Part 6
We were told the Rhine is the only possible line of resistance. Providence meant it to play that part, and it is only the sinister interference of statesmen who love not France that deprives Frenchmen of this security for peace which a far-seeing Nature has provided.
The fact that this involved the subjection to a foreign yoke of millions of men of German blood, history, and sympathies, and that the incorporation of so large an alien element, hostile in every fibre to French rule, would be a constant source of trouble and anxiety to the French Government, whilst it would not merely provide an incentive to Germany to renew war but would justify and dignify the attack by converting it into a war of liberation--all that had no effect on the Rhenian school of French politics.
This school is as powerful as ever. In one respect it is more powerful, for in 1919 there was a statesman at the head of affairs who had the strength as well as the sagacity to resist their ill-judged claims.
But what about 1922? Where is the foresight and where is the strength? There is a real danger that the fifteen years' occupation may on one pretext or another be indefinitely prolonged. When it comes to an end will there be a ministry in France strong enough to withdraw the troops? Before the fifteen years' occupation is terminated will there be a ministry or a series of ministries strong enough to resist the demand put forward without ceasing in the French press that the occupation should be made effective?
Upon the answer to these questions the peace of Europe--the peace of the world, perhaps the life of our civilisation--depends. The pressure to do the evil thing that will once more spill rivers of human blood is insistent. The temptation is growing, the resistance is getting feebler. America and Britain standing together can alone avert the catastrophe. But they can do so only by making it clear that the aggressor--whoever it be--will have the invincible might of these two commonwealths arrayed against any nation that threatens to embroil the world in another conflict.
There are men in Germany who preach vengeance. They must be told that a war of revenge will find the same allies side by side inflicting punishment on the peace-breakers. There are men in France who counsel annexation of territories populated by another race. They must be warned that such a step will alienate the sympathies of Britain and America, and that when the inevitable war of liberation comes the sympathies of America and Britain will be openly ranged on the side of those who are fighting for national freedom.
The time has come for saying these things, and if they are not said in high places humanity will one day call those who occupy those places to a reckoning.
The pact was designed to strengthen the hands of M. Clemenceau against the aggressive party which was then and still is anxious to commit France to the colossal error of annexing territory which has always been purely German.
M. Clemenceau knows full well that Britain has been ready any time during the last three years up to a few months ago to take upon herself the burden of that pact with or without the United States of America. At Cannes early this year I made a definite proposal to that effect. It was a written offer made by me on behalf of the British government to M. Briand, who was then prime minister of France.
I was anxious to secure the co-operation of France in a general endeavour to clear up the European situation and establish a real peace from the Urals to the Atlantic seaboard. French suspicions and French apprehensions constituted a serious difficulty in the way of settlement, and I thought that if it were made clear to France that the whole strength of the British Empire could be depended upon to come to her aid in the event of threatened invasion French opinion would be in a better mood to discuss the outstanding questions which agitate Europe.
International goodwill is essential to the re-establishment of the shattered machinery of international commerce. With a great country like France, to which the issue of the war had given a towering position on the continent of Europe, in a condition of fretfulness, it was impossible to settle Europe.
Hence the offer which was made by the British government. M. Briand was prepared to welcome this offer and to proceed to a calm consideration of the perplexities of the European situation. It was agreed to summon a conference at Genoa to discuss the condition of European exchange, credit and trade. It was also resolved that an effort should be made to establish peace with Russia and to bring that great country once more inside the community of nations. A great start was made on the path of genuine appeasement. The German Government were invited to send their chief Minister to the Cannes conference in order to arrive at a workable settlement of the vexed question of reparations. The invitation received a prompt response, and Dr. Rathenau, accompanied by two or three leading ministers and a retinue of financial experts, reached Cannes in time to take part in the discussions.
The negotiations were proceeding helpfully, and another week might have produced results which would have pacified the tumult of suspicious nations and inaugurated the promise of fraternity. But, alas, Satan is not done with Europe. A ministerial crisis in France brought our hopes tumbling to the ground. The conference was broken up on the threshold of fulfilment.
Suspicion once more seized the tiller, and Europe, just as she seemed to be entering the harbour of goodwill, was swung back violently into the broken seas of international distrust. The offer made by Britain to stand alone on the pact of guarantee to France was rejected with disdain. We were told quite brutally that it was no use without a military convention. This we declined to enter into. Europe has suffered too much from military conventions to warrant the repetition of such a disastrous experiment.
