FRANCE'S PROBLEMS.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 November 1919, Page 12

FRANCE'S PROBLEMS.

DISSATISFIED WITH THE PEACE. FACING GREAT BURDENS. (Auckland Star Correspondent). Paris, August 25. That the Peace Treaty, as far as the interests of France are concerned, has left her witS* an "Anglo-Saxon" peaco on her shoulders—or, if you prefer it, with a Wilsonian white elephant on her hands—is the formula which has been current in the French Press for the last month. M. Barthou boldly takes up tlse matter to examine it. In the first place, lie makes the personal disclosure that Clemenceau, "who is so supercilious or disdainful in the face of other reproaches,'' seems to lose his nerve under the sting of this reproach. Clemeneeau, as you know, because of his political association in the remote past, has always been held in Era nee to be the champion of British influence. Also you will remember that he spent some time in the. States and married an American lady. These peculiar circutustance*" arc said by Clomoncenu'.s opponents to have given bins to his attitude | in his secret dealings with the other "Big Two." And M. Harihon bluntly and rather forcibly remark* thai if the conference soared for five months*in the cloudland of the League of Nations instead of settling at once, and on earth, the Franco-German problem, "'when France was still enwrapped in an atmosphere of sympathy," tlie responsibility for the course pursued evolves on the President of the Conference —i.e., Clemeneeau himself. Moreover, M. Barthou expresses the ; opinion that if the chairmanship of'the 'conference was offered to France by the "Anglo-Saxons," it was not merely as an act of homage to that nation, but also as a precaution which would allow the other "Big Two" to shift all responsibilities on to the honored chairman. Were M. Barthou as conscious as I am of Britain's and America's devotion to the France of Verdun, he would not hav; entertained for a minute so unpleasant a suspicion. As things stand, however, there is no concealing the fact that the "AngloSaxons" have reaped" from victory all the benefits to which they were fully entitled, and that France has not. The United States, which claimed nothing, have secured for themselves an incomparable prestige, a right of intervention, and a place second to the- foremost in world-politics, not to speak of-substan-tial arrangements in Eastern Europe. What has France get? Practically as hard a peace in the present as Germany has hypotheticnlly in the future. She h loft encompassed by ruin and threatened by danger. 'Hundreds of miles of her territory will remain a desert for generations. The indemnities and reparations to which she had tfb full a right have not. even been promised her, nor could they be, perhaps, because of Germany's supreme crime, which was to commit more evil than she ever could mend if she tried. The trade of France, already declining before the war, is now virtually annihilated, as is shown by the growing depreciation of the rate of exchange of the franc. Her influence is waning in the Orient, even in Syria, where her moral rights were acknowledged by the. natives themselves. Lastly, the defensive guarantees which she had been promised, are lacking. Not that the majority of the French nation either wish to reconquer the left bank of tlie Rhine after the German fashion, or to deal a death blow to the German national unit which was bred by the French Revolution. It is only' that France, bled lo death as she is, a nation at present of 371 millions, the weakest in population of.' all the great AlliesItaly included—should be committed- almost alone to keep vigil on the Rhine against a race of seventy millions of men,, is both unfair to her and unwise for the rest of the world. I ask you to look at the political situation' in Europe. Germany is possessed more strongly with the spirit of revenge than ever was France after the war of IS7O, and you may trust her to live up to her hatred more faithfully than we did to ours. Russia, formerly our only ally on the Continent, is lost to us, whether Bolshevik or redeemed from that plague. In the first place it is obvious, and no less in tlie second, since a national Russia will hardly forgive us our present lack of help to her in these tragic days of her stress, and she will most probably call for German support as Bolshevik Russia has done. Lastly, our pre-war friend and our war ally Italy is now more deeply estranged from us than even in the sinister days of Crispi, all her most bitter eaneour having been unjustly turned against France, as a result of .Mr. Wilson's disastrous message, of which the French rightly disapproved. French blood, as you know, has been spilt in Fiume all through this American nonsense. Such, then, are the plain, hard facts which we ask the British people to face as we are doing. And now that the League has failed to provide for a watch on the Rhine, and now that failure has

been confessed by Mr. Wilson himself, by the fact of his upholding the new compact between America and Britain as a future protection for France, a doubt is spreading here as to the efficiency of the compact, and as to the speed with which protection can be provided. These are the views of the French people on a Treaty which has deceived but not imbittercd them, and to which, on the whole, they have made it their duty to subscribe, as the loyal Belgians have done in a like case.