France, under the leadership of Poincaré, scoffed from the beginning
at the League of Nations, although supporting it over the Corfu
incident, and although one representative, M. Léon Bourgeois, was
a loyal friend of the League idea. After the refusal of the United
States to ratify the pact of security for France against another war
of German aggression, followed by the withdrawal of Great Britain, the
France of Poincaré saw no safety except in the power of her Army in
alliance with other forces which she could link in a military chain
around her defeated enemies. No one ought to blame France for that
philosophy, in view of her agony and her future peril. But it resulted
inevitably in actions which checked the recovery of Europe, aroused all
the old hatreds, filled the defeated peoples with a sense of profound
injustice, and raised the old devils of national pride, vengeance, and
belief in force which for a time had been banished to the houses of the
German Junkers and had lain low in German hearts. It was the cause of
increasing friction, spasms of passionate ill-will, between France and
England, and a long campaign of scurrilous abuse in the French Press
which poisoned the old Entente Cordiale, wiped out the memories of war
comradeship, and was a tragic and painful chapter in recent history.
France under Poincaré demanded her pound of flesh from Germany,
including the lifeblood of the German people in the arteries of its
economic health. Germany could not recover nor, before recovering, pay.
Afterwards, when the Ruhr was invaded, their chief source of wealth
and of payment was strangled. The French objects of “security” and
“reparations” were in hopeless antagonism, and defeated each other.
There could be no reparations, on a large scale, if French security
demanded the expulsion of those who directed and worked the Ruhr and
its railways. There could be no “security” for France in the long run
if, instead of German reparations, she goaded the German people into
nationalism and a war of vengeance by every means, fair or foul. While
the policy of Poincaré was dominant, Europe sank deep into despair, and
the nations most stricken by war saw no hope of revival.
The first three years after the world war provided terrible proofs of
the disaster which had happened to humanity in that deadly struggle.
Those who wish to convince the future generations of the devastating
effect of modern warfare upon highly organised nations, as a frightful
warning, must summon up the picture of Europe in 1919, 1920 and 1921. I
saw it from end to end, and it haunted me.