A still larger foreign purchase will be the inevitable result of the forcible diversion of large quantities of Ruhr coal to France and Italy, with further financial embarrassments as a consequence.
That is bad enough. But I fear worse. Will the German miner work with the same regularity and efficiency for a foreign master as he does for a German employer? Is there the least possibility of the production being maintained at its present level?
The influence of this added muddle on world trade is incalculable. Nobody gains; everybody is a loser by the move. How is a Germany whose embarrassed finances are made still more involved—how is a Germany whose industry becomes more and more difficult—how is a Germany reduced to despair to be of the slightest use to France, Belgium, Italy, or anybody else?
The feather-headed scribes who have advocated this rash policy assume that France will be helped because Germany will thus be reduced to impotence. For how long?
The disintegration of Germany is not an unlikely consequence of this move. I know that is the expectation. Frenchmen still hanker after the days when Saxons and Bavarians and Wurtembergers were allies, and almost vassals, of France against Prussia. It was the lure that led the Third Napoleon to his ruin. It is the attraction which is now drawing France once more to a sure doom. The policy will bring no security to France in the future. It deprives her of all hope of reparations in the immediate present. There will no longer be a Germany to pay. It would be too hopeless a task to attempt recovery from each of the severed states.
But what of increased security? Nothing can keep Germans permanently apart. They will, at the suitable moment reunite under more favourable conditions, freed from external as well as internal debt. France will have lost her reparations and only retained the hatred of an implacable foe become more redoubtable than ever.
How would Europe have fared in the interval whilst France was learning from events what every other country can see now? There is no knowing what will happen when a brave people of 60,000,000 find themselves faced with utter ruin. Whether they turn to the left or to the right will depend on questions of personal leadership, which are not yet determined. All we can be sure of is that they can hardly go on as they are, maintaining an honest struggle for ordered freedom and democratic self-government. The French proclamation, with its threat of "severest measures in case of recalcitrancy," is ominous of much that may happen. No people accustomed to national independence have ever been able long to tolerate a foreign yoke.
Chancellor Cuno's action is the first manifestation of the spirit of revolt. It will certainly grow in intensity. The lash will then fall, sooner or later, and Germany will be inevitably driven to desperate courses. A Communist Germany would infect Europe. European vitality is so lowered by exhaustion that it is in no condition to resist the plague. Would a reactionary Germany be much better—brooding and scheming vengeance?
Russia, with her incalculable resources of men and material, is at hand, needing all that Germany can best give and best spare. The Bolshevik leaders only require what Germany is so well fitted to supply in order to reorganise their country and convert it into the most formidable state in Europe or Asia.