In tracing the question of reparations from Germany through three years of continuation conferences, we have seen how France and Great Britain were unable to formulate and adopt any policy that would afford a practicable solution. When the time came to fix the total sum, as provided for in the treaty, Great Britain yielded to the insistence of France and allowed a sum to be named which economists with one accord declared to be absurd. Under threat of occupation of the Ruhr Valley, the German Government accepted the Allied ultimatum. It was evident that neither France nor Great Britain expected Germany would or could pay the bill presented in May, 1921. But the motives for assessing Germany far beyond her capacity were different.

The British Government believed that there were sources of wealth that could be tapped for reparations, if only sufficient pressure were brought to bear. Germany was an industrial nation, like Great Britain, and her statesmen and captains of industry knew that rehabilitation in world markets depended upon doing the right thing in the way of reparations. The British contended that the bill should be cut down if Germany made a decent effort to meet her creditors half-way, and that if a bit of bribing accompanied the bullying the question could be settled to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. The British were eager to see an end to the upset condition of Europe, which retarded seriously the recovery of trade upon which they were dependent. The economic aspect of the reparations question was paramount, if British interests were to be protected; and Bonar Law was no more ready to ignore the economic considerations than Lloyd George had been.

To the French the recovery of reparations from Germany had been a political question from the time the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The guarantees for the execution of the treaty provided by the Rhineland occupation were deemed insufficient. The Cologne area, south of the Ruhr, was to be evacuated in 1924, the Coblenz area in 1929, and the last troops withdrawn from the Mainz area in 1934. If this progressive evacuation were allowed to take place, where would France stand after fifteen years? Economists, financial experts, and bankers might argue convincingly about the best plan for getting reparations from Germany. France could not afford to agree to any practical program for reparations. For if she did, and Germany paid up, the Rhine frontier and the sword kept pointed at the heart of industrial Germany would no longer be possible. Rid of her enemies, Germany would swiftly prepare a war of revenge. PoincarÉ had explained the determination of France to take extreme measures on the ground that without large sums from Germany, immediately paid, France would be unable to avoid a financial crash. But the money really mattered little. The prime consideration was to make France secure by rendering Germany impotent. The Bonar Law proposals afforded Germany an opportunity to break loose from the strangle-hold of France. To prevent this French public opinion was behind PoincarÉ in risking the disruption of the Entente.

After the failure of the Paris Conference, which terminated abruptly on January 4, 1923, the French press declared that France and Belgium intended to force Germany to pay the sums stipulated in the May, 1921, schedule, but that the measures adopted would be purely economic. On January 9, PoincarÉ told the Chamber of Deputies that the Allied Governments (with the exception of the British) had decided to send engineers and experts into the Ruhr, and that there was no thought of extending the French military occupation beyond the actual positions already held in the Rhineland nor of the permanent occupation of the Ruhr. A limited number of French and Belgian troops would form a body-guard for the new Ruhr Commission. The plan was to supervise the distribution of coal and coke, and to have sent to France and Belgium and Italy sufficient to pay the reparation amounts in default and for the current year. The great industrialists and the German people, dependent upon Ruhr coal, would hasten to comply with the orders of the Reparations Commission. It would soon be seen that the Germans had been bluffing. As for the inhabitants of the Ruhr, no difficulties were anticipated. In fact, they were ill disposed toward the capitalists and the Berlin Government. Under French control they would be well paid and would have better and more abundant food.

