The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1922. RIFTS IN THE LUTE.

Evening Star, Issue 18045, 12 August 1922, Page 4

The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1922. RIFTS IN THE LUTE.

It would seem that, if a definite breach between Britain and France over the reparations question is to bo averted, it must bo by postponement of the issue, and not by ft compromise. The compromise threatens to be impracticable, ns M. Poincare’s attitude has been assumed. And it is plain, that, if M. Poincare felt any disposition to modify his attitude, it is only within very narrow,limits that ho would have .power to do so. A reservation as to details, which is said to have accompanied the French Cabinet’s insistence on productive guarantees as the necessary condition of a moratorium, leaves tlio way just open for an approximation! of the policies of the Allies; but the whole tone of French opinion, as it has been expressed on the issue, suggests that the actual discretion which M. Poincare may feel himself free to exercise as to “specific points ” will be of the smallest. For him to recede far from his extreme position would only bo courting the fate which JL Briand suffered after a previous conference. The Allies would be no further forward. Not 'loss strong than the French insistence on demands which the Committee of Experts has,, almost without dissent, declared to be impracticable and unprofitable is the determination of, the British Government, backed by the British Press, to bo no party to a civil control of Germany, which it is feared would inevitably make military coercion the next necessity. The position is very nearly, if it is not quite, that of the immovable body meeting an irresistible force, and Europe will wait anxiously for the next development.

In a Roman per.il one man saved the for times of the State by delay. It appears that, not fra- the first time, that may bo Mr Lloyd George’s role. An effort is being made to tide over present difficulties so that the whole question may be referred to a later conference, when the immovable body may he found to bo less unyielding. It is the way by which the Genoa Conference was saved from disaster, and a deadlock avoided on this reparations question when it was discussed with M. Poincare in London more than a month ago. But to postpone difficulties plainly is not to solve them. The necessity for early agreement by the Allies upon some common policy, if the conditions of Europe are ever to be made stable, should bo as plain to Franco as it is to most people in Britain. That the guarantees she desires would, in the opinion of all the experts but her own, bo less likely to be productive than destructive of the desired reparations is a consideration which should have decisive weight with her; but it is to be feared that scant consideration will be given to it when the alternative to swift, if only partial, seizure appears as a longer waiting before any easement for her necessities can be obtained. Franco needs her reparations, and needs them quickly; her national finances have all been based on the expectation that they would be forthcoming. Britain also wants to see reparations paid, but she believes that it is by nursing the sick debtor, and not by putting gyves upon him, that the power of his country to provide them will be best assured. If every creditor is to bo its own collector it is not much that any of them will obtain.

The necessity of Anglo-French co-opera-tion to that re-establishing of stable conditions in Europe which is as important to one country as the other has received as much acknowledgment, so far as words go, from French as from British statesmen. Yet, as often as it has been a question of acting together for any common purpose, since the war ended, their position has been not unlike that of the friendly incompatibles who “both agreed together that they never could agree.” Are the French right or the British right in their present differences, which obviously go much deeper than questions of methods? The British tendency has been to blame a too narrow nationalism on the part of Franco as the obstacle to co-opera-tion in prescribing for Europe. In a recent interview a prominent Frenchman, M. Maurice Golrat, who was President of the Economic Commission of the Genoa Conference, had a different explanation to offer. “ England,” he declared, “ does not really understand the Continent. We believe that wo do, and that makes us always inclined to resent the attitude of England, not when she gives us advice, but when she takes up the attitude of teaching us a lesson.” It is a suggestion rather alarming at the first encountering. It recalls the pronouncement of Mr Kipling that on every occasion, before and since the war, when Britain and Franco had differed in their opinions of Germany, France had been right and Britain wrong. But in this case, at least, Italy and Belgium are of one mind with the British Government. ' ‘ England’s isolation in Europe ” was the heading under which M. Colrat’s remarks were featured in an American journal. But it is Franco who to-day stands isolated. Her people should doubt the wisdom of her Government’s “lone band.”