FRANCE AND BELGIUM IN THE RUHR
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and the last troops withdrawn from the Mainz area in 1934.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.