The French soon discovered that they had as completely misjudged the reaction of the Germans to the Ruhr invasion as the Germans had misjudged the reaction of the Belgians in 1914. In the twentieth century national feeling still transcends class feeling; and men do not live by bread alone. Force of any kind is resented by the common people, but most hateful is the force of the foreigner. Was it strange to expect that the Germans of the Ruhr would act differently from the Belgians and French in Northern France? Speaking at PÉronne in the last year of the war, Clemenceau made a statement that I have never forgotten: “Partout il y a des ruines, mais les hommes, eux, ne sont pas en ruines, et, de mÊme que les FranÇais ont ÉtonnÉ le monde dans la guerre, ils l’Étonneront encore dans la paix.”27 One cannot draw a boundary-line and say that the common people on one side of the line are men, with noble sentiments, and on the other side animals, with no sentiments at all. There may be a difference, through culture, in the educated classes of different nations; but, given the same degree of civilization, human nature is pretty much the same. When the French entered the Ruhr they found that the Germans were loyal to their country, and acted as they had acted, when the tables were turned. This upset the calculations of Paris and Brussels, and confronted the two Governments with the problem of breaking down the passive resistance of millions of people.

On January 9 the Reparations Commission declared Germany in wilful default in 1922 coal deliveries by three votes to one. Sir John Bradbury cast the minority vote. The American observer, Roland W. Boyden, said that it would be easy for him to remain silent, but that he wanted to record his personal opinion. Germany, according to Mr. Boyden, had made “a very considerable effort in a very difficult matter and had attained a very large measure of success.” If he were making a report he would go further than simply to explain his reasons for believing Germany less culpable than she appeared in the matter of the particular defaults in question, and would explain that the conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles had been demonstrated by experience to be impossible. Moreover, he believed that that impossibility had affected not only Germany’s financial situation and her financial obligations to the Allies, but that “the continuation of these conditions had already resulted in great loss of money to the Allies and would result in still further loss so long as they were maintained.”

The British and American point of view was not heeded. On January 10 the French and Belgian Governments, in a note to the German Government, announced their intention to “despatch to the Ruhr a mission of control composed of engineers and having the necessary power to supervise the acts of the Kohlensyndicat and to assure by virtue of orders given by its President either to the latter syndicate or to the German transport service strict application of the schedules fixed by the Reparations Commission and take all necessary measures for the payment of reparations.” The next day Germany protested to all the powers that had signed the Treaty of Versailles “against the oppression applied toward Germany in contradiction to the treaty and international law. The German Government does not intend to meet violence with violence nor to reply to the breach of the treaty with a withdrawal from the treaty.” On the same day President Ebert issued a manifesto, exhorting the inhabitants of the Ruhr Valley to remain calm, and declaring that “the execution of the peace treaty becomes an absolute impossibility, and at the same time the living conditions of the suffering German Nation are disorganized.”

The French and Belgian troops marched into the Ruhr on January 11. Their first objective was Essen, but in a few days the occupation was extended to the other centers of Westphalian coal production. The German authorities and population did not resist, and the local police coÖperated with the invaders in maintaining order. But that was as far as coÖperation went. The Kohlensyndicat had already transferred all its records to Hamburg. The German Government ordered the operators not to deliver coal to the French and Belgian authorities even though it were paid for. The mine-owners, at a meeting called by the French authorities on January 15, refused to obey General Degoutte’s order to continue deliveries, on the ground that they had to obey the order of their own Government. It was suggested that negotiation for coal deliveries should be carried on between Paris and Berlin. Thereupon the six largest coal producers were arrested and sent to Mainz for trial by court martial. The miners employed by the arrested men promptly went on strike. Wherever French soldiers appeared in mines or factories the workers quit immediately. There were no exceptions. The solidarity of the workers with their employers and the Berlin Government amazed and baffled the French and Belgians. Threats and arrests had no effect.

When the invaders tried to move the coal and coke already mined, the German Government issued orders to railroad and Rhine navigation officials and employees to transport no reparation coal. This measure completely tied up Ruhr traffic, blocked the Rhine ports with barges, and necessitated the militarization of the intricate system of railways. But the French and Belgian Governments did not have the one hundred and twenty thousand trained railwaymen and canal-boat and tug hands to grapple with the situation. The mine-owners paid their striking workmen, and full pay was sent from Berlin to the railwaymen. Where the French succeeded in moving trains and barges, sabotage began. Bridges and locks were dynamited, signal-stations and switches tampered with, and vital parts of machinery removed from locomotives and tug-boats. Efforts, partly successful at first, were made to run locomotives and rolling-stock into unoccupied Germany. The local authorities refused point-blank to coÖperate with the French and Belgians, and this movement spread throughout the Rhineland, except in the British zone. (The Americans had withdrawn from Coblenz within a fortnight after the Ruhr occupation.) Hotel- and restaurant-keepers joined with shopkeepers in boycotting the invading troops.

