A STIRRING REPLY.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 December 1922, Page 2

A STIRRING REPLY.

BY AIR LLOYD GEORGE, INNER HISTORY REVEALED. AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION. LONDON, December 14. Mr Lloyd George in the course of his reply to M. Poincare continued—Tardieu handed ft-document to the Allies on March 12tli 1919 containing the following proposals—“ln the general interest of peace the Western frontier of Germany is fixed at the Rhine, consequently Germany renounces all sovereignty as well as any customs unioh with tiie territories of the former German Empire, on the left bank of the Rhine.” These quotations demonstrate that AT. Cl cm cnee a u and AT, Tardieu

at that date had become converts to the doctrine of the Rhine as the natural boundary. American and British pressure subsequently caused AT. CiemeneCau to abandon the position and to annul the register of 1919-20. Commenting on AL Clemenceau’s defeat for tlic Presidency says, Clemenceau’s opponents declared he had given way too much to the American and British standpoints, particularly in regard to France’s Eastern frontier. Endless leading articles and speeches by men of all tendencies could be quoted. Later, when Alarshal Foc-h was elected a member of the French Academy AT. Poincare during a discourse turned to him and said—“Oh, Alarshal, if only your advice had been listened to.” Tt was said the territories on the left bank would not be annexed, but reconstituted into an independent Republic, but what manner of independence and what kind of republic. All German officers wore to be expelled. It was to be detached from German economic life and not allowed to associate with the Fatherland. The territories of the independent Republic would he occupied by foreign soldiers. Its youilg men would be conscripted and trained with a view to absorption in flic French and Belgian armies. The whole conditions of life in this free, independent republic were to lie dictated by an accord between France, Luxemburg and Belgium, and Foch’s words were— Britain wilt be ultimately brought in. lam told that these proposals did not mean annexation. What else, did they mean? You don’t swallow an oyster, yon merely give it independence by detaching it from its hard surroundings. You then surround it on all sides, and absorb it into your system. It would have been, and was intended to he a sham republic. Had it been adopted it would have been a blunder and a crime, wherefore not France alone but the world, would have paid the penalty.

In the face of these quotations, an undoubted facts, can anyone assert that I calunmated France by sayinfi there was a powerful party desiring the Rhine as the natural barrier. 1 never said this claim had the support of the French democracy. The fact that the Treaty was Ratified by On overwhelming majority of tiie French Parliament demonstrated that the French people as a whole shrank from following even a lead they admired, but the fact that a potent influence in France still press the demand, calls for unremitting vigilance.