of self-deter- mination when loosely and ignorantly applied anywhere, anyhow, at any time, and by anybody, was not a universal solvent but a dynamite bomb.
Next, though we are determined to do all we can to help the League of Nations while it is in existence, we are free to express our regrets at the shape it assumed at Versailles. We do not think the Covenant was well devised either from the point of view of abstract political wisdom or even from that of political opportunism. It was a figment from the brain of the greatest egotist and doctrinaire that the world has ever seen, endowed with almost unlimited power over his fellow-creatures. President Wilson was a man whose good intentions were alas always tracked by evil deeds—by deeds which were not, of course, in themselves evil, but were fraught none the less with evil consequences. If we had tried for much less in the League of Nations we should have accom- plished much more. If instead of occupying ourselves with impossible aspirations towards abstract virtues we had adopted and maintained the humbler principle of the sanctity of treaty contracts, and so had built up a true system of international law and of international jurisprudence, the world would have been a happier place. , However, these are regrets, and regrets are vain things. We have got to deal with the world as it is, and in these circumstances the first duty of every honest man is not to despair of the Republic. The second thing we must do is to determine that we will keep the peace and prevent the appeal to arms at all costs, The third is for each one of us to determine to do his best to support democratic government throughout the world and to bring about an economic settlement which will avoid the agonies and the horrors which have been practised, and strangely enough also preached, in Soviet Russia—the most undemocratic of countries and the most hideous of autocracies. Remember, autocracies are not improved but are rendered the more cruel and tyrannical when they are conducted, not by a single ruler, but by a set of squalid and bloodthirsty committees.
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