Position Respecting the Rhineland

Two other phases of French security have played a part in the period since the treaties came into force. These are the question of the duration of the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and the effort to erect an independent Rhineland state.

The first point has been much discussed in the so-called Supreme Council. At Paris the part of the treaty of Versailles providing for the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine was the subject of considerable compromise. There are three zones, the evacuation of which is dependent upon "the conditions of the present treaty being faithfully carried out by Germany." In the Cologne sector are the Belgians, to be retired in five years. The Coblenz sector, now held by the British, is to be evacuated in ten years. The Mainz sector, held by the French, is to be evacuated in fifteen years. A highly technical controversy continues in France as to when these periods shall begin, it being obvious that if the date is not, as would normally be supposed, January 10, 1920, the day the treaty of Versailles entered into force, the dates of evacuation would not be 1925, 1930 and 1935 respectively.

On May 22, 1919, General Mangin, commanding general of the French army at Mainz, sent a colonel of his staff to General Liggett's headquarters at Coblenz to inquire what the American attitude would be toward a political revolution on the west bank of the Rhine for the establishment of an independent Rhineland republic free from Germany. The staff officer stated that fifty French deputies were ready to be sent into the American sector to assist in starting the revolution.1 The proposition referred to revolved around Hans Dorten of Wiesbaden. M. Clemenceau conducted an investigation and wrote a letter to General Mangin, of which Baker says:

In this letter there was no serious censure of General Mangin, much less any repudiation of the project. . . . Indeed, no secrecy was made of the concurrence of the Government in Mangin's sympathy with the movement for revolt.

Early in 1923 Josef Smeets, the Bavarian separatist leader,

'Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, II, 87. The statement is substantially verbatim from General Pershing's report to the President.

testified in court that he had been receiving money from French sources in connection with that campaign.

A report dated April 16, 1923, addressed by the high commissioner of the French Republic in the Rhine provinces, Paul Tirard, to the Secrétariat-Général, Paris, reviewed the relations of the French authorities in occupied Germany with Dr. Dorten. After explaining the difficulties of Dorten's position immediately after the 1919 incident, the salient points in the report are:

While maintaining imperturbably its point of view amid the whirlpool of “alliance politics" the French high commissariat did everything it could do without bringing itself to grief to preserve for Dr. Dorten the possibility of action within certain limits. . . . Thanks to this support, in short, Dorten was able to get his adherents together, maintain their enthusiasm, increase his propaganda and establish journals.

In the middle of 1922 after a grave crisis, of which I duly told you, he wished to reorganize his party. He remained faithful to the program which he had gradually elaborated for the creation of an autonomous federal state within the Reich; but this, as he told me repeatedly, was merely designed to calm the uneasiness of the majority of his followers, who, being anti-Prussian but German, were apprehensive of a disguised French annexation. In Dr. Dorten's mind such creation could not last and would soon be replaced by an independent state, with leanings toward France.

At the end of February, 1923, the high commissariat reproached Dr. Dorten with three grave matters: firstly, that the Rhenish leader did nothing to develop the separatist movement, knowingly exaggerated its importance and responded to the French effort in the Ruhr by a complete lack of activity in the Rhineland; secondly, that he misused the funds intrusted to him; and, thirdly, that he provoked campaigns in the French press which were hostile to the high commissariat.

This report was made at a time when Dr. Dorten was in Paris. It concluded by advising negotiations with him as a "valued and weighty counsellor."

The French concern as to the Rhineland is military. The general staff has always laid stress upon the fact that so long as Germany possesses both banks of the Rhine, she possesses a springboard for launching an army on to the French plains to the west. If the boundary were at the Rhine by reason of a buffer state, or beyond the Rhine eastward, the strategic springboard would no

Manchester Guardian Weekly, VIII, 515.

longer exist. Its continuance bears directly upon the problem of the potential security of France.

German Nonaggression Pact Offer

On New Year's Day, 1923, the newspapers carried an extract from a speech made by Chancellor Cuno at Hamburg the previous day to the effect that France had rejected a German offer intended to prove to that country "that we have no bellicose ideas and that she can evacuate without fear the left bank of the Rhine." It was indicated in the address that this proposal had been made through a third power, which proved to be the United States. The Department of State on January 2 issued a statement that it had been "deemed inadvisable to transmit the proposal to the Governments named unless it appeared that it would be favorably considered by the French Government."