French retaliation took the form of fining, imprisoning, and deporting Government officials, industrialists, and superintendents and chief engineers of the mines; expelling wholesale customs and railway employees and their families; confiscating state properties in the Rhineland and Ruhr; seizing money in transit to branches of the Reichsbank and found in municipal treasuries and post-office and railway-station tills; requisitioning hotels and restaurants; closing shops; seizing custom-houses; and putting a cordon around the invaded territories. The French military authorities announced that they would issue export licenses and collect the taxes. The German Government forbade manufacturers and operators to apply for these licenses. During the winter and spring business came gradually to a standstill.

In the first four months of the Ruhr occupation France and Belgium received less coal and coke than they would have got in a fortnight of normal deliveries. The cost of the occupation was appalling and required the maintenance of a military establishment that grew by leaps and bounds to six times the figure originally planned for. French and Belgian francs fell 25 per cent, while German marks depreciated to one-two thousandth of par and reached almost the vanishing point on foreign exchanges. There was remarkably little bloodshed, and not as great hardship to the Ruhr inhabitants as one would have supposed. But the gulf of hatred separating the peoples was greatly widened, and the Germans seemed to have recovered to a certain extent from their complete abasement of the years succeeding the great defeat. The recovery was of a dangerous kind, however, as it tended to play into the hands of the reactionaries. The Ruhr workmen who never had any too much love for their employers made a hero of Thyssen, and especially of Krupp von Bohlen, who was sentenced by a regimental court martial to fifteen years’ imprisonment for supposed complicity in an attack on French soldiers at the Krupp works in April, in which no French were hurt but thirteen Germans were killed and many wounded.

The extension of the French occupation cut off the British in the Cologne area from contact with unoccupied Germany and led to an insistent demand in the British press for the withdrawal of the Army of Occupation, following the American example. Critics of the Bonar Law Government declared that Great Britain was being unnecessarily humiliated on the Rhine. Had it not been for commercial interests involved, such a complaint would have received little attention. It is a quality of British officials to be fair-minded; and, while they did not relish the position they were in, the military and civil authorities at Cologne realized that the location of the Ruhr Valley made it necessary for the French to extend their lines around the British zone. The opposition of British commercial interests and of Liberal and Labor leaders in Parliament was far more serious. In the first three months of 1923 the Ruhr occupation caused serious losses to British firms, which were scarcely offset by the German orders for Welsh coal and the consequent profit to the shipping trade. It was realized that Germany could not find the credits to continue buying in British markets. The two war premiers, Asquith and Lloyd George, declared in Parliament that four months of the Ruhr experiment were sufficient to show the disaster of the undertaking, not only to Germany and France, but to the entire world. They insisted on British intervention. Lord Robert Cecil proposed that the Government invite the French Government to bring the question before the League of Nations.

The PoincarÉ Cabinet was disappointed in the failure of Italy to back the Ruhr policy more vigorously, and was alarmed over the growing opposition in Belgian labor and shipping circles. Protests had come in from Sweden, Holland, and Switzerland. The two latter countries declared that their treaty rights on the Rhine had been infringed upon, and that their industries had suffered from the failure to get Ruhr coal. Most serious of all was the split in the great steel organization in France, which had been supporting the PoincarÉ Government, if not actually inspiring it. The Schneiders, the largest single firm in France, which owned Le Creusot, withdrew from the SociÉtÉ des Forges de France in April as a protest against the policy of the Wendel and other groups, who believed that if France stuck it out Germany would surrender unconditionally. The Schneiders did not relish the idea of Ruhr products competing in French markets.

