A year of prophesying

23.4.24

I was in Paris the other day when M. Poincaré reconstructed his Government, and I heard him make his declaration of policy to the Chamber of Deputies. I had never seen him before. It was a dramatic and amusing occasion, and I conceived for M. Poincaré the same sort of warm and hostile affection that I have for Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Lloyd George. He is an entirely delightful personality; he has all the charm—and much of the appearance—of a wiry-haired terrier. He even barks.

The Chamber of Deputies is in a semi-circle like a Roman theatre; there is none of the waste and confusion of effect one gets in the Gothic oblong at Westminster. The public was present by ticket; it sat in a semi-circle of little boxes within nodding distance of the deputies—and mostly it was ladies and very well dressed. High up over it all and facing it all sat M. François Arago, like a finite and protesting deity, with his recording angels behind him and a large bell convenient for his hand. Beneath him was the rostrum from which one addresses the house, and then a lower rank of reporters. But there was no beam of limelight. The political world has still to discover limelight. It is extraordinary how slow all legislative assemblies are in adopting modern conveniences. A beam of limelight would be excellent at Westminster to indicate the direction of the Speaker’s eye.

M. Poincaré read out his intentions in a hard, very audible voice. His opening sentences went to much applause and interruption. The chief scene came when, enumerating the ways in which France proposed to restore and preserve her solvency, he referred to an intensive exploitation of her colonies. “Our colonial policy,” said he. “Sarraut!” cried the Left—a fine, wolf-like sound. “Our colonial policy!” said M. Poincaré with increasing firmness. “Sarraut!” “Our colonial policy,” M. Poincaré repeated, in small capitals, so to speak. “Sarraut!” much louder—the Left enjoying itself. M. Poincaré brought up unexpected vocal resources. After five—or was it six?—repetitions, honour was satisfied and the statement went on.

In the horrible language of English political discussion, M. Poincaré is attempting to “dish” the Left. He was trying to make his policy look as “Left” as possible, while still remaining the same inflexible person as ever. He had thrown over various associates from the Right and brought in reasonable men from the Left Centre to liberalise the effect of his reconstituted Government. He was prepared to be generous to Germany provided she paid the uttermost farthing. He was prepared to seem to come out of the Ruhr, while in reality sticking there. He spoke hopefully and brightly and emptily of the League of Nations.

That is the quality of the new phase. M. Poincaré is talking as liberally as he can. He exchanges compliments and large liberal gestures with Mr. Ramsay MacDonald; neither of them meaning anything whatever, except a desire to pass the time and be in the fashion. It is the change in the fashion that should interest the student of affairs. M. Poincaré is getting ready for the elections in May, and his proceedings betray his consciousness of the deep strong movement of French thought and intention leftward, away from adventure and nationalism and militarism, towards—sanity. In spite of a systematically perverted news service and many provocations and natural fears, the mind of France is becoming powerfully reasonable. It thinks less and less of glory and more and more of solvency. It is more open to-day to ideas of reconciliation, disarmament, and organised international co-operation than it has been at any time since the war.

M. Poincaré has been superficially dexterous, his majority is beautifully restored, but France and all the world know him for an honest obdurate man. I doubt if he will come back after the elections. M. Millerand has seemed to threaten a dictatorship if the Poincaré policy is defeated. Is France so Latin as to stand that? I think M. Millerand will be better advised to try a resignation. For the recent credit given to France to support the franc is probably the end of French borrowing power, and a defeat of the Left by fraud or violence—a cessation of the movement towards reason and disarmament—means a withdrawal of foreign confidence and a swift and sure financial collapse.

Now unhappily it is just at this phase of French affairs, with the peace-intending reconciling forces of France and Britain coming rapidly into accord and ascendancy, that Germany begins to manifest her least agreeable traits. The recent Munich trials, the acquittal of that foolish old monarchist blusterer, Ludendorff, the ridiculous mitigated sentences of Hitler and the other conspirators against the German Republic, and, above all, the public demonstrations of sympathy with these second-rate nationalist reactionaries, come as a real shock to our hopes of an approaching European reconstruction. Like that supremely silly incident, the neglect to lower the German flag in Washington on the occasion of President Wilson’s death, it is ugly; it betrays the bad heart. One may recognise the stream of injustices and disappointments that have been inflicted on Germany in the last five years, one may be willing to concede the right of Germans to a considerable resentment, and yet one may find it hard to forgive these sentimental dangerous reversions towards monarchism in uniform, and, above all, that petty and provocative folly at Washington.

It has been a great disappointment and discouragement to those who have worked, and who are now drawing near to the accomplishment of their work, for a reconciled Europe, to note how feeble has been the collateral movement in Germany. Where is liberal and intelligent Germany to-day? It is begging its bread; but I do not see why it should concentrate all its energies upon begging its bread. When one goes into Germany one encounters plenty of residual swash-buckler spirit; the old heroism of the expanded chest and the high voice; and one encounters a vast amount of abject sob-stuff; but it is very hard indeed to find any Germans who seem to be steadily busy upon the reconstruction of Europe upon broad modern lines. Germany seems to be divided anatomically between the right and left. The Monarchists have the backbone and no brains; the Liberals have the brain and no backbone. When a German displays will he does something stupid and violent, and when he displays intelligence he does nothing at all. In Berlin last summer everybody I sought out and questioned talked in terms of crisis. Germany was sinking. England must do something for Germany at once. America must do something for Germany at once. The one thing they would not recognise was the necessity of Germany doing something for Germany at once. And no party has arisen, no newspapers have arisen, no leader or group of men stands out yet to embody a new Germany in a new Europe. The time of opportunity draws near and Germany, one fears, may remain too sick and beaten, too witless and unteachable, to make any use of this year of opening opportunity.

I write without any profound knowledge of things German. I may be too much impressed by the reactionary crowd in the streets of Munich. There may be deeper currents in German life which find no adequate expression in the German Press, and of which I know nothing. But with the French elections drawing near, it is time that the good Europeans in Germany, if there are good Europeans in Germany, should make themselves heard and felt. The impression I have of an unhelpful and uncreative and irresponsive Germany, cheated, it is true, and disappointed, but lapsing far too readily towards a sullen unhelpfulness, is a very general impression in France and Britain. France is under an urgent necessity of retrenchment and ready to abandon her futile aggressiveness; Britain was never less imperialist than she is to-day. Is there no German initiative to meet this new occasion?