The Evening Star SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 1923. FRANCE AND GERMANY.

Evening Star, Issue 18173, 13 January 1923, Page 4

The Evening Star SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 1923. FRANCE AND GERMANY.

M. Poincare lias got his vote of confid- ‘ enoe from the French Chamber of Do- j pulies. All things considered, it is quite as overwhelmingly in favor of France’s * occupation of the Ruhr as might have been * expected. Tho international nature of the Communist movement has already been in- ‘ stance d in this momentous development by tho fact that French Communists got into 1 Essen ahead of the French troops and ex- 1 horted the German workers to resist the 1 occupation by means of a general strike, < if not by violence. Tho bocialistg are {.airly strongly represented in the French Chamber, but a vote of 478 to 73 in support of the Government’s action across tho : Fvhine shows plainly enough that very many of them must have put La Belle France—La Patrie—before the industrial doctrine which recognises no national barriers, and which would regroup mankind at large into tho proletariat and tho Capitalists, arrayed against one another in every country in the great class war. There was, in fact, quite a dramatic scene in tho Chamber when M. Erlich declined to recognise the gospel according to Marx, and look up the traditional stand of French versus German, the racial instead of the class issue. Evidently be^ has dallied at some time with the Socialistic School, for one of its adherents flung in his face a handful of coppers, emblematic of the thirty pieces of silver, and denounced him as “the Communistic Judas” because ho suggested that the French Communists who aro agitating in Essen muat j be in tho German Reichstag’s pay. Uuj donbtedly the international nature of the ! Communist movement must complicate matters. There has been in every belli- j gerent country since the war—even before | the war came to an end —-an insidious and j persistent attempt to induce the worker j to believe that the war was deliberately j instigated and planned by the Capitalists | of all countries for the enslavement of the workers. The hardship, poverty, and unemployment which follow inevitably in the train "of war and its destructiveness are attributed to the same source aa the deliberate act of Capitalism in furtherance of its plans for tightening, after actual hostilities have ceased, tho grip it obtained while they were in full swing. If this theory were really credible, M. Potticare would not have had such a majority behind him as this division disclosed. What effect the French advance will have on German class feeling it ia impossible to say. It haa long been acute. On the one hand there is the laboring and . artisan class, under-nourished and overworked; and on the other there is the ostentation, even debauchery, of those who Lave waxed fat through the war—and tho profiteering that went on irt Qer- , many is said to dwarf that of any other belligerent country. Observers of industrial life in. Germany declare that what

was produced there hy six working men before the war needs ten people for its production now, such is tho state of enervation to which they are reduced. And tho higher the wave of misery rises the louder tho ciy is raised hy those Germans out of its reach; "Back to longer workin, g hours!” Tho great financial and industrial magnate, Albert Slinnes, satfl a few weeks ago, in reference to the eighthours day lately won by the German worker: "You must have the courage to toll every German that you cannot lose a war and work two hours less into the bargain.” There ha m been all the indications of a grave breach between the masses and the classes in Germany. 'Hie question is whether France’s action will tend to widen it or to heal it.