It is this obstinate insistence upon having his way, and having his way in every detail, that lends his present policy in the Ruhr its contradictory aspects of bull-headed determination and uncertainty.

We must not let our desire for peace, a desire that possesses all of us before aught else, be suspected for one moment. We should have entered the Ruhr with a formal and definite programme. We should have said to Germany and the world: 'Four years have passed since the war. Those who are guilty are guilty. Every man may name the criminals for himself and detest them in his own heart. But today we face the question of peace. Peace has not returned. We must secure it.

'We must think of peace as an organism, not to be brought into being by a decree but by a birth. It must be based upon the economic coöperation of France and Germany. The two countries must strive to accomplish something shoulder to shoulder. Our hatred will disappear when we are working in a common cause. Let us get to work then.

'Let us see what each one has that the other one needs what we can exchange. Let us set about creating wealth instead of trying to deprive each other of it. We both have tremendous industrial resources. Let us pool them and thereby multiply them. We must make peace that is, restore normal conditions. The first step toward this is to keep silence over our wrongs. We must forget.'

We shall forget, in Germany and in France, if we are able to establish industrial unity in the Rhine valley, if we succeed in harmoniously exchanging our products with each other.

The barriers that we have set up

the time being aggressive, warlike barriers. But they serve at the same time to define the district that logically should become a field of common endeavor for Germany and France, of a coöperative effort in which questions of territorial suzerainty should play no part.

Notwithstanding the fact that our present occupation of the Ruhr has made the crisis between France and Germany more acute, it none the less prophesies an equilibrium, an eventual harmonizing of interests between the two countries. The very effort we exert to punish Germany for her default to us but makes more obvious the benefits she will receive from fulfilling her obligations. The occupation of the Ruhr is like a photographic negative; it is only necessary to apply it to sensitive paper to change the picture from a negative to a positive. The coal trains that now make their way with such difficulty from Germany to France suggest the day when ore trains will roll in the opposite direction from France to Germany.

We can easily imagine the Germans returning on a basis of equality to this industrial beehive where our troops are now idling, but under a single condition: they must recognize the identity of their interests and our own, and agree upon a policy of loyal coöperation with us.

I cannot help believing that Germany is at the bottom of her heart eager to get away from the psychology of war. I am convinced that she does not really love war. Were she again blessed with assured prosperity, the basis of which she fully understood, she would not for many years to come return to her old military dreams.

What we refuse to see, what we belittle and underestimate, is the pleasure that Germany takes in working and

producing. Germany is suffering today from inhibited production. That is what is making the country bilious and bitter. I believe firmly that if we were to offer her an opportunity to work and grow, her good humor and pacific disposition would speedily come back.

All we need to provide for is that her expansion shall be identified with our own. Then we shall be joint partners, both intent on constructive progress instead of striving to block it, to harass it, to diminish it. Since we have been bold enough or rash enough to beard this great monster of German industry in his den, we should now prudently restore his liberty and by prudently I mean mounting on his back.

I am quite aware of the political objections to such a policy. One of the weightiest is that England would never consent. But we must ask ourselves if Great Britain values sufficiently the peace of Europe; if the peace of Europe is or is not the greatest advantage of which she can dream.

Assuming that such a peace is the greatest blessing she can conceiveas she asserts it is then she must reconcile herself to the conditions it demands. And the first and the only condition of such a peace is an economic alliance between France and Germany.

We should get rid of the illusion that a settlement of the Reparations question will bring peace. Germany can never find a sum large enough to acquit her debt. We picture her to ourselves as a sinner who will feel herself redeemed and radiant when her penance is accomplished. At least that idea is implied in our policy. It is a puerile delusion.

I admit that there is more or less bluff and bluster in the following statement, made to a Temps correspondent

by the manager of a great chemical factory in the Rhine country. But it outlines a programme, nevertheless, that Germany may sooner or later substantially adopt, unless we cast away our present fixed idea of exacting Reparations:

You ask me what the end of all this will be. A very bad one for you French. The Cuno Cabinet is backed by the patriotic sentiment of the nation. It has already virtually abrogated the Versailles Treaty. It has successfully resisted the oppression of imperialist France. Now it is seeking to force France to set a definite sum for Reparations. When that is accomplished, we shall have won our battle. We shall go to work to pay you. Neutrals will extend us credit. The day you are paid — and it will be long before the final period set you will evacuate German territories. Five or ten years later, da wird es aber Äpfel geben - there will be another war, an invasion, a revenge.

