The Dawes Report
It was with the will of the people and an earnest desire to co-operate in this enquiry and report, that the American Government appointed General Dawes to the international committee which investigated the state of German finance and recommended a plan of action. It was another step towards American co-operation in the arrangement of world peace, and the beginning at least of a settlement in Europe based on business methods and common sense.
The Dawes Report cut like a clean wind through all sophistries, fantasies, illusions, and passions. It stated the realities, to France as well as to Germany.... Germany was a bankrupt State with great assets and immense potential energy. France and other countries could get heavy payments in course of time—if Germany were given industrial liberty and a loan to stabilise her monetary system, in securities which were good. Otherwise, they would get nothing. Take it or leave it. There were the facts.
The acceptance and working of the Report which disillusioned both France and Germany, and excited bitter opposition in both countries, was dependent on one incalculable element—goodwill on all sides. The German nationalists denounced it as an outrage, French nationalists as a surrender; Poincaré was prepared to discuss it subject to many reservations, including the occupation of the Ruhr and the military control of the Rhineland Railways. Not in that political atmosphere between the two nations was there a ghost of a chance for the Dawes Report.
But then two other events happened in the political world which by a kind of miracle changed the mental atmosphere of Europe, at least sufficiently to secure the adoption of the new scheme. They were the advent of the Labour Government in Great Britain and the downfall of Poincaré.