PROPHET OF DISASTER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18347, 13 March 1923, Page 7

PROPHET OF DISASTER.

i I FRANCE SOWING THE WIND. A. and N.Z. LONDON. March 11. Mr. J. L. Garvin, in the London Observer, continues the discussion on the Ruhr in an article entitled "From Folly to Madness." He asks: "Who thinks France's present unchecked supremacy can last ? It is the result of combined effort by the Allies, and has no natural basis in France alone. France has the arms, Germany breeds men. After the . hatred the Ruhr policy has created the I German women would fight if they had > a chance. Nothing can prevent Germany from becoming the stronger. If France reappears in her old fixed role of hereditary enemy of German unity, the Ger- ' man cause > will conquer, because it will I be just. When that day comes, what . can France expect if the precedent set is to be the merciless example of her present policy ? "The unparalleled coalition which saved France in the last straggle would rot be seen again. Britain and the United . States would not intervene; Russia would j take the other side; Italy would take 1 Tunis and Syria. The vast majority of . Germans have no desire to throw in their j Jot irrevocably with the Bolsheviks, but they will do so if no other hope is left. ; Moscow openly desires the German resist- i ance to fail, in order that there shall be j no alternative left to the German people but to join the Bolsheviks and become ultimately the spearhead of a real world revolution. If France persists in demanding impossible reparation as a pretext for permanent occupation, if her policy becomes ' the incredible re-embodiment, more and more identical in every feature, of the Potsdam theory of force and forcible acquisition, if France abuses her tern- } porary military ascendancy in order to i ignore even tho Allies who saved her in . war, and to attack their real interests, it will only he a matter 01 years, and not many years, befora she will be crushed. France's choice, at the parting of the ways, lies between a course leading to true safety on the right hand, and to the nemesis of doom on the left. That time j Is not distant, It is now." j — .