"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."