The pact with Britain lies for the moment in the waste-paper basket. But we never flung it there. M. Clemenceau ought to have made his complaint in Paris against men of his own race and not in New York against Englishmen. With the pact went the effort to make peace in Europe.
The history of Genoa is too recent to require any recapitulation of its features. The new French ministry did not play the part of an inviting government responsible for pressing to a successful end the objects of Cannes, but rather that of the captious critic who had to be persuaded along every inch of the road and who threatened at every obstacle to turn back and leave the rest of Europe to struggle along with its burden, amid the mocking laughter of France.
I am not complaining of M. Barthou. He did his best under most humiliating conditions to remain loyal to the conference which his government had joined in summoning. But his task was an impossible one. He was hampered, embarrassed and tangled at every turn. Whenever he took any step forward he was lassoed by a despatch from Paris. I have good authority for stating that he received over eight hundred of these communications in the course of the conference!
What could the poor man do under such bewildering conditions? The other European countries were perplexed and distracted. They were anxious that Genoa should end in a stable peace. There was no doubt about the sincerity, the passionate sincerity, of the desire for peace throughout Europe, but European nations could not help seeing that one of the great powers was working for a failure. They had a natural anxiety not to appear to take sides.
It is a marvel that in spite of this unfortunate attitude adopted by the French Government a pact was signed which has, at any rate, preserved the peace in Eastern Europe for several months.
Before the conference we heard of armies being strengthened along frontiers and of movements of troops with a menacing intent from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Genoa at least dispelled that cloud. But a permanent peace has not yet been established and the pact with Russia will soon expire. I am, however, hopeful that the spirit of Genoa will stand between contending armies and prevent the clash of swords.
All this, however, is leading me away from an examination of M. Clemenceau's suggestion that Britain did not keep faith in the matter of guaranteeing France against German aggression.
The offer was definitely renewed at Cannes, and M. Poincaré has not accepted it.
I have my own opinion as to why he has not done so. It is not merely that he does not wish to set the seal of his approval upon a predecessor's achievement. I am afraid the reason is of a more sinister kind. If France accepts Britain's guarantee of defence of her frontier every excuse for annexing the left bank of the Rhine disappears.
If this is the explanation, if French ministers have made up their minds that under no conditions will they, even at the end of the period of occupation, withdraw from the Rhine, then a new chapter opens in the history of Europe and the world, with a climax of horror such as mankind has never yet witnessed.
The German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine are intensely German--in race, language, tradition and sympathies. There are seventy millions of Germans in Europe. A generation hence there may be a hundred millions. They will never rest content so long as millions of their fellow-countrymen are under a foreign yoke on the other side of the Rhine, and it will only be a question of time and opportunity for the inevitable war of liberation to begin.
We know what the last war was like. No one can foretell the terrors of the next. The march of science is inexorable, and wherever it goes it is at the bidding of men, whether to build or to destroy. Is it too much to ask that America should, in time, take an effective interest in the development along the Rhine? To that extent I am in complete accord with M. Clemenceau. Neither Britain nor America can afford to ignore the manoeuvres going on along its banks. It is a far cry from the Rhine to the Mississippi, but not so far as it used to be.
There are now graves not far from the Rhine wherein lies the dust of men who, less than six years ago, came from the banks of the Mississippi, with their faces towards the Rhine.
_London, December 2nd, 1922._
VIII
WHAT IS FRANCE AFTER?
_2. The Rhine_ (Continued)
The breakdown of the London conference, and especially the reason for that breakdown, proves the warning I uttered in my last chapter was necessary and timely.
M. Poincaré demanded the occupation of the only rich coalfield left to Germany as a guarantee for the carrying out of impossible terms.
It is because I am profoundly convinced that the policy represented by this project will lead to trouble of the gravest kind for Europe and the world that I felt moved to sound a note of warning. I knew it would provoke much angry misrepresentation. I am accustomed to that. I deemed it to be my duty to face it.
The statement I made in my last chapter about the existence of a strong party in France which regarded the Rhine as the natural barrier of that country has provoked a storm of denial, repudiation and indignation. It is denounced as a wicked invention. Some are amazed at the impudence of the calumny. Where is the party? France knows nothing of it. Is it not a monster which has emanated from the brain of the enemy of France?
Repudiations have their value, especially if they come from men of authority, and I shall bear invective with the fortitude to which all men who wish to be happy though politicians should be hardened provided I elicit denials which may render future international mischief difficult.
