Anglo-American Establishment полностью

motion. He said that France would never agree to any reparations figure, because she did

not want the reparations clauses fulfilled, since that would make necessary the evacuation

of the Rhineland. France went into the Rul1r, he said, not to collect reparations, but to

cripple Germany; France was spending immense sums of money on military occupation

and armaments but still was failing to pay either the principal or interest on her debt to

Britain.

When put to a vote, the motion was defeated, 305 to 196. In the majority were

Ormsby-Gore, Edward Wood, Amery, three Cecils (Robert, Evelyn, and Hugh), two

Astors (John and Nancy), Samuel Hoare, Eustace Percy, and Lord Wolmer. In the

minority were Fisher, Simon, and Arthur Salter.

By March, Fisher and Simon were more threatening to France. On the sixth of that

month, Fisher said in the House of Commons: "I can only suggest this, that the

Government make it clear to France, Germany, and the whole world that they regard this

present issue between France and Germany, not as an issue affecting two nations, but as

an issue affecting the peace and prosperity of the whole world. We should keep before

ourselves steadily the idea of an international solution. We should work for it with all our

power, and we should make it clear to France that an attempt to effect a separate solution

of this question could not be considered otherwise than as an unfriendly act." Exactly a

week later, John Simon, in a parliamentary maneuver, made a motion to cut the

appropriation bill for the Foreign Office by £100 and seized the opportunity to make a

violent attack on the actions of France. He was answered by Eustace Percy, who in turn

was answered by Fisher.

In this way the Group tried to keep the issue before the minds of the British public and

to prepare the way for the Dawes settlement. The Round Table, appealing to a somewhat

different public, kept up a similar barrage. In the June 1923 issue, and again in

September, it condemned the occupation of the Ruhr. In the former it suggested a three-

part program as follows: (1) find out what Germany can pay, by an expert committee's

investigation; (2) leave Germany free to work and produce, by an immediate evacuation

of the Rhineland; and (3) protect France and Germany from each other [another hint

about the future Locarno Pacts]. This program, according to The Round Table, should be

imposed on France with the threat that if France did not accept it, Britain would withdraw

from the Rhineland and Reparations Commissions and formally terminate the Entente. It

concluded: " The Round Table has not hesitated in recent months to suggest that [British]

neutrality . . . was an attitude inconsistent either with the honour or the interests of the

British Commonwealth." The Round Table even went so far as to say that the inflation in

Germany was caused by the burden of reparations. In the September 1923 issue it said

(probably by the pen of Brand): "In the last two years it is not inflation which has brought

down the mark; the printing presses have been engaged in a vain attempt to follow the

depreciation of the currency. That depreciation has been a direct consequence of the

world's judgment that the Allied claims for reparation were incapable of being met. It will

continue until that judgment, or in other words, those claims are revised."

In October 1923, Smuts, who was in London for the Imperial Conference and was in

close contact with the Group, made speeches in which he compared the French

occupation of the Ruhr with the German attack on Belgium in 1914 and said that Britain

"may soon have to start rearming herself in sheer self-defence" against French militarism.

John Dove, writing to Brand in a private letter, found an additional argument against

France in the fact that her policy was injuring democracy in Germany. He wrote:

“It seems to me that the most disastrous effect of Poincare's policy would be the final

collapse of democracy in Germany, the risk of which has been pointed out in The Round

Table. The irony of the whole situation is that if the Junkers should capture the Reich

again, the same old antagonisms will revive and we shall find ourselves willy-nilly, lined

up again with France to avert a danger which French action has again called into being. . .

. Even if Smuts follows up his fine speech, the situation may have changed so much

before the Imperial Conference is over that people who think like him and us may find

ourselves baffled.... I doubt if we shall again have as good a chance of getting a peaceful

democracy set up in Germany.”

After the Dawes Plan went into force, the Milner Group's policies continued to be

followed by the British government. The "policy of fulfillment" pursued by Germany

under Stresemann was close to the heart of the Group. In fact, there is a certain amount of

evidence that the Group was in a position to reach Stresemann and advise him to follow