The reason Why so many deputies of the Right - voted
for him needs a little explanation. He argued with considerable adroitness that there was really no difference between M. Briand's policy in regard to Germany—a policy deeply mistrusted on the French Right—and that of M. Maginot, the new Minister for War. M. Briand, he said, had promised that the withdrawal from the Third Zone in the Rhineland should begin directly the Young Plan had been put into operation, and that it should be completed in eight months or at the latest by the end of next June. M. Maginot, on the contrary, had been understood to say that the Third Zone would not be evacuated until the first part of the unconditional annuities had been mobilized under the Young Plan. M. Tardieu asserted that this was only an apparent contradiction. The phrase to be " put into operation " which M. Briand used at The Hague was only a particular way of saying that although France would do all that she could to accelerate the evacuation, everything depended upon the action of the International Bank.