But a further perusal of the evidence on which I based my statement has served to deepen my apprehensions. What was the statement? Let me quote the actual words I used:--
"There was a strong party in France which urged M. Clemenceau to demand that the Rhine should be treated as the natural frontier of their country, and that advantage should be taken of the overwhelming defeat of Germany to extend the boundaries of France to that fateful river.
"The most moderate and insidious form this demand took was a proposal that the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine should remain in French occupation until the treaty had been fulfilled. That meant for ever. Reparations alone--skilfully handled by the Quai d'Orsay--would preclude the possibility of ever witnessing fulfilment.
"The pact was designed to strengthen the hands of M. Clemenceau against the aggressive party which was then, and still is, anxious to commit France to the colossal error of annexing territory which has always been purely German."
What was the basis on which I made this assertion? It was thoroughly well known to all those who were engaged in the operations of the Peace conference. The Rhine was the background of all manoeuvre for weeks and months. Whether the subject matter was the League of Nations, the German fleet, or the status of Fiume, we knew that the real struggle would come over the Rhine.
On one hand, How much would France demand? on the other, How much would the Allies concede? There was a subconscious conflict about the Rhine throughout the whole discussion, however irrelevant the topic under actual consideration happened to be.
But unrecorded memories are of little use as testimony unless corroborated by more tangible proofs. Do such proofs exist? I will recall a few.
There was a party which considered the Rhine to be the only natural frontier of France. It was a strong party, with a strong man as its spokesman--in many ways the strongest in France--Marshal Foch. His splendid services in the war gave him a position such as no soldier in France or in any other country could command. The soldier who, by his genius, leads a nation to victory, possesses a measure of influence on the public opinion of the people he has saved from destruction such as no other individual can aspire to--as long as his services are fresh in the memory of his fellow-countrymen. That, I admit, is not very long. Gratitude is like manna--it must be gathered and enjoyed quickly, for its freshness soon disappears. But in the early months of 1919 Marshal Foch was still sitting at the banquet table of popular favour enjoying the full flavour of grateful recognition. His word on all questions affecting the security and destiny of France was heard with a deference which no other man in France could succeed in securing. He has also a quality which is not usually an attribute of generalship: he is a lucid, forceful and picturesque speaker. He was, therefore, listened to for what he was, for what he said, and for the way he said it.
What did he say? He said a good deal on the subject of the Rhine frontier and I cannot quote it all. I will take a few germane sentences out of his numerous utterances on the subject. On the 19th day of April, 1919, there appeared in the London _Times_ an interview with Marshal Foch. From that interview I take these salient passages:--
"'And now, having reached the Rhine, _we must stay there_,' went on the Marshal very emphatically. 'Impress that upon your fellow-countrymen. It is our only safety, their only safety. We must have a barrier. We must double-lock the door. Democracies like ours, which are never aggressive, must have strong _natural military frontiers_. Remember that those seventy millions of Germans will always be a menace to us. Do not trust the appearances of the moment. Their natural characteristics have not changed in four years. _Fifty years hence_ they will be what they are to-day.'
* * * * * * *
"From the table at the other end of the room Marshal Foch brought a great map, six or eight feet square, on which the natural features of this part of western Europe were marked. The Rhine was a thick line of blue. To the west of the river the Marshal had drawn in pencil a concave arc representing the new frontier that France will receive under the Peace treaty. It was clearly an arbitrary political boundary conforming to no natural feature of the land.
"'Look at that,' said Marshal Foch. 'There is no natural obstacle along that frontier. Is it there that we can hold the Germans if they attack us again? No. Here! here! here!' and he tapped the blue Rhine with his pencil.
"'Here we must be ready to face our enemies. This is a barrier which will take some crossing. If the Germans try to force a passage over the Rhine--ho! ho! But here'--touching the black pencilled line running north-west from Lorraine past the Saar valley to the Belgian frontier--'here there is nothing.'
* * * * * * *
"'No; if you are wise you insist on having your locks and your wall, and we must have our armies on the Rhine. Some people object that it will take many troops to hold the Rhine. Not so many as it would take to hold a political frontier. For the Rhine can be crossed only at certain places, whereas the new political frontier of France can be broken anywhere and would have to be held in force along its entire length.'"
He expounded his doctrine in greater detail in an official memorandum which, as commander-in-chief of the Allied armies, he submitted to M. Clemenceau:--
"To stop the enterprises towards the west of this nation, everlastingly warlike, and covetous of the good things belonging to other people, only recently formed and pushed on to conquest by force regardless of all rights and by ways the most contrary to all law, seeking always the mastery of the world, _Nature has only made one barrier--the Rhine. This barrier must be forced on Germany. Henceforward the Rhine will be the western frontier of the Germanic peoples...._"
He repeated this demand in a subsequent memorandum. Many of us recall his dramatic irruption into the placid arena of the Peace conference in May, 1919, still brandishing the same theme.