In every public utterance during the winter and spring of 1923 PoincarÉ made it clear that France and Belgium were at one in their intention to stay in the Ruhr until Germany paid the schedule of reparations fixed in May, 1921. He said, moreover, that France would not treat with Germany or discuss any conditions until the German Government abandoned the policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr. This meant that Germany could settle the reparations issue only by abandoning the sole weapon she had and thereby consenting to France’s indefinite occupation of the heart of industrial Germany.

Despite this uncompromising attitude, Lord Curzon urged Germany to make a direct offer to France. He stated what all the world knew, including the Germans, that if the demands of the victors had been impracticable, the offers of Germany had failed equally to take into account the facts of the situation. Before the Treaty of Versailles was imposed the German delegation had offered to pay 100,000,000,000 gold marks, but the offer was coupled with unacceptable conditions, retention of Upper Silesia, a League mandate to Germany for her former colonies, and other concessions that the victors could hardly be expected to accept. In 1921, when the time came to fix the total amount, Germany offered 50,000,000,000 gold marks, still with the stipulation concerning Upper Silesia. In both instances there was a wide discrepancy between the Allied and German estimates as to the value of German payments since the war.

Following the British suggestion, the Cuno Cabinet sent a note to the Entente Powers and the United States on May 5 proposing that the obligation of Germany as to payments in cash and in kind under the Treaty of Versailles be fixed at 30,000,000,000 gold marks, of which by a bond-issue at normal rates on the international money-market, 20,000,000,000 gold marks were to be raised before July 1, 1927, 5,000,000,000 before July 1, 1929, and 5,000,000,000 before July 1, 1931. As an alternative Germany was willing to leave the whole reparations question to an international commission, as had been suggested by the American secretary of state. Germany would also agree to submit to international arbitration all conflicts of any kind between herself and France. However, Chancellor Cuno declared that Germany would continue her passive resistance until the French evacuated the areas “occupied in excess of the stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles.”

Before the German note was received the French press had declared that it would be rejected. It was felt that France could not afford to go back on her previous statement of policy, i.e., that the German Government rescind all the orders that had been given for passive resistance in the Ruhr before negotiations were begun. In other words, France, holding what she considered to be the trump card, demanded unconditional surrender on the part of Germany. Quite logically the Paris journals pointed out that the PoincarÉ Cabinet could not remain in power if the Ruhr expedition were confessed to be a failure. France and Belgium simply had to continue to affirm that the occupation of the Ruhr was legal and that German resistance was an infraction of the treaty. On the other hand, it was equally true that the Cuno Government would be overthrown if it surrendered unconditionally.

A strenuous effort was made by Bonar Law and Lord Curzon, who were beginning to feel the pressure of public opinion in Great Britain, to enter into conversation with Paris, Brussels, and Rome, and to see if the Entente Powers could not be induced to formulate a joint response to the German offer. Although it was intimated that Great Britain was willing to join in rejecting the Cuno note on the ground of its inadequacy, the French and Belgian Cabinets decided to reply immediately and to reject the German offer on their own responsibility. This was done. On May 8 the French and Belgian replies were published in Berlin. The Germans realized that there was no hope of inducing France to release her hold on the Ruhr. Not only was the German offer spurned but the Cuno Cabinet was informed that France and Belgium did not propose to release their tangible guarantees until the sums assessed against Germany by the Reparations Commission were paid in full. The French argued that at the last minute Germany would submit to France in order to avoid bankruptcy and internal chaos. France and Belgium made it clear that they were willing to take the risk of this if Germany did not submit, and that as the conflict was a matter between Germany and the powers occupying the Ruhr, London and Rome would not have to reply to the German note.

