FRENCH ACTION IN RUHR "SUPREME OF STUPIDITY" SAYS OWNER OF "NATION"

That the situation in the Ruhr is the greatest misfortune that has ever befallen Europe is the conviction of Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard '93, president and owner of the "Nation", according to an interview given recently to a CRIMSON reporter.

Mr. Villard based his statements on a consideration of the condition of the French people and referred only indirectly to the Germans, declaring that the invasion of the Ruhr was a crime against the French people themselves.

"Let us turn", Mr. Villard said, "to France's own statements as to her reasons for the occupation. At first the invasion, according to M. Poincare, was to be merely a mission of technical engineers, with a few soldiers'. Next it was to be occupation of mines and industrial districts; then it was to be operation of the mines and plants; next complete occupation and the entire cutting off of the Ruhr; then the operation of all the railroads temporarily, next their indefinite occupation. On February 9 the 'New York. Times' dispatch read: 'Poincare Says Ruhr Won't Be Exploited', but since March 1 it has been the universal admission that the Ruhr will be exploited.

"I claim", he declared, "that any action which is destroying the great reservoir of good will built up in America for France during the war, which has already broken the Entente, and will shortly lead, unless all signs fail, to action by the British against the French their chief law officers have declared the action of the French a violation of the Treaty of Versailles and their newspapers are now united in opposition to the policy in the Ruhr--is surely the supreme of stupidity, the very reverse of enlightened and intelligent statesmanship. France's action has been denounced in Sweden, Denmark, Italy, and Holland, as well as by the International Trade Union Congress, the most powerful labor organization in the world. Sir Phillip Gibbs says: 'France has produced undying hatred in Germany, as well as despair, hunger, and disease, and has raised against herself the moral disapproval of every man and women in the world who stands for fair play rather than brutality, for European civilization rather than French militarism, and for the humble working men and women with their hungry children, whether they be German, French, Russian, English, or any nationality, race, or color whatever. Out of that hatred which she is inflaming every hour of every day in German hearts, and out of that despair she is causing in every country dependent upon German industry for its own prosperity, there will come one day in fearful retribution'.

"With what Sir Phillip Gibbs says. I agree", declared Mr. Villard, "down to the last word. The point is that the French are violating the moral law; that at the very moment when the moral sense of the world is struggling as never before to free itself from the domination of war and force, we are all of us expected to bow down, before Poincare and say: 'Yes, this is the right and Christian way to compel the payment of the debt'. We who hold to our faith in the teachings of Jesus Christ are asked to believe that any sums of money which may be pressed out of the Ruhr are to be sanctified and holy, that the coal mined by a half-starved and half-distracted miner at the point of a bayonet will bring peace, contentment, and happiness to some poor, much-to-be pitied inhabitant of the desolated districts of France. It will do nothing of the kind. It will carry with it inevitably a curse and penalties which will return to plague the French people precisely as the German people are today paying the most terrible penalties for the rule of the Kaiser and those other Germans, aristocrats and militarists, who brought them to ruin."