It may be said that Marshal Foch is not and does not pretend to be a statesman. He is only a great soldier. Nevertheless, his political influence was so great that even in 1920 he overthrew the most powerful statesman in France within a month of his triumphant return at the polls with a huge supporting majority in the French Parliament. It was Marshal Foch who, by his antagonism, was responsible for M. Clemenceau's defeat at the presidential election of 1920. But for Marshal Foch's intervention M. Clemenceau would have been to-day president of the French republic.
Why was he beaten, at the height of his fame, by a candidate of infinitely less prestige and power? The wrath of Marshal Foch and his formidable following was excited against M. Clemenceau because the latter had, under pressure from the Allies, gone back on the agreed French policy about the Rhine. M. Tardieu, as is well known, was one of the two most prominent ministers in M. Clemenceau's administration, and closely associated with his chief in the framing of the Peace treaty. He has written a book, and in that book he gives at length a document which he handed to the Allies on March 12th, 1919, containing the following proposal:--
"In the general interest of peace and to assure the effective working of the constituent clause of the League of Nations, the western frontier of Germany is fixed at the Rhine. Consequently Germany renounces all sovereignty over, as well as any customs union with, the territories of the former German empire on the left bank of the Rhine."
There is a sardonic humour about the words "in the general interest of peace and to assure the effective working of the constituent clause of the League of Nations."
But it demonstrates that at that date M. Clemenceau and his minister had become converts to the doctrine of the Rhine as the natural boundary of Germany. American and British pressure subsequently induced him to abandon this position and, as I said in a previous chapter, the pact was part of the argument addressed to him. But the party of the Rhine never forgave. Hence his failure to reach the presidential chair. It was an honourable failure and will ever do him credit.
The reasons assigned for that defeat by the _Annual Register_, 1919-20--certainly not a partisan authority--prove that even an unexcitable chronicler laboured then under the delusion--if it be a delusion--which possessed me when I wrote the offending article. Explaining the remarkable defeat the _Annual Register_ says:--
" ... Clemenceau's supporters contended that the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were satisfactory from the French point of view; his opponents declared that he had given way too much to the American and British standpoints and that the peace was unsatisfactory, particularly in respect of the guarantees for the reparations due to France _and in the matter of the French eastern frontier. It will be remembered that a large body of French opinion had desired that France should secure the line of the Rhine as her eastern frontier._"
I can if necessary quote endless leading articles in French journals and writings and speeches of French politicians. Men of such divergent temperaments and accomplishments as M. Franklin Bouillon and M. Tardieu gave countenance to this claim that Germany should be amputated at the Rhine. One carried the theme along on the torrent of his clattering lava and the other on the dome of an iceberg. Later on at the reception of Marshal Foch when he was elected a member of the French Academy, M. Poincaré, turning at one moment in his discourse to the Marshal, said in reference to the veteran General's well-known attitude on the Peace treaty, "Ah, Monsieur le Maréchal, if only your advice had been listened to." Has he also gone back on an opinion so histrionically expressed? Let us hope for the best.
I know it will be said that although the boundaries of Germany were to end at the Rhine, the province on the left bank was not to be annexed, but to be reconstituted into an "independent" republic. What manner of independence and what kind of republic? All German officers were to be expelled; it was to be detached by special provision from the economic life of Germany upon which it is almost entirely dependent for its existence. It was not to be allowed to associate with the fatherland.
The Rhine which divided the new territory from Germany was to be occupied in the main by French troops: the territories of the independent republic were to be occupied by foreign soldiers. Its young men were to be conscripted and trained with a view to absorbing them into French and Belgian armies to fight against their own countrymen on the other side of the Rhine. The whole conditions of life in the "free and independent republic" were to be dictated by an "accord" between France, Luxemburg and Belgium, and, in the words of Marshal Foch, "Britain would be ultimately brought in."
But I am told that these proposals did not mean annexation. Then what else did they mean? You do not swallow the oyster. You only first give it an independent existence by detaching it from its hard surroundings. You then surround it on all sides and absorb it into your own system to equip you with added strength to prey on other oysters! What independence! And what a republic! It would have been and was intended to be a sham republic. Had the plan been adopted it would have been a blunder and a crime, for which not France alone but the world would later on have paid the penalty.