The Occupation of the Ruhr
It was this occupation of the Ruhr—the threat of its happening, the entry of the French troops, and the results of it—which poisoned the relations between England and France, flung Germany back into the arms of her Nationalists, and thwarted all efforts of international good will in the spirit of the League of Nations. It kept the wounds of war open and salted in Central Europe. It checked the economic recovery of all nations dependent upon Germany as buyers and sellers. France failed to get her reparations, and instead of building up security the policy of Poincaré made a future war between the two nations almost inevitable by stirring a cauldron of boiling pitch. It turned the justice of the War into an injustice of peace, with the Germans as the victims of injustice. For how could they pay reparations if their industrial heart was strangled? And how could they submit to a military tyranny over their great working population from an enemy which had professed to fight the war for liberty and democracy? How could any peace be justified which enabled a foreign army, after war, to hold up the chief industries of a great country, to destroy the machinery of its life, to coerce its workers at the point of the bayonet, to expel them when they refused to work under their military command, to take their money, to fling out their furniture, to imprison their working chiefs, to cut off their food supplies, to prevent their intercourse with their own folk, to deal with the passive resistance of proud and hungry men as though it were a crime against France, to use their whips in German theatres, to terrorise the inhabitants of a great district, to break their spirit by a thousand tyrannies, insults, humiliations and brutalities? That was how the Germans argued, and the argument stands in the soul of Germany as a memory that must one day be wiped out in blood. I think France under Poincaré was unwise in giving to Germany that sense of injustice and that cause of vengeance. I think France under Herriot thinks so too, although it cannot forget, as none of us can forget, the abominable acts of German officers and men during time of war in France and Belgium.
The argument on the French side was logical enough, to a certain point, where its logic broke abruptly. France, as its mind was expressed by Poincaré, said: “These people have not paid us. They are not trying to pay us. They are in wilful and flagrant default.”
They paid no attention to the German reply that they had paid all they could—enormous sums—and could pay no more without utter ruin. In any case, they did not yet know the fixed sum of their debt, and the figures France demanded were beyond the capacity of any nation on earth.
“Very well,” said the French, “we will take pledges for future payment. We will send the bailiff into the house; we will hold the Ruhr until Germany realises the inevitable and makes better arrangements to pay. Meanwhile, whether she pays or not, we shall weaken her power of recovery, postpone the time when she is able to challenge us again, and hold her by the throat for the security of France. Excellent plan, both ways! Perfectly justified in law and equity.”
Where France failed in logic was in the combination of two ideas which were mutually destructive. She might gain military security (for a time) by weakening Germany and keeping a grip on her jugular vein, but she could not gain reparations at the same time and by the same method. Above all, her logic on the point of security would fail at some future date—twenty years, forty years, sixty years, when the German people would be strong enough to fight for the liberty of their life, by the mere weight of increasing population inspired by passion and armed with new weapons. France would have done better to seek the security of world opinion in support of her just claims instead of risking this lonely adventure against the judgment of her friends. That, I think, was the verdict of the Dawes Report. It was certainly the verdict of British opinion among moderate-minded folk, long before the Ruhr episode had ended in the financial downfall of Germany and explosive passion.