The majority of Americans undoubtedly were in favour of the occupation
of the Ruhr. They regarded Germany as a fraudulent debtor. They
believed in the “strong hand.” They had no patience, or very little,
with the British view, which seemed weak and sentimental. Only the
German-Americans, the Pacifists and the Socialists, with here and there
bankers and business men and “intellectuals,” believed that France was
not giving Germany a fair chance, was thrusting Europe back into the
mud and was violating the spirit of the League of Nations. This view
changed a little, though imperceptibly, when France had entered the
Ruhr and had failed to extract anything solid from that nation. Even
the warmest sympathisers with the French point of view became a little
tired of Poincaré’s “No, no,” to all arguments on behalf of compromise,
and of his nationalistic utterances. American opinion, still hostile
to Germany in the mass—more intolerant of German character, and more
convinced of her exclusive war guilt than the British people who had
suffered so hideously—swung away from the Poincaré policy, at least to
the point of belief that the occupation of the Ruhr was no solution of
the problem but only a method of enforcing a solution that had still
to be found; and time was short. Germany’s policy of inflation, that
colossal fraud, had collapsed. Her money was waste paper, her credit
gone, her capacity to pay indemnities extinguished—for a time. Some
international scheme, divorced from politics, conducted on strict
business lines, must get at the real facts and impose a settlement,
or Europe as well as Germany would go down in chaos, not without
repercussion in the United States.