Neither Bonar Law nor Mussolini, however, felt that it would be good policy to ignore the German offer. Had not France and Belgium been showing a tendency, which had to be checked, to regard reparations from Germany as a matter interesting themselves exclusively? The British and Italian replies both pronounced the offer as “far from corresponding, either in form or in substance, to what might reasonably have been expected,” as Lord Curzon put it. The British answer called attention to the fact that the British program, which was rejected by the other Entente Powers in January, had provided for nearly double the amount Germany now offered. How could Germany expect that 30,000,000,000 gold marks would be accepted as a basis for discussion? The Italian answer declared that Germany failed to realize the importance of taking into account Italian reparation claims. These had been reduced to one tenth of the amount to be recovered from Germany on the ground that Italy was to receive compensation from Austria and Hungary, which had not been forthcoming. Both Governments omitted any reference to the Ruhr, or to Germany’s alternate proposal to refer the reparations question to an international tribunal.

One point in the Italian note was significant. It laid stress on the intimate connection between reparations and interallied war debts and insisted that this problem be solved at the earliest possible moment in order to “relieve the cost of reconstruction of the Italian invaded provinces.” The sacrifice demanded of Italy by Germany was therefore too great. The Paris “Temps,” commenting on the British and Italian notes, said that Great Britain and Italy, by encouraging the Germans in their passive resistance, must be held partly responsible for the inadequacy of the German proposition. Great Britain, declared the “Temps,” had to realize that “the amount France and Italy demand from Germany will necessarily depend upon the sums claimed from them by England.” Virtually every other Paris newspaper said in substance the same thing. By the middle of May it had become clear that if the deadlock was to be broken, and a tolerable sum fixed for German reparations, pressure in the Ruhr was not going to accomplish that purpose. Hope lay in a reconsideration of interallied indebtedness; and a part of the sacrifices to be made would be demanded of Great Britain and the United States.

At the beginning of May the French Government announced that two thirds of the expenses of the Ruhr occupation had already been recovered from coal and coke shipped out and taxes levied, and that it would not be long before the occupation “made expenses.” This news was sent out from Paris with an air of great satisfaction; but French newspapers revealed the fallacy of the Government’s statement. Making expenses was not the first objective of the Ruhr occupation, and in the announcements of policy and the many notes of the winter and spring of 1923, had not the French and Belgian Governments declared that the Ruhr occupation would bring in reparations? If one drew up a balance sheet it would be necessary to put on the debit side the complete cessation of deliveries in kind since the second week of January and the resultant loss to the two Governments. This was the only logical way of computing the cost of the occupation. Not until France and Belgium could meet all their military expenses out of the Ruhr, force the resumption of the 1922 rate of payments and deliveries in kind, and then see coming in a surplus over that amount could the Ruhr occupation be fairly asserted to be profitable.

In judging the Franco-Belgian policy, other considerations than that of financial return demand attention. Has the occupation of the Ruhr lessened Germany’s capacity to pay reparations? That is the business consideration. Has the Franco-Belgian policy weakened the political situation of France and Belgium in post-bellum Europe? That is the political consideration. Has the reign of martial law hurt France’s prestige as a chivalrous nation, scrupulous in her treatment of the civilian population at her mercy, and rigorous in her observance of international law and the elementary principles of justice? That is the moral consideration. The observer of European financial markets and international political currents, and the reader of the most influential journals of all European countries, must give a reluctant affirmative answer to all three of these questions.

In one of the many conferences on reparations the Japanese ambassador to Great Britain declared, “Gentlemen, there is only one question before us: ‘How can we best make Germany pay most?’” The Japanese ambassador was talking common sense. But his point of view was as little heeded in the heated discussions as had been the point of view of General Bliss several years earlier, when he insisted that the armistice with Germany was a military question and should be so regarded. The statesmen in 1918 had no intention of rendering Germany immediately and completely impotent; for they wanted a treaty in which terms could be incorporated, on the excuse of Germany’s power, that would serve their political and economic interests. In the reparations question what the statesmen feared most was a final definite and workable solution proposed by bankers and economic experts; for they intended to establish an indefinite protectorate over Germany. There is no doubt that Germany’s capacity to pay has decreased steadily since June, 1919, and received a still more serious blow by the rejection of the offer of the Cuno Government in May, 1923, to submit the question to any tribunal the Entente Powers might name, and agree to abide by its verdict.

