Where Are We Going?

by David Lloyd George

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.

In the face of these quotations and of these undoubted facts, can any one say that I calumniated France when I said there was a powerful party in that country which claimed that the Rhine should be treated as the natural barrier of Germany, and that the Peace treaty should be based upon that assumption?

Let it be observed that I never stated that this claim had the support of the French democracy. The fact that the treaty, which did not realise that objective, secured ratification by an overwhelming majority in the French parliament and subsequently by an emphatic verdict in the country, demonstrates clearly that the French people as a whole shrank with their invincible good sense from following even a lead they admired on to this path of future disaster. But the mere fact that there are potent influences in France that still press this demand, and take advantage of every disappointment to urge it forward, calls for unremitting vigilance amongst all peoples who have the welfare of humanity at heart.

In conclusion I should like to add that to denounce me as an enemy of France because I disagree with the international policy of its present rulers is a petulant absurdity.

During the whole of my public career I have been a consistent advocate of co-operation between the French and British democracies. I took that line when it was fashionable in this country to fawn on German imperialism.

During the war I twice risked my premiership in the effort to place the British army under the supreme command of a French general. To preserve French friendship I have repeatedly given way to French demands, and thus have often antagonised opinion in this country. But I cannot go to the extent of approving a policy which is endangering the peace of the world, even to please one section of a people for whose country I have always entertained the most genuine affection.

London, December 9th, 1922.