His resignation, therefore, was not far off ; but nobody
foresaw that he would be beaten on the first day of the session without getting ratification for the Hague Agree- ments. The temporary combination which defeated him brought together Radicals, Socialists, and the Right-- men who had nothing in common except a desire to get rid of M. Briand. The Right notoriously loathes his foreign policy. Some of the extreme newspapers of the Right have not hesitated to speak of him as a fit subject for impeachment. He surrendered, they say, all the rights of France at The Hague and got nothing in return ; he promised to evacuate the Rhineland—thus giving 575 away the only solid pledge which France held—without 577 getting any real guarantee that Germany would pay as 578 much to France as France had to pay to the United States ; and meanwhile the eastern fortifications of France had been neglected, and France, instead of harvesting money and security, had been cheated and weakened. No impartial foreign observer will be able to trace a single lineament of truth in this fevered picture of M. Briand's sincere striving for peace.
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