Foreign News: Conditions for Peace

“Most Germans think of me as a kind of monomaniac, as a hairy personification of our poor Alsace-Lorraine, incapable of nourishing other designs than those of vengeance.” Thus spoke Raymond Poincaré last week, and spoke the exact truth. Germans do hate and fear him more than any other Frenchman—for it was he who sent French and Belgian troops to occupy the Ruhr in 1924. Moreover he is the strongest statesman in Europe now opposing the famed “Locarno spirit,” a conception which would admit Germany fully and freely to the comradeship of nations. His speech last week at the War-ravaged town of Luneville, was indiscreet to the point of eccentricity; but apparently M. Poincaré is so tired of “Locarno-talk” that he had to get out of his system what he considers the unvarnished truth about France and Germany. He said: “In our long and magnificent history our country every time it has been victorious has spontaneously offered the hand of friendship to the conquered. But there has always been one condition, and that was that the vanquished should not seek to contest the victory proclaimed. . . . “If immediately after her defeat Germany had openly disavowed the Government and military caste which led her into the war … if she had not contested against all evidence the crushing responsibilities of the imperial policy, it would never have entered anyone’s mind to associate the German people with their former regime and attribute to the whole of Germany the abominable deeds of which we were witness.” Because Germany has not made these disavowals, M. Poincaré declared last week that only the following acts by the German Republic can bring lasting peace to Europe: 1) demilitarization of the German police force and complete destruction of German fortifications; 2) complete disavowal by the German Government of any desire to recover Alsace-Lorraine; 3) greater co-operation than at present by Germany in fulfilling the Dawes plan.