Immediately the French Press was up in arms. " Finance
has now fulfilled its ambition of regulating European policy," &c., &c. However, no amount of shouting and screaming can avail in the least. The Allies are at present trying to solve their difficulties on the basis of the Dawes Report. An essential part of the Dawes Report is the raising of a £40,000,000 loan to Germany. The only people who can tell us whether this is possible, and on what conditions it is possible, are the bankers. They have now told us, and the French may do anything they will—may throw out M. Herriot and replace him by a Government controlled by M. Leon Daudet—without altering that decision, for it is not a decision of -opinion, but merely a state- ment of fact. So France must make her decision. Either she must abandon the whole Dawes Report, and therefore co-operative action with the rest of the Allies and with America, or she must abandon her own perfect freedom of action, and hence give security to intending investors in the German Loan. There is no way out.
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