The frank annoyance of the British Government at the “unnecessary precipitancy” of the French reply to the Cuno offer reveals a seriously disrupted Entente. In the House of Commons and in the House of Lords the same statement was made on May 8:

It was the view of His Majesty’s Government that the best and most natural course of procedure would be to return to a concerted reply ... the more so as the German note was in response to a suggestion made publicly and officially by the Foreign Minister of the British Government and as the problem involved ... was one in which the Allied Powers, and not merely France and Belgium alone, are deeply concerned.

The isolation of France from her old comrades in arms, through whose aid alone she was put in the position where she could coerce Germany, is accompanied by dissatisfaction in Belgium, and by a feeling of resentment and suspicion, as we have already indicated, on the part of other European countries. The prudent policy for a country with the birth-rate of France would seem to be reconciliation with Germany and conciliation with Russia. Whatever gain France may enjoy from a temporary success of the Ruhr occupation is bound to be offset by the feeling aroused in the minds and hearts of the generation growing up in Germany. Wise statesmenship ought to have taken this fact into account.

The saddest result of the Ruhr occupation is the flood of newspaper stories, cartoons, and editorials in every European country, directed against the abuse of military power in the relations of the army of occupation with the civilian population of the Ruhr. An invading army invariably gets itself involved in difficulties, and goes from one doubtful proceeding to another. That is in the nature of the thing. Public opinion hates abuses of military power and verdicts of court martials, no matter how great the provocation or how just the cause of prosecution. The moral indignation of the world was a powerful factor against Germany during the World War; and within the same decade as the Marne and Verdun it is tragic to see in the most reputable newspapers of Stockholm, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Rome, and London, over the signature of bishops, university professors, journalists, and historians, stories like the following, which I have taken from the London “Observer” of May 6, 1923.

Thousands of innocent persons lie in the gaols, closely crowded together, six or ten in a single cell, often without separation of the sexes—gray civil servants put in with criminals, woman officials (e.g., five from the Wiesbaden post office) with prostitutes; often punished by withdrawal of food for days together and always under the control of Moroccan warders. Many have waited for months without examination, being left entirely ignorant of the reason of their arrest; others have been condemned to years of captivity or forced labor ... and all this invariably without preliminary trial, by administrative order, for no crime but that of “criticizing” the administration, or at most of obeying the orders of the German Government instead of those of French military authorities.... It is thus that, among many other examples, the Traffic Inspector Gottfried of Ludwigshafen was carried off to twenty years’ captivity in the French colonial mines.

Of course our minds go back to the days of the World War when the Germans did things of this kind, and we might argue that it is natural and just for their civilian population to have a taste of what their military authorities inflicted upon French and Belgian civilians. But during the war we flattered ourselves that we were better than the Germans and would not have stooped, had we been in their place, to make war upon the weak and unarmed. It is more than a question of ethics. It is a question of weakening the excellent case we had against the Germans by dragging ourselves down to their level. Right-minded men the world over intensely abhorred the German abuses of military power in Belgium and Northern France. It is permitted therefore for warm friends and admirers of France to question the wisdom of a policy that lays the French army open to charges of abuse of power, vandalism, brutality, and unjust verdicts of courts martial. No matter how great the provocation, the impression is always bad.

In the summer of 1923 the French may assert that the settlement of the Ruhr dispute is a matter between France and Belgium on the one side and Germany on the other. But clairvoyant Frenchmen do not indorse this attitude, which, if persisted in, spells ruin for France and Belgium in the future. No greater calamity could fall upon France and Germany alike than the adoption by the rest of the world of the easy rÔle of Pilate. France is on top now; to-morrow Germany will have her day. Is it no concern of the rest of the world? The circumstances being as they are, is not the victory of France, in this question, as disastrous as her failure? Upon a fair and just solution of the Franco-German conflict over reparations, in which France shall be assured just reparation for damages done during the war but at the same time be not allowed to follow the Bismarckian policy, which the present generation of Frenchmen seems to approve, depends the question of a durable peace or a new and more horrible war than the last one.