"On December 18," stated Premier Poincaré, at the Interallied Conference on Reparation and Interallied Debts, called at the Quai d'Orsay, January 2-4, 1923, "Mr. Hughes had acquainted the French ambassador that the German ambassador had told him that he was in a position to propose the conclusion of [the agreement referred to]. Mr. Hughes had added that if M. Jusserand, after transmitting this communication to M. Poincaré, received from Paris an encouraging reply, he would ask Herr Wiedfeldt to put his proposal in writing. M. Poincaré, to whom this proposal had been immediately communicated, cabled to M. Jusserand that the proposed pact was undoubtedly a maneuver on the part of the German Government on the eve of the Paris conference."

In a subsequent conversation on December 21, M. Jusserand had explained to Mr. Hughes M. Poincaré's objections and the Secretary of State had read a text in a single sentence which the German ambassador had just communicated to him. The text was to the following effect:

"The German, British, French and Italian Governments solemnly engage themselves toward one another and promise the United States not to make war among themselves for a generation (say for thirty years), unless the matter is decided by popular vote, which should make war virtually impossible."

M. Poincaré on receipt of this text again characterized the proposal as a "clumsy maneuver." The French reasons on both occasions were:

If the German Government wished to get rid of all chance of war, it might be asked why had it limited the promise of peace to thirty years. Even in less time than thirty years German propaganda might unhappily develop such desire for revenge that when the time came the popular vote in Germany might be in favor of aggression against France.

The French constitution gave the representatives of the nation full powers over peace and war, and this right could not be withdrawn without a revision of the constitution. Moreover, the French Parliament would never take the initiative in any war.

For the German promise to have any value it would have to be guaranteed with positive engagements on the part of Great Britain and the United States, engagements supported by agreements assuring to France within a determined period an arranged military defensive co-operation. There was already in Art. 10 a formal undertaking of nonaggression which bound France. As soon as Germany was admitted to the League of Nations, she would have the benefits and the burdens of that article. Germany wanted to throw doubt on the sanctions which, sooner or later, the allies would be called on to take if she violated her engagements, and which are foreseen by several dispositions of the treaty of Versailles and notably by paragraph 18 of Annex II of Part VIII.

France could not fall into that net.

Besides, Mr. Hughes had not held out the least possibility of an AngloAmerican guaranty. But even an Anglo-American pact of guaranty, duly ratified by the Federal Senate, and assuring to France within a determined period an arranged military defensive, would not suffice entirely to relieve France of anxiety.1

2. THE FRANCO-POLISH ALLIANCE

The Republic of Poland, like the other succession states, entered the world without fixed boundaries. Certain groups of national patriots in the course of the World War set up so-called governments, which were promptly recognized by the Principal Allied

'Inter-Allied Conferences on Reparations and Inter-Allied Debts, p. 69-71. (Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Miscellaneous No. 3, 1923. Cmd. 1812.) Same texts in French are in Documents Diplomatiques. Demande de Moratorium du Gouvernement allemand à la Commission des Réparations (14 Novembre 1922). Conférence de Londres (9-11 Décembre 1922). Conférence de Paris (2-4 Janvier 1923), p. 76-77.

and Associated Powers and as promptly admitted to the Peace Conference at Paris as the proper representatives of states with limited interests. As the original support of these "governments" was an element in the successful political phase of the war, so their desires at Paris became an element in the settlement that was intended to leave the Central Powers without the capacity for renewing the conflict.

Of the succession states only Poland came in for any considerable share of the territory of the former German Empire. A third of the historic Poland had been in Prussia; but, worse, the Germans and Poles had so intermingled on the borderland that the problem of drawing a proper boundary was almost insoluble. Plebiscite areas were left (Allenstein, Marienwerder, Upper Silesia); the Free City of Danzig was cut out of East Prussia to afford Poland access to the sea; Memel was left in suspension. In a word, very little of the boundary of Poland toward Europe was definitely fixed when the new republic was launched as a member of the family of nations at the Peace Conference.

On the east lay the turmoil of Soviet Russia and the group of Russian states.

No state ever came into the world that knew so little about where its rightful place on the map was.

The almost innumerable odds and ends of territorial adjustment left unfixed by the Peace Conference devolved upon the Conference of Ambassadors sitting at Paris. It soon became apparent that the French representatives in that continuous conference appreciated Polish arguments very fully and were favorable to Polish contentions. Poland reciprocated in friendship.

The publicists of the two countries began to examine their common interests, and to find them similar, especially with reference to Germany, lying territorially between them.

By 1921 there was a notable cordiality between the French and Polish Governments, due to favors received and favors anticipated. On February 4-6, 1921, Marshal Pilsudski, chief of the Polish State, paid a ceremonial visit to Paris. On the second day of that visit, Premier Briand took the unusual step of summoning to him the ambassadors of Great Britain, Italy and Japan and of communicating to them the following joint FrancoPolish declaration: