RHINE BARRIER.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1922, Page 5

RHINE BARRIER.

THE FRENCH CLAIM, PROVED BY LLOYD GEORGE. REPLY TO FRENCH ATTACK. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. London. December 14. Continuing his article, Mr. Lloyd George said: In an interview with the Press in 1910, Marshal Foch said: “Having reached the Rhine we must stay there. Democracies like ours, which are never aggresive, must have strong military frontiers. The Germans have not changed their characteristics in four years. Fifty years hence they will be what they* are today.” Marshal Foch, producing a map, shewed France’s new frontier under the treaty. “Look at that,” sam he, “there is no natural obstacle along that frontier, but here,” tapping the Rhine with a pencil, “we must be ready to face the enemy. We must have aur armies on the Rhine.” Marshal Foch later expounded his doctrine in greater detail in an official document to M. Clemenceau. In this he said that to stop enterprises towards the west by the Germans, who were everlasting warlike and covetous, of the good things belonging to other people, Nature only made one barrier, the Rhine. This barrier must be forced on Germany, and henceforward the Rhine would be the western frontier of the Germanic people. Mr. Lloyd George says: “Many of us recall Marshal Foeh’s dramatic irruption into the Peace Conference in May, 1919. still brandishing the same theme. Marshal Foeh’s political influence was so great that he alone was responsible for M. Clemenceau* defeat at the presidential elections, because the latter had gone back, under the Allies’ pressure, from the French policy on the Rhine.” FIXING THE BOUNDARY. M. Tardieu handed a document to the Allies on March 12, 1919, containing the following proposal: “Tn the general interest of peace the western frontier of Germany is fix c d at the Rhine, consequently Germany renounces all sovereignty as well as anv Customs union with the territories of the former German Empire on the left bank of the Rhine.” . These quotations demonstrate that MM. Clemenceau and Tardieu, at that date, had become convert* to the doctrine of the Rhine as the natural boundary. American and British pressure subsequently caused M. Clemente abandon the position. The Annual Register for 1919-20, commenting on M. Clemenceau’s defeat for the position of President, says M. Clemenceau’s opponents declared that he had given way too much to the American and British standpoints, particularly as regards France’s eastern frontier.” Endless articles and speeches from men of all temperaments could be quoted. Later again Marshal Foch was elected a member of the French Academy, and M. Poincare, during his discourse, turned to him and said: “Ah Marechai, if only your advice had been listened to.” A REPUBLIC SUGGESTED. It was said that 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 the German officers were to be expelled. It was to be detached from the economic life of Germany and not allowed to associate with the Fatherland. The territories of the independent republic would be occupied by foreign soldiers, its young men conscripted and trained with a view to absorption in the French and Belgian armies. The whole conditions ot life in this free and independent republic were to be dictated by an accord between France, Luxembourg and Belgium, end Marshal Foch s words were: “Britain will be ultimately brought in.” I am told these proposals did not mean annexation. What else did they mean? You don’t swallow the oyster; you 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 be a sham republic. Had it been adopted it would have been a blunder worse than a crime, for which, not France alone, but the world would have paid the penalty. In face of these quotations and the undoubted facts can anyone assert that I calumniated France by saying there was a powerful party desiring the Rhine as a natural barrier. I never said thU claim had the support of the French democracy. The fact that the Treaty was ratified by an overwhelming majority of the French Parliament demonstrates that the French people as a whole shrank from following even the lead they admired, but the fact that- potent influences in France sun press the demand calls for unremitting vigilance.