We have clinched with an opponent larger, stronger, more vigorous, more fecund than we are. Any policy that seeks to impose willy-nilly, for all time, our superiority, no matter how successful it will be for the moment, will prove in the long run utopian and disastrous. The only intelligent, farsighted, really shrewd policy, which will truly lead to peace and guarantee the future of France, the only policy that is worthy of the memory of our dead, to which we have so often appealed to justify the worst of follies, - is a policy that strives to utilize our temporary advantage to win us a permanent advantage. That is only possible by converting our present military superiority into an economic asset or better said, by creating an economic asset for our enemy that will attach him to us and will substitute for his debt to us community of interest with us.

CAN Germany and France survive only by trying to crush and destroy each other? Must the relations of the two countries be based upon misunderstanding and mutual injury, and not upon reciprocal assistance and support?

So far as the field of the intellect is concerned, history gives a prompt answer. Germany's classical philosophy is inconceivable without French enlightenment. Frederick the Great could not exist without Voltaire, or Kant without Rousseau. German liberalism received its stimulus from France: human rights, popular sovereignty, parliamentary institutions. The German socialism of the nineteenth century, above all that of Marx, bears unmistakable evidence of French influence, of Condorcet and SaintSimon: the idea of class struggle, and the economic interpretation of history. Many Germans, including the writer of these lines, were, during the formative period of their life, profoundly influenced by Auguste Comte, whose lucid, penetrating intellect and positive objectivity drew them irresistibly into his following.

But Germany has paid back with interest what she received from France. I shall cite the testimony of the greatest Frenchman of the nineteenth century to confirm this. German idealism taught the French to reconcile spirit and nature, God and the world, and gave them the concept of historical progress.

Renan says: "The German intellect of the close of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century struck me with awe. It was as if I had entered into a temple. Yes, there was what I sought: the union of sincere religion with the spirit of scientific

investigation. As a matter of fact, fifty years ago, at the Weimar court of an absolute prince, there was more freedom of thought than in our own. country, which has fought so many battles for freedom.'

Taine wrote on one occasion: 'I try to help myself through the present by reading the Germans. They are, compared with ourselves, what the English of Voltaire's time were for France. I find thoughts in their writing that afford food for a century. Hegel, Beethoven, and the Pyrenees are stimulants that arouse in me the same sensation - which for want of a better word I might call sentiment, or perhaps emotion.'

Victor Hugo also said: 'Europe's moral standards were at one time threatened by Spain and Turkey. Today their most dangerous enemies are England with her esprit du commerce and Russia with her esprit de conquête. Germans and French spring from the same source. They are brothers of the past, of the present, and of the future. A union of Germany and France would hold England and Russia in check, would be a blessing for Europe, would give peace to the world.'

Elsewhere Victor Hugo praises Germany enthusiastically: 'No nation is greater than thou. Thy voice is music. Thou hast more heroes than the peaks of Athos. Thy exploits are worldwide. Be proud, you Germans!'

A generation later, after the 'redeeming defeat,' Romain Rolland wrote: "The good that Germany has unintentionally done us is greater than the evil. Yes, she has revived our devotion to higher things. She has kindled in our land the fire of painstaking research and of faith. She has

brought it about that France is covered with schools. She has given new life to our poetry and music. We thank her for the revival of our race consciousness. In spite of lies and hatred we shall not be separated. She needs us and we need her in order to attain the full stature of our intellect and our national genius. We are the two pinions of western Europe. If one is broken. the flight of the other is checked. Let there be war! It will not permanently separate our clasped hands or break the brotherly rhythm of our hearts.'

