TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHAT FRANCE WILL FIND OUT.
TO the sorrow of all who care for France, and they are not few, of all who long to see the world freed from the evil spells of the War, of all who want to return to sanity, civilization, and the capacity to make and to exchange, France has determined to demand her pound of flesh. That is a policy which she will find, as all who have tried it before her have found, is doomed to fail. It is a policy inimical to the essential interests of mankind. Therefore as it proceeds it gathers opposing forces that are sure to defeat it.
France is making her provocation (which was heavy beyond example, we admit), and not Justice, Wisdom, Prudence, or even Common Sense, the inspiration of her action. She is weaving her sheet of doom out of confused, ill-devised, and ill-drawn clauses of Treaties, " Annexes," Agreements, and Declarations, out of bitterness caused by German wickedness and inhumanity, out of the dreadful injuries, physical and moral, done to her plundered provinces, out of her memories of the past and her fears for the future, and, last and most dangerous of all, out of vague and heady ambitions. She has a scheme of action which if persisted in will result, must result, in her downfall.
France, poisoned, intoxicated by the sense of wrongs, and with her mind dazed by her fears and the suspicions which come in their train is, in a word, going to commit the extremity of human folly. Instead of letting herself be governed by enlightened self-interest, she is going to surrender to the Furies of Hate—none the less ruinous ' because they masquerade under such titles as " Right," " Impartiality," " Justice," " Security," and " Self- Preservation." These are the misleaders of men. They are the maddening Abstractions which warp the judgment and cloud the mind. Their antidotes are Mercy, that true sense of Justice which is a finer knowledge inspired by charity, and that instinct for moderation which refuses to rest upon, and therefore to overvalue, pure naked rights.
Renan, most humane of social philosophers, whose centenary France is. about to celebrate, tells us in a quaint, yet moving, passage in his Reminiscences that he often longed to own slaves in order that he might show the world how a man who owned other men should behave—how he must forgo his abstract and legal rights, and repudiate all the horrors and brutalities of proprietorship in human bone and fibre. That is the spirit that is wanted in France to-day, or rather that is wanted to be made eloquent, for we will not admit for a moment that the French people have forgotten their humanity and their nobility of soul. They are perplexed, confused, nervous, weary, and therefore irresolute, but if only they had a leader they would soon, we feel sure, abandon the emasculating food on which their politicians are feeding them.
And so, short of a miracle, France seems fated not to awaken to what she is doing till she finds herself ruined in purse and pride, without even the barren satisfaction of having performed a great feat of arms, and without a friend in the world. She will stand forth as the nation which prevented her fellows from attaining their economic salvation and yet did not save herself. At home she will find that the mad economic policy of spending twenty francs to collect ten may be -as sure a way to ruin Departments and lay cities flat as German fright- fulness. Across her eastern borders she will see the menace of a people maddened by hunger and hopelessness, a people who have learnt the ominous lesson that in resistance the destitute are invincible.
To show that we are not exaggerating the dangers and difficulties into which France is plunging herself and us by her policy of seizing the Ruhr on the technical excuse of Germany's partial default in the supplies of coal, let us examine the inevitable consequences of pushing her scheme to its logical conclusion. To begin with, France will at once be watched with eyes of in- creasing unfriendliness by the rest of the world. The other nations will come to regard her as men regard one of a group of creditors who forces on isolated and individual action and in the unsuccessful endeavour to secure his share of the debtor's property ruins all chance of the others getting even a small dividend. When men or nations find themselves in such a position the first thing they do is to insist that he who thus unsocially stands on his technical rights and insists on his pound of flesh shall • have that but nothing more. If he will have it he must, but not a drop of blood nor the minutest fragment of flesh in excess of his legal claim.
But though this will prove a disconcerting and even dangerous attitude towards France, it is by no means the only bad result. If France, after all, fails to get her pound, as it is our belief she will fail, she will be ruined by the expenses she will have incurred. If she succeeds her position will be little or no better. In that case all those to whom she owes money will follow her example and will insist that if she claims the full pound she ought also to yield it.
To deny this simple logical conclusion at the present moment will be particularly difficult. It is notorious that the American people are by no means sympathetic towards the course of French policy. Pleased by our entire willingness to pay our debts, they will not see France a successful debt collector in Germany without giving her a sharp reminder that she must follow Britain's example and pay as well as receive when her legal duty is so clear.
A similar line of argument is sure to prevail here. The British people have talked very little about France's debt to them, because there has been a general feeling that, though our fiscal sacrifices have in fact been greater than those of France, we ought to be generous and not stand on our legal rights—provided that France would act in a similar spirit in regard to German payments. When, however, this hope of a final equitable joint settlement of Reparations and Debts has been killed by France's own action, it is certain that the British People will at once take an entirely different view of France's indebtedness to us. We shall seek to profit by her example. That will from many points of view, certainly from that of the Spectator, be a subject of regret, but it is no good to refrain from recording a fact on the ground of its unpleasantness. The change of attitude is inevitable. It has, indeed, begun already.
So much for the direct effects of French policy. Though they will be slower in coming, the indirect consequences will be worse. Whatever else happens, France's new policy will prevent the economic recovery of Germany. But this means the prevention of the recovery of trade throughout the world. You cannot restart inter- national barter and exchange with Germany left out. When men here and in America and throughout the rest of the globe realize that they are not to taste the cup of trade revival which was almost at their lips there will be a sense of bitterness of which no one in France has as yet formed the slightest conception. Other- wise, someone in France would assuredly have warned his countrymen of the peril. It is idle to retort that France can stand by herself, and that the good will of the world does not matter to her. If that is to be her attitude she will soon receive a lesson in economics. The ruin of Germany when it is accomplished will be felt in every corner of the habitable world. France herself will suffer profoundly.
When at last, undeceived, disillusioned, and wounded morally and materially by her own madness, France turns to her neighbours, what will they say to her ? Alas ! they will not only be unable but unwilling to help her. Their answer will be to point to where Europe lies dying and to say :- "Look on the tragic lading of this bed,
This is thy work."
For those who have loved France, who were willing to risk all to stand by her in 1914, and who still love her, it is little short of a martyrdom to write as we have written. But there is no other way. It would be far worse to let France live in a Fool's Paradise. We dare not drug both ourselves and her with lies.
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
Previous page
