POLITICAL NOT ECONOMIC

In all his endeavors to avert abject cessation of passive resistance in the Ruhr, there was one concession that Chancellor Stresemann always refused to make; there could be, he declared, no surrender of a foot of German territory. Speaking a few weeks ago at Marseilles, former Premier Briand, M. Poincare's immediate predecessor, declared that in the whole Franco-German problem, the question of security for France came first and the question of Reparations second. Relinquishing his position as a moderate critic of the government, he stated that under present conditions there could be only support for those at the head of the French state.

Such statements are only further proof that the problem of Reparations and Franco-German relations is political rather than economic. And failure to realize this has been a common but costly failing since the War; it has led to indecisive conferences in most European capitals and "watering places" and to abortive suggestions for economic investigations. It has left Europe turbulent and vengeful and fearful.

In proportion to its importance since 1919, the Peace Conference spent relatively little time on the question of Reparations. France wanted security but was forced to accept the League and an Anglo-American Treaty in lien of the left bank of the Rhine. Then she was deserted, as she felt, by England and America and forced to depend for safety against a more powerful nation on her own unaided efforts. That, under such circumstances, she should insist on the literal execution of the Treaty even when that appears almost impossible, seems perfectly natural.

It does not really matter whether as Mr. Jentsch thinks, French plots have brought on the Separatist movement or whether, as Professor Feuillerat claims, it is all due to the innate Rhenish hatred for Prussia. But it is interesting to realize that in Aix and Bonne, in Coblenz and Dortmund there is a struggle in progress the result of which is nearly as important for the future of France and Germany as were the battles of the Marne and Verdun. The balance of power has shifted since 1914 from Germany to France and England, forever anxious to keep the scales even, is moving further and further from France. But the future of Germany is not being determined by Downing Street or by the Quai d'Orsay, or even by the Wilhelmstrasse, which seems largely powerless in the force of events; it is being determined by Munich and Dresden and the cities in the Ruhr and the Rhineland.