Which Way France?

The Versailles system has crumbled; the Locarno Treaty - the treaty of the Locarno spirit - is dead; and France has begun a new life -a dangerous life in a bold and wicked new world. Not even during the first post- War years did French opinion seriously believe that the Treaty of Versailles would or could last; for the French knew that in order to last the Treaty was neither sufficiently soft nor sufficiently hard. It was not tolerable to Germany as the Treaty of Vienna had been tolerable to France; but to use Bainvilles phrase it had while robbing Germany of everything left her the most precious thing of all - the power of political recuperation. In other words it had not broken but strengthened German unity. Except for one belated and half-hearted attempt to shake this unity by encouraging Rhineland Separatism at the time of the Ruhr occupation in 1923 France accepted with much resignation the thought that Germany would continue to exist as a great single Power; and the policy of Briand consisted precisely in making the best of it. He knew that the Versailles system could not be eternal and he prepared the transition to a new system -the system of the League. He was blamed by his critics for hastening this process; and Tardieu in 1930-2 was the last who attempted to slow it down; though even he could not have thought that Versailles would last forever.