THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1923. FRANCE IN THE RUHR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18769, 24 January 1923, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1923. FRANCE IN THE RUHR.

The effort which Franco is making to collect reparations from Germany in a way that is regarded by authorities of the highest standing, not in Great Britain only but elsewhere, as hound to fail is being watched with curiosity and interest. It is rather early yet to speak, as one correspondent has done, of the French being beaten all along the line. The difficulties, however, of forcing under military coercion the fulfilment of the behests ofi a victorious and hated enemy by a sullen, embittered population, disciplined* to resist, have probably never been adequately realised by the rulers of France. The opposition which Franco has already encountered has led to the institution by her of punitive measures, directed against some of the German industrial leaders, but it will not be in any degree surprising if the effect of these is merely to stiffen up the resistance of the beaten nation and, in the end, to emphasise the lack of efficacy of the French plan. That the sympathy of the world will, as has been suggested by one of our contemporaries,' be-extended to Germany as a victim of the unsportsmanlike practice under which an opponent is belaboured when he is prostrate is hardly likely. In representing France as a spiteful and cruel oppressor, Mr Lloyd George has overstepped the mark in an article which should not have been written and which one of the London daily papers that had acquired the right of ’publication discreetly decided to exclude from its columns. Mr Lloyd George has mischievously endeavoured to create the impression that all the rights in the present situation are on the part of Germany and all the wrongs are on the part of France. It is a distorted picture which he has drawn, and unfortunately it is a picture which will be regarded by too many French people as expressive of the feeling of the British public. For this reason, it is to be feared that it will tend to aggravate the irritation that has been caused in France by the inability of the British Government to recognise the validity of the French plan of enforcing reparation payments. The attempt oh the part of France to carry matters with a high hand is almost certain to he productive of disappointment for France herself, involving her in a heavy expenditure that will not yield any compensating advantage, but there can be little doubt that Germany has systematically schemed to evade her reparation obligations and she is not greatly deserving of the sympathy which Mr Lloyd George and some others would lavish upon her. In France itself there seems fortunately to be a growing disposition to recognise that the less heroic measures which were favoured by Great Britain were too hastily rejected. It is a significant circumstance that French experts are said, upon a re-exairsmation of it, to be regarding less adversely the plan which was submitted by Great Britain at the last Conference of Prime Ministers of the Allied countries and that France is herself apparently considering a new scheme of reparations the execution of which would not depend upon the occupation of German territory.