The British government have just issued as a Parliamentary paper a full report of the proceedings of the Paris conference. It is an amazing document. As far as I can see no real endeavour was made by any of its members to prevent a break-up. At the first failure to secure agreement the delegates threw up their hands in despair and sought no alternatives. They agreed about nothing except that it was not worth while spending another day in trying to agree. Even M. Theunis, the resourceful Belgian premier, had nothing to suggest. A blight of sterility seems to have swept over the conference. On this aspect of the fateful and fatal conference of Paris I do not now propose to dwell. I wish to call attention to it for another purpose. I have perused the Blue Book with great care. I was anxious to find out exactly what M. Poincaré proposed to demand of Germany as a condition of submission to the French will. What was Germany to do if she was anxious to avert the fall of the axe? I have read his speeches and annexes in vain for any exposition of these terms. It is true he was never asked the question. That sounds incomprehensible. But every one engaged was in such a hurry to break up the conference and thus put an end to disagreeable disagreements that it never seems to have occurred to them to ask this essential question. And the party principally concerned was not represented. The result is that no one knows the terms upon which the French army is prepared to evacuate the Ruhr. Mr. Bonar Law could not explain when questioned in the House of Commons. I am not surprised, for no one has ever told him and he never asked. I am sure that by this time M. Poincaré has quite forgotten why he ever went into the Ruhr. For that, amongst other reasons, he will remain there until something happens that will provide us with an answer.
Most human tragedy is fortuitous.
London, March 10th, 1923.
XVI THE FIRST GERMAN OFFER
The French and Belgian governments have slapped another opportunity in the face. To make that slap resound as well as sting, they have accompanied their rejection of the German offer by a savage sentence of fifteen years' imprisonment on the head of the greatest industrial concern in the Ruhr, if not in Europe. What for? Because he ordered the works' syren to sound "cease work" for one day when the French troops occupied the place. There is a swagger of brutality about that sentence which betokens recklessness. It came at a moment when the German government had just made an offer of peace, and when that ally of France who had made the deepest sacrifices in the war to save her and Belgium from ruin was urging the French government to regard that offer at least as a starting-point for discussion. The answer was to treat the German note as an offence, to promulgate that penal sentence which outrages every sense of decency throughout the world, and to refuse to permit an ally, who had been so faithful in the time of trouble for France and Belgium, even the courtesy of a discussion on the tenor of the reply to be given to a note that so vitally concerned the interest of all the Allies without exception. Prussian arrogance in its crudest days can furnish no such example of clumsy and short-sighted ineptitude. It gives point to Lord Robert Cecil's observation in the House of Commons that it is very difficult to reconcile the French attitude with a conception that the French government, with the opinion behind it, desires a settlement.
What is the German offer? It proposes to limit the total obligations of Germany in cash and in kind to thirty milliards of gold marks (£1,500,000,000) to be raised by loans on the international money markets at normal conditions in instalments of:—
| 20 milliards up to July 1, 1927. |
| 5 milliards up to July 1, 1929. |
| 5 milliards up to July 1, 1931. |
There are provisions for payment of interest from July, 1923, onward, and the agreements entered into for delivery of payments in kind on account of reparations are to be carried out in accordance with the arrangements already made. Then comes this important provision. After a paragraph in which it is argued that the above figures would strain the resources of Germany to the utmost it adds:—