THE FACE OF EUROPE.
THE face of Europe is changing, and unless some untoward event intervenes the change should be beneficent. The good turn was taken when the French Government yielded to the pressure put upon them at home as well as abroad and agreed to the two Expert Committees. Since then, this agreement, so happy in itself, has been supported by other good influences. The Renten Mark Currency has proved a considerable success and has helped on the financial recovery of Germany. What is equally important, an increasing sense of hope has come to Germans and to Europe as a whole. The belief, apparently well founded, that the Experts Committee do not take by any means a despairing view of German finance and will suggest a large loan being guaranteed by the Powers has already led to a return of confidence. The loan, it is understood, will be used for beginning a serious attempt to meet the reparations obligations of Germany.
At the same time, the military and financial policy of France has moved in the right direction. Public opinion has awakened in France, and its first mani- festations have been directed against the extremes of militarism, the present system of wanton expenditure, and the madness of supporting the Separatist movement in Germany. The prodigality of French public expendi- ture and_the terribly rapid fall in the value of the franc, caused by France's over-expenditure and by the desire which even home investors are showing to escape from the franc, have acted as an advertisement of the weakness and the danger of M. Poincare's policy.
French public opinion has, in a word, shifted, not one but many points away from the right and the reactionaries, and in the direction of the left. Consider M. Briand's speech made at the Radical-Socialists' Party banquet at the beginning of the week. It was a speech which a few weeks ago would have been impossible. M. Briand declared that a situation had now developed in which Frenchmen must consider their position " with greater calm." They must not separate foreign and home policy, and the real interests of France could not be served except by the tradi- tional French policy of liberty. What followed was even more important. M. Briand insisted that the logic of events had brought the present Government face to face with the necessity of relying for the rights and security of France upon an international settlement. The War had given birth to an admirable instrument, in which they could have great confidence— the League of Nations. Though the bad faith of Germany had made a solution difficult, Germany, like the Allied belligerents, found herself impoverished by the War and was unable to find the enormous payments demanded under the Treaty of Versailles. No doubt, he went on to say, the French taxpayer could not bear Germany's burdens, but the necessary moratorium should, he declared, be granted to Germany in order that she might recover her equilibrium. " She might be aided by international loans, from which France might receive a part of her debt." When a man who was not very long ago French Prime Minister, and who represents the views of a very considerable proportion of the French people, makes such a series of declarations, we may well feel that things are advancing.
Though the awakening of the French people and their disillusionment in the case of the franc and also of the failure of the Poincare policy are so noticeable, and though M. Briand's speech is so much in the right direc- tion, there is danger in the very rapidity of the change. France is a country in which the risk of revolution is always present. Sometimes French revolutions come from below, and sometimes from above, as in the coups d'etat which made the First Empire and also the Second. But from whichever quarter they come, they are none the less revolutions—that is, political movements contrary to the Law and the Constitution. That being so, we do not wonder that the world is full of rumours that there may be revolutionary action : first, a great outcry of " We are betrayed ! " and then a demand for a saviour of society. The reactionaries, that is, may set on foot what they will call a "movement to save society," though it would really be an attempt to maintain themselves in power through the sword of some popular soldier. We shall make no attempt to decide whether there is anything substantial in these rumours and prophecies. We only note them as a possibility. It should further be remembered that saviours of society, when they come in France, are apt to try to confirm their rule by finding someone to go to war with. The first thought of Napoleon III., when he had proclaimed the Empire, was to look round for someone to fight with in order that he might thereby consolidate his rule. Out of that desire came the Crimean War. But these are gloomy forebodings. Also, the people who indulge in them forget certain essential considerations which apply to the present age. Even if France were in a fit of reactionary fear to appoint a saviour of society, we do not believe that she would give him leave to do more than use threats towards other Powers. The French people are as tired of fighting as any other nation in the world. A proof of this is to be found in their use of Moroccan and other African troops. The coloured brigades are used because the French voter has had enough of campaigning to last him for at least one, and we may hope for many, generations. But the French peasant is beginning to find that the use of African soldiers does not free him from something which he dislikes almost as much as mobilization, and that is vast expenditure and heavy taxation. We may expect, therefore, to see a good deal of cooling down in regard to the strange delusion that France can dominate the world by alien mercenaries. Therefore we adhere to what we said at the beginning of this article. The face of Europe is changing, and is changing for the better.
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