SIEGE OF GERMANY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 47, 24 February 1923, Page 7

SIEGE OF GERMANY.

NEW FRENCH POLICY. FOREDOOMED TO FAILURE. LLOYD GEORGE'S VIEW. NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITIES. ißy Cable .--Press Association. -<-np Tr i Kht .) 'Received H.BO ami t-OXDOX. February 2:3. Mr. Lloyd George, in his weekly article dealing with the international policies, to-day discusses the French operations in the Ruhr. He writes: - The French Government having conspicuously failed io win its anticipated coup, is doubling the stakes each time it loses. When and where will it end? It is ill gambling with human passions; they all engaged in this wild venture. On both sides of the table are pride, greed, vanity, obstinacy, temper, corohativeness. and racial antagonisms, but also love of justice, hatred of wrong, and high courage. Each side draws from the same treasury of fiery human emotions, and unless someone steps in to induce a halt. 1 fear the result will be devastating. France has now abandoned the hope of running the mines, railways, and workshops of the Ruhr by military agencies. You cannot shoot every worker who refuses to excavnte so many hundredweights of coal daily, or drive locomotives, so a new policy was improvised. It is nothing less than the siege of Germany. Sixty million Germans are to be starved into submission. All classes are united in resistance: national pride, fortified by endurance, incites to sacrifice, and the ports still are open. Meanwhile incidents may happen creating a situation baffling all the invaders' resources. "THE SOONER THE SAFER." Many are disposed to say that the invasion of the Ruhr was bound to come, and the sooner the safer. Get it over quickly: headache will bring repentance, and France will then settle down to a quiet life. 1 emphatically protest against this view. If this ill-judged enterprise had been delayed a few more months I do not believe any French Government would have embarked on it. There is no French statesmen of any standing who, in his heart, believes in its wisdom. Now that the credit of France is involved in its success they will all support it, but French opinion as a whole was rapidly moving away from this policy. Vacancies in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies afforded an opportunity of testing the real opinion, and the results are sensational. The champions of "Ruhrism" were beaten by emphatic majorities. The masses of the French workmen always opposed the policy, the peasant has had enough of military adventure., His sons were never numbered among the exempts, and the losses in peasant homes were appalling. We cannot wonder, therefore, that by-election 6 in rural and urban France display unmistakable weariness of plans involving the march of armed Frenchmen into hostile territory. The sorrowing people of France have good reason to shrink from action that leads to further shedding of blood. CHAUVINISM AND DELAY. That is why 1 steadily favoured every scheme to that effect, postponing the decision on the Ruhr question. Delay meant ultimate defeat of the Cftauvinistsl that is why they strove so hard to rush the Government into precipitate action. The abrupt termination of the Paris Conference was their opportunity; they seized it with- tingling lingers. I"n til then there had never been a clean break on which violence could be founded. Friends' moderation both here and on the Continent had seen to that, and Europe was saved the catastrophe of once more handing its "destinies to the guidance of blind force. Unhappily, weariness or impatience, induced the Paris negotiators, in a few hours, to drop'the reins which for four years had held the furies from dashing along the career of destruction. Alternative plans might have been discussed with a little more persistence, and lesn pessimism might have persuaded Belgium, Italy, and Japan to aid our appeals to France to trust, rather to the League of Nations than to the uncertainties of war. Neglected opportunities Titter the path of this troublesome question. The Cannes conversations were broken as they were reaching fruition, and it will not surprise mc to find that the whole cargo of reparations has disappeared beyond salvage with these shipwrecked negotiations. GERMANY'S ERROR. Again Germany threw away a great opportunity at Genoa. True reparations were' excluded, but the spirit engendered by a friendly settlement of all other outstanding questions would have rendered reasonable and temperate considerations of reparations inevitable. Gemanj, by its foolish staging of the Russian agreement, made all that impossible. Resentment and suspicion were once, more equipped with the lash, and they used it relentlessly to drive out all goodwill for Germany from the congress. Another lost opportunity then came with the Bankers' Committee. The French Government testily declined to consider the essential conditions indicated by the bankers another lost opportunity', and Europe once more lumbered along the dreary way to seek another. I Then came Mr. C E. Hughes famous New Haven speech. It was clearly the result of prolonged consideration, and was made four days before the Paris Conference. It was obviously intended to be discussed there. An endeavour has been made to minimise the importance of this American approach to Europe. It is incomprehensible to mc how so momentous a pronouncement was treated as if it were merely the casual utterance of a politician who had to find some tonic to illuminate his discourse. Another opportunity lost: perhaps the jureatesl. nerhaps the last. Never has luck striven so hard to save stut.iditv, but luck loses its temper easily, and then is ant io hit hard.—(A. uudN_. Cable.)