It was with the will of the people and an earnest desire to co-operate
in this enquiry and report, that the American Government appointed
General Dawes to the international committee which investigated the
state of German finance and recommended a plan of action. It was
another step towards American co-operation in the arrangement of world
peace, and the beginning at least of a settlement in Europe based on
business methods and common sense.
The Dawes Report cut like a clean wind through all sophistries,
fantasies, illusions, and passions. It stated the realities, to France
as well as to Germany.... Germany was a bankrupt State with great
assets and immense potential energy. France and other countries could
get heavy payments in course of time—if Germany were given industrial
liberty and a loan to stabilise her monetary system, in securities
which were good. Otherwise, they would get nothing. Take it or leave
it. There were the facts.
The acceptance and working of the Report which disillusioned both
France and Germany, and excited bitter opposition in both countries,
was dependent on one incalculable element—goodwill on all sides. The
German nationalists denounced it as an outrage, French nationalists
as a surrender; Poincaré was prepared to discuss it subject to many
reservations, including the occupation of the Ruhr and the military
control of the Rhineland Railways. Not in that political atmosphere
between the two nations was there a ghost of a chance for the Dawes
Report.
But then two other events happened in the political world which by
a kind of miracle changed the mental atmosphere of Europe, at least
sufficiently to secure the adoption of the new scheme. They were the
advent of the Labour Government in Great Britain and the downfall of
Poincaré.