If we are to have any fundamental improvements in the present relations of nations, if we are to achieve that change of heart which is needed as the fundamental thing for the establishment of a world peace, then we must look the facts of international friction squarely in the face. It is no good pretending there is no jar when there is a jar. This business of the world peace effort, of which the Washington Conference is now the centre, is not to smooth over international difficulties; it is to expose, examine, diagnose and cure them.

Now here is this Franco-British clash, a plain quarrel and one very disturbing to the American audience. The Americans generally don’t like this quarrel. They are torn between a very strong traditional affection for the French and a kind of liking for at least one or two congenial things about the British. They would like to hear no more of it, therefore. They just simply want peace. But there the quarrel is. Was it an avoidable quarrel? Or was it inevitable? Perhaps it is something very fundamental to the European situation. Perhaps if we analyze it and probe right down to the final causes of it we may learn something worth while for the aims and ends of the Washington Conference.

Now, let us get a firm hold upon one very important fact, indeed. This clash is a clash between the present French Government and the present British Government, but it is not a clash between all the French and all the British. It is not an outbreak of national antipathy or any horrible, irreconcilable thing of that sort. There are elements in France strongly opposed to the French Government upon the issues raised in this dispute. There is a section of the English press fantastically on the “French” side and bitterly opposed even to the public criticism of the public speeches of the French Premier in English. The party politics of both France and Britain and, what is worse, those bitter animosities that centre upon political personalities have got into this dispute.

It may help to clear the issue if we disregard the attitude of the two Governments in naming the sides to the dispute, and if instead of speaking of the “French” or the “British” sides we speak of the “Keep-Germany-down” and the “Give-Germany-a-chance” sides, or better, if we call them the “Insisters,” who insist upon the uttermost farthing of repayment and penitence from Germany, and the “Believers,” who don’t. For it is upon Germany that the whole dispute turns.

There is a very powerful “Insister” party in Great Britain; there is a growing “Believer” party in France. And while France has been steadily “Insister” since the armistice, Britain and the British Government have changed round from “Insister” to “Believer” in the last year or so. This change has produced extraordinary strains and recriminations between French and British political groups and individuals, as such changes of front must always do. Such disputes often make far more noise than deep and vital national misunderstandings, and it is well that the intelligent observer, and particularly the American observer, should distinguish the note of the disconcerted party man in a rage from the note of genuine patriotic anger.

The beginnings of the present trouble are to be found in the Versailles Conference. There the only “Relievers” seem to have been the American representatives. Those were the days of the British Khaki election, when “Hang the Kaiser” and “Make the Germans Pay!” were the slogans that carried Mr. Lloyd George to power. For about four months the dispute went on between moderation and overwhelming demands. America stood alone for moderation. The British insisted upon the uttermost farthing, at least as strenuously as the French, and it was Gen. Smuts, of all people, who added the last straw to the intolerable burden of indebtedness that was then piled upon vanquished and ruined Germany. And both America and Britain were parties to the arrangements that give France the power, the Shylock right, of carving into Germany and disintegrating her more and more if Germany fail to keep up with the impossible payments that were then fixed upon her.

The position of the French Government in this business is therefore a perfectly legal and logical one. France can adhere, as M. Briand says she will, to the Treaty of Versailles, she can flout and disregard any disposition of the Washington Conference to qualify or revise that treaty, and the British Government, in a hopelessly embarrassed and illogical position, can appeal only to the hard logic of reality.

Britain is much more dependent upon her overseas trade than France, and so the British have earlier realized the enormous injury that the social and economic breakdown of Russia has done and the still more enormous injury that the breaking up of Central European civilization will do.

“You are quite within your rights,” these newly converted “Relievers” say to the obdurate “Insisters,” “but you will wreck all Europe.”

That idea that the possible destruction of civilization has not yet entered so many minds in France as it has in Britain. Germany is nearer to France than to Britain, and the fear of a renascent and vindictive Germany is greater in France than in Britain. In the French mind, the possibility of a German invasion for revenge twenty years hence still overshadows the possibility of an economic breakdown in a year or two years’ time. The British are nearer the breakdown and further from the Germans. That is the reality of this Franco-British clash.

Upon that reality bad temper, party feeling, personal spites, irrational prejudices, are building up a great mass of nasty, quarrelsome matter. And the French Government and the French nationalist majority are pressing on to naval and military preparations that distinctly threaten Britain. It is no good pretending that they do not do so when they do. The French submarines are aimed at Britain.

Empty civilities between France and Britain are of no value in a case of this sort. Both countries are being worried by their infernal politicians and both are in a state of financial distress and raw nerves. It is not a time when deliberation and clear reasoning are easy. But when we get down to the fundamentals of the case we find that the antagonism comes out to these two propositions that are not necessarily irreconcilable:

(I) That Germany, for the good of the whole world, must not be destroyed further, but, instead, assisted to keep upon her feet (“Relievers”), and

(II) That Germany must nevermore become a danger to France (“Insisters”).

And these two propositions are completely reconcilable, and this particular clash can be entirely cured and ended by one thing and by one thing only, a binding alliance, watched and sustained by a standing commission of France, Germany, Britain, America, and possibly Italy and Spain, to guarantee France and Germany from further invasions and internal interference, if France follows the dictates of her better nature and the advice of her wiser citizens, foregoes her impossible claims and lets up on Germany from now on.

And from no country can the initiative of such an alliance come more effectively than from the United States of America, the universal creditor, who can bring home to France, as no other power can, the beauty and desirability of financial mercifulness.

I submit that these are the broad lines, the elements, the A B C of the present situation and that there is nothing whatever between France and Britain that is not entirely secondary and subordinate to this issue between Insistence and Relief.

And moreover the issue between France in general and Britain in general is an issue that is going on in parallel forms all over the world. Old Japan insists upon the Versailles treaty; young Japan would relieve China,—how much is not yet clear. The American scene is a conflict between those who insist fiercely upon the British debt and those who would devise relieving conditions. It is nowhere a struggle between peoples and races, it is everywhere a struggle between logic and reason, between the stipulated thing, the traditional thing and the humane and helpful thing, between old ways of thinking and new, between the letter and the spirit. Old Shylock was the supreme insister, and since Portia was the triumphant reliever, we may reasonably look to the woman voter and the women’s organizations of Britain and America for a particular impetus towards relief. And the sooner relief comes the better, for once Shylock’s knife has cut down sufficiently to the living flesh, the cause of the reliever and of civilization will have been lost forever.