WHAT OF THE RUHR?

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12195, 21 July 1925, Page 4

WHAT OF THE RUHR?

When the French sent troops into the Ruhr, Mr Lloyd George, 'using his faculty for epigram, said they had been sent to dig coal with bayonets. It was a masterly summary of the position. It truly indicated the difficulties of the situation, and freely predicted that the French would find those difficulties insuperable. The world looked on"aghast at the unexpected block in the working out of the Versailles peace conditions. The difficulties certainly proved enormous, and the cost of the 'French attempt to solve them by “cutting the Gordian knot” also proved enormous. The Gordian knot held; and the French cutting instrument seemed to have got blpnted by. the stroke of failure. In spite of all remonstrance, the Poincare Government persisted with the cutting. , The process proved costly also to Germany, with considerable stagnation of trade. It Was freely said that, on the German side, the situation was exploited to the making of much 'money at the expense of other nations. Certainly some big German fortunes were made. But it soon became evident that whatever fortunes were made—if any—in Germany, the pressure of .the Ruhr occupation was deadly to the German nation. , Negotiations, protests, recriminations, writings, and speeches deiiuncfatory and pathetic followed, erecting a perfect Tower ot Babel, to the puzzling of all mankind outside a small charmed inner circle. In due course of ominous mystery, there came a cjiange of politics in France, by which Poincare, the inflexible, was relegated'to private life. The Babel Tower collapsed, and out of its ruins came the Dawes settlement, by which the evacuation of the Ruhr took its place amongst things fixed. Europe breathed~more freely, and new proposals of pacts, with arid without the League of Nations, came out of the ruins of Babel, and grew more or less healthily, in the improved atmosphere ot diplomacy. , Fear ended and stability began. /The fixing, of dates made the evacuation of the Ruhr a thing Of. certainty. To-day the evacuation, which recently began, is proceeding. It is not a thing, of .pomp and circumstance done by The whole army of occupation -in a'single sensational programme. The French,.troops are retiring by units. ,But the fact that they are retiring is'the thing that counts. The manner is nothing, the thing is everything. : ; It means the reasonableness of both Trance and Germany, by which huge cost is saved on one sideband huge provocation is ended on the other, to the establishment of the stability which is so much to the world. , . There is still much to be done in the way of adjustment before the situation becomes normal. But the clearance of. the atmosphere by the clearance of the Ruhr is mdst favourable to adjustment, a thing possible to reason and impossible to force. The immediate future now wears the smile which Versailles called up and the Ruhr episode extinguished.