Ten years after

by Philip Gibbs

Most people in England watched all these things with disapproval and dismay. Gradually, as time went on, they drew further away from the French policy in Europe. It seemed to them bad business and bad morality. From a business point of view a great number of hard-headed people in Great Britain could see no sense in demanding payments from Germany beyond her power to pay, and in holding her by the throat so tightly that in any case she could not pay. Unemployment and bad trade in Great Britain were seen to be directly caused by this situation in Germany, which at one time had been England’s second best customer. It was not only the direct trade between Germany and England that had declined, but it was the indirect effect of Germany’s economic downfall all round the world. If Germany bought less wool from Australia and less grain from Canada, then Australia and Canada bought less manufactured goods from Great Britain. If Germany were not trading profitably with Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, then those countries could not buy the same quantity of British goods. Germany was the axle-tree of the great wheel of European trade which had broken its spokes and lay in the ditch. Until the old waggon was on the road again England would not recover her commerce. The French cried: “What about our devastated regions? Who will pay for reconstruction if the Germans are not forced to do so?” The English shrugged their shoulders and said: “What about our devastated trade in Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, London, and a hundred other cities where men are out of work?”

Less than ten years after the beginning of that struggle in which the youth of these two countries had fought side by side for the same purpose, and with the same ideals, there was a friction between England and France which obliterated the memory of that common sacrifice in many minds and created suspicion, dislike and political hostility.

The French Press and people abused the British for their materialism. “That nation of shopkeepers!” they cried. “They can think of nothing but their trade interests. They would sell their soul or their best comrade for a mess of pottage!” They forgot that they also were out for financial interests, that their policy was dictated by the desire to get reparations out of Germany. And although England advanced commercial reasons for relieving the pressure on Germany, she had other reasons which to the French seemed sheer hypocrisy, the most sickening cant. The English people and their sister nations do not like kicking an enemy when he is down, nor treading on his face when he lies prostrate. The old traditions of sport, strong even in the Cockney mind, bid them shake hands with the other fellow when he has been counted out after a knock-out blow. They do not believe in “hugging hate.” They have an instinctive sense of fair play. It is not too much to say that these were the overwhelming reasons in the minds of the average Englishman which made him dislike the entry into the Ruhr and the Poincaré policy of “keeping the Germans down.”

Lloyd George and Poincaré

There was another reason, deep in many minds of humble folk and great statesmen. They looked back to the War with loathing and horror. They desired to support some better way of argument in international disputes, so that there need be no “next war,” worse than the last, between the same combination of Powers. They believed in the spirit of the League of Nations as the only way by which that next war might be avoided. They were hostile to any Power which seemed to thwart the progress of that spirit. They believed that the policy of Poincaré was contrary to the establishment of good will among nations. They believed that it was hurtful to future peace and leading inevitably to a war of revenge. For that reason millions of people in Great Britain looked upon Poincaré and for all he stood as the greatest menace in the world.

Lloyd George was one of them. After the signing of the Peace Treaty and a jingo election in which his followers appealed to the lowest passions of the people, that extraordinary man, with his nimble mind, his rapid vision, his instinctive Liberalism, his sincere belief in righteousness (overlaid by the cunning and craft of political necessities), led him into a crusade on behalf of a world settlement by conciliation and compromise.

In conference after conference, with splendid courage, with untiring zeal, with broad and liberal views, with an honest desire to bring Europe back to health by fair play all round and business methods, he endeavoured to settle the differences between France and England over this question of Germany, to scale down the German payments so that they were possible and not impossible, to give France security, to bring Russia back into the family of nations, to make some reasonable arrangement for inter-allied debts, and to adopt a scheme of general demobilisation in Europe which would relieve its peoples from crushing burdens and prepare the way of peace. However one may criticise the character and quality of Lloyd George, history will, I think, give him enormous credit for that great endeavour to secure the peace of the world. At every conference he was thwarted by France, whose difficulties and dangers could not be reconciled by any of these plans, who regarded them all as treachery to her people.

Briand concluded an agreement by which he released Germany of certain obligations in return for a limited guarantee of French security by British alliance in the case of a new aggressive war from Germany. And with that document in his pocket Briand lost his job in France. Poincaré succeeded him as the representative of French nationalism, the military point of view, the unrelenting will of the majority of French people to exact their full pound of flesh from Germany at all costs. From that time onwards until the downfall of Lloyd George himself the situation between France and England was controlled by the diplomatic intercourse between Lloyd George and Poincaré which developed into a personal duel of hostile views. In every case Poincaré had the best of the argument on lines of pure logic and abstract justice. It was right that Germany should pay for all the damage she had done. Was France to pay?... In every conference Poincaré stone-walled Lloyd George’s attempt at compromise, by which logic should give way a little to general interest and the military safety of France to a world pact of peace.

Then Lloyd George fell. By a frightful paradox his fall was partly due to a call for war. The man who was passionate for the peace of the world, who had given his health and risked his political career in the cause of the pacification of Europe, raised a fiery torch to the people—which fell like a damp squib in a cold sea. It was after the tragedy of Greece.

For some reasons not yet fully known to history, Lloyd George had fallen under the spell of Venizelos and his friends. Greece had been given a new Empire in Asia Minor and Thrace at the expense of the Turk, who had been utterly crushed by British armies. He turned a deaf ear to all critics who prophesied that the character of the Greeks would not be equal to these new responsibilities.