Nor was it otherwise with Jaurès, whose socialism, imbibed from Kant and Fichte, was far more German than the Marxian dogma. Bergson culled the principles upon which he based his philosophy from ground tilled by German thinkers. The kinship of Germany and France was being recognized in art. Led by their school-teachers the youth of the two countries were stretching out their hands toward fraternal union. Then, at the last moment, the old spirit of isolation and reaction triumphed, and brought about the war.

In the economic field likewise a highly complex division of labor had sprung up between the two countries, beneficial alike to German industry and to French agriculture, to German quantity production and to French quality production. In spite of high tariffs, political friction, and chauvinist press campaigns, commercial intercourse between the two nations was expanding rapidly. Between 1895 and 1912 the exports of France to Germany increased more than one hundred and forty per cent and her imports from Germany two hundred and forty per cent. If anything, Germany was more important for France than France for Germany, for our country had relatively larger outlets for her specific commodities and manufactures in England, Russia, and the United States.

Next to England Germany was France's most important customer. Just prior to the war we bought sixteen times as much from our French neighbors as did the latters' ally, Russia. To be sure, we sold more to France, measured by gross value, than France sold to us; but we bought from her luxury goods upon which her profits were very large.

The mutual dependence of the two countries was further indicated by the kind of goods they reciprocally shipped to each other. Before the war, Germany exported to France mainly machinery and coal, which France could get cheaper from her than from any other source. On the other hand, Germany was forced to purchase luxuries from France or do without them. Let it be noted here, that France was more interested than any other nation in the continued prosperity of Germany because the highclass goods we bought from her were the first to be dispensed with when hard times came. In many cases similar wares were interchanged between the two countries, France buying from Germany those of ordinary quality, and Germany buying from France those of the finest and most expensive grade. This was true, for example, of artificial flowers, carpets, perfumeries, bronzes, and photographic goods. Germany was also a leading market for the most expensive products of French agriculture. She was the principal buyer of French wines and Parisian women's garments.

And, strange as it may seem, the Versailles Peace has in some respects increased this mutual dependence. Thirty per cent of the iron and steel exported from France to-day comes to Germany; two thirds of the cotton yarn she ships abroad comes to our country. Therefore sooner or later the French people are sure to say to their leaders: 'Will not our prosperity,

wealth, and national strength be better consulted by an economic alliance with Germany than by an attempt to destroy her?'

God's mills grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine. Some day French militarism must collapse, as the militarism of Germany collapsed; for, in spite of all our turmoil and apparent retrogression, the ideals of liberty and freedom go marching on. Let us recall the words of Victor Hugo, delivered on March 1, 1871, in the National Assembly at Bordeaux: 'If brute force is to rule, then Europe's peace is gone forever. There will be two dangerous nations in the world, one because it is victorious, the other because it is vanquished. From to-morrow France will have a single thought to recover, to grow strong, to rear children filled with holy wrath, burning to restore the

greater France of 1792, the France of inspiration and the sword. And speedily she will rise again, and with irresistible power seize Alsace and Lorraine, and listen well to my words likewise Trèves, and Mayence, and Cologne, and Coblenz - yes, the whole left bank of the Rhine. Then France will proudly proclaim: "Here I stand. I am the victor. But am I thine enemy? I am thy sister. I have taken all from you, but I shall return it to you under one condition that henceforth we shall dwell as one people, as one family. I will raze my fortresses; you must raze yours. My revenge is brotherhood. Let us erect one great republic, the United States of Europe. Let us clasp hands, for each has done the other a great service. You liberated me from my Emperor, I now liberate you from yours.'

IN The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, Admiral Consett, who was Naval Attaché in the northern neutral countries throughout the Great War, gives a detailed account, drawn both from his own experience and from official statistics, of the methods by which the enemy was supplied and fed by this country. Much was suspected during the war, but the facts revealed for the first time in Admiral Consett's book surpass the wildest suspicions.

From the evidence he cites, Admiral Consett draws the conclusion that the prolongation of the war from the six months or the year for which Germany had calculated her resources to four and a half years was mainly due to her supply by British traders of foodstuffs and the material for munitions. The enemy was thus continuously supplied until 1917, when, with the entrance of the United States into the war, the blockade was for the first time enforced.