2. The Rhine (Continued)

The breakdown of the London conference, and especially the reason for that breakdown, proves the warning I uttered in my last chapter was necessary and timely.

M. PoincarÉ demanded the occupation of the only rich coalfield left to Germany as a guarantee for the carrying out of impossible terms.

It is because I am profoundly convinced that the policy represented by this project will lead to trouble of the gravest kind for Europe and the world that I felt moved to sound a note of warning. I knew it would provoke much angry misrepresentation. I am accustomed to that. I deemed it to be my duty to face it.

The statement I made in my last chapter about the existence of a strong party in France which regarded the Rhine as the natural barrier of that country has provoked a storm of denial, repudiation and indignation. It is denounced as a wicked invention. Some are amazed at the impudence of the calumny. Where is the party? France knows nothing of it. Is it not a monster which has emanated from the brain of the enemy of France?

Repudiations have their value, especially if they come from men of authority, and I shall bear invective with the fortitude to which all men who wish to be happy though politicians should be hardened provided I elicit denials which may render future international mischief difficult.

But a further perusal of the evidence on which I based my statement has served to deepen my apprehensions. What was the statement? Let me quote the actual words I used:—

"There was a strong party in France which urged M. Clemenceau to demand that the Rhine should be treated as the natural frontier of their country, and that advantage should be taken of the overwhelming defeat of Germany to extend the boundaries of France to that fateful river.

"The most moderate and insidious form this demand took was a proposal that the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine should remain in French occupation until the treaty had been fulfilled. That meant for ever. Reparations alone—skilfully handled by the Quai d'Orsay—would preclude the possibility of ever witnessing fulfilment.

"The pact was designed to strengthen the hands of M. Clemenceau against the aggressive party which was then, and still is, anxious to commit France to the colossal error of annexing territory which has always been purely German."

What was the basis on which I made this assertion? It was thoroughly well known to all those who were engaged in the operations of the Peace conference. The Rhine was the background of all manoeuvre for weeks and months. Whether the subject matter was the League of Nations, the German fleet, or the status of Fiume, we knew that the real struggle would come over the Rhine.

On one hand, How much would France demand? on the other, How much would the Allies concede? There was a subconscious conflict about the Rhine throughout the whole discussion, however irrelevant the topic under actual consideration happened to be.

But unrecorded memories are of little use as testimony unless corroborated by more tangible proofs. Do such proofs exist? I will recall a few.

There was a party which considered the Rhine to be the only natural frontier of France. It was a strong party, with a strong man as its spokesman—in many ways the strongest in France—Marshal Foch. His splendid services in the war gave him a position such as no soldier in France or in any other country could command. The soldier who, by his genius, leads a nation to victory, possesses a measure of influence on the public opinion of the people he has saved from destruction such as no other individual can aspire to—as long as his services are fresh in the memory of his fellow-countrymen. That, I admit, is not very long. Gratitude is like manna—it must be gathered and enjoyed quickly, for its freshness soon disappears. But in the early months of 1919 Marshal Foch was still sitting at the banquet table of popular favour enjoying the full flavour of grateful recognition. His word on all questions affecting the security and destiny of France was heard with a deference which no other man in France could succeed in securing. He has also a quality which is not usually an attribute of generalship: he is a lucid, forceful and picturesque speaker. He was, therefore, listened to for what he was, for what he said, and for the way he said it.

What did he say? He said a good deal on the subject of the Rhine frontier and I cannot quote it all. I will take a few germane sentences out of his numerous utterances on the subject. On the 19th day of April, 1919, there appeared in the London Times an interview with Marshal Foch. From that interview I take these salient passages:—

"'And now, having reached the Rhine, we must stay there,' went on the Marshal very emphatically. 'Impress that upon your fellow-countrymen. It is our only safety, their only safety. We must have a barrier. We must double-lock the door. Democracies like ours, which are never aggressive, must have strong natural military frontiers. Remember that those seventy millions of Germans will always be a menace to us. Do not trust the appearances of the moment. Their natural characteristics have not changed in four years. Fifty years hence they will be what they are to-day.'

* * * * * * *

"From the table at the other end of the room Marshal Foch brought a great map, six or eight feet square, on which the natural features of this part of western Europe were marked. The Rhine was a thick line of blue. To the west of the river the Marshal had drawn in pencil a concave arc representing the new frontier that France will receive under the Peace treaty. It was clearly an arbitrary political boundary conforming to no natural feature of the land.

"'Look at that,' said Marshal Foch. 'There is no natural obstacle along that frontier. Is it there that we can hold the Germans if they attack us again? No. Here! here! here!' and he tapped the blue Rhine with his pencil.

"'Here we must be ready to face our enemies. This is a barrier which will take some crossing. If the Germans try to force a passage over the Rhine—ho! ho! But here'—touching the black pencilled line running north-west from Lorraine past the Saar valley to the Belgian frontier—'here there is nothing.'

* * * * * * *

"'No; if you are wise you insist on having your locks and your wall, and we must have our armies on the Rhine. Some people object that it will take many troops to hold the Rhine. Not so many as it would take to hold a political frontier. For the Rhine can be crossed only at certain places, whereas the new political frontier of France can be broken anywhere and would have to be held in force along its entire length.'"

He expounded his doctrine in greater detail in an official memorandum which, as commander-in-chief of the Allied armies, he submitted to M. Clemenceau:—

"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."

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.