FRANCE AND GERMANY.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4575, 28 April 1922, Page 2

FRANCE AND GERMANY.

Fhitz is in a bad way. He has done some clever things, and he has been adept in holding oft the Allies from doing-just as they pleased with him. Ho has been just as acute in diplomacy in setting Ally against Ally as he ivas up to 1914, and he has been on the verge of carrying oil' several seemingly master strokes of intrigue that threatened to undermine the rest of the world. But just as there art? business men who arc able and ambitious, but who fail because they are “too clever,” so Fritz amongst the nations has registered failure afto' failure in more things than the Great War. And so to-day, when he has Franco and England by the ears, with Russia seemingly in his pocket, and the Genoa Conference apparently torpedoed by tho very Power that should have been the backbone of the gathering of tho nations, Fritz is in worse plight than ever. He has been dominated by Ivan of Russia, where he has sought to enshivo the Russian; and, apart from Franco—which will have to “come to heel,” after tho noiso and tumult are over —has wolded the Allies together more solidly than ever. Indeed, the Rus-so-German pact has thrown the Little Entente—that group of important republics occupying tho Corridor of Europe—right into the arms of the Entente Cordialc, so that Bolshevism has a barrier set up that will prevent connection between Berlin and Moscow. But now comes the -cruellest blow of all for Fritz. To-day’s cabled news tells the world that France has decided to occupy the Ruhr Valley if Fritz does not pay up his reparations by the end of next month. Already France has control of that other coal area vital to Fritz’s industries—tho Saar Valley. If the Ruhr also has Franco for its overlord, then, industrially, Fritz is doomed. His last state will bo far, far worso than his first—and already he is in as bad a way as even his worst enemies can wish him to bo in the matter of maintaining his self-contained policy as a nation. Really and truly, the way of the intriguer, like that of the transgressor, is hard. But, after all, wo are not extending sympathy. Fritz is getting all that is overdue to him, whether Franco or Russia he the hand that scourges. And, of course, ho will meet all his obligations before May 31.