The immediate personal interest which the Budget has for the
man in the street temporarily deprives him of his sense of proportion. This fact, combined with the contempt bred of familiarity, has, during the week, driven the Franco-German situation into the background. Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean that the situation has improved. A game of alternating bluff has set in, in which first one side and then the other mounts the high horse. The alleged success of M. Loucheur's visit to England had raised a flicker of hope that France was relenting. Last Friday the Malin even went so far as to publish M. Loucheur's scheme, which was supposed to have met with the support of M. Poincare and the approval of Mr. Bonar Law. The scheme was, roughly, that Germany should pay nominally £6,000,000,000, but that France was immediately in- terested only in £1,000,000,000, provided that certain conditions as to priority for the devastated regions, 672 and the payment of the expenses of the Ruhr occupation, were granted. Germany should pay the instalments of our American debt for the next ten years, and France would start a gradual evacuation of the Ruhr in pro- portion as the reparations were paid.
