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The Visit of René Viviani

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NE of the most important events since the signing of the Versailles Treaty is the visit of M. Viviani to this country. country. This visit is especially significant for the memories which it arouses. Few names imply more in the recent history of Franco-American relations than that of Viviani. He was the Prime-Minister of France who conducted the negotiations with Germany which preceded the World War. In May, 1917, Viviani and Marshal Joffre headed the French Commission to this country-a mission which resulted in the creation of an American Army and the effective coöperation of the United States in the war. M. Viviani's eloquence, sincerity, and patriotism profoundly impressed the audiences he addressed and the people with whom he came in personal contact, and laid the basis for the earnest reception which he has now received. Though his mission is one of officially extending the felicitations of France to the new American President, it has in fact a purpose much more far-reaching and definite. M. Viviani's real hope is that this visit may complete the results of the one which was made so successfully in 1917. At that time he and his associates succeeded in persuading the American people that upon their wholesouled participation in the war depended the salvation of the Allied cause. The fruits of The fruits of this coöperation became evident eighteen months afterward in a defeated Germany. Having contributed decisively to this result, the mass of Americans apparently regarded their work as finished and began to lose interest in European politics.

The essential characteristic of M. Viviani is the dramatic; and his arrival has the wholesome effect of concentrating national attention upon the existing international situationof bringing the Harding Administration face to face with what is its greatest problem. The world is marking time, waiting for a final policy toward Germany. The economic and industrial life of all nations is standing still until this matter is decided. Conditions are not so acute in the United States as in other countries, but they are far from satisfactory, and there will be no positive change until the Administration clearly outlines and actively pursues a foreign policy. There is no excuse for further delay. There is no comfort to be gained in any further carping on the mistakes

of the Wilson régime. The fact that the Versailles Treaty was made a political issue gave some excuse for postponing this decision until a new Administration was seated in Washington. in Washington. That Administration is now in power; it was elected by the most overwhelming majority given any President since the Civil War; it has an abundant majority in both the Senate and the House. The Republicans therefore have ready to their hands all the agencies needed for meeting the German issue. It is absurd to maintain, as certain unenlightened and partisan forces at Washington are maintaining, that the Treaty and the League are not the predominant questions of the hour. The assertion that the tariff comes first is not only a display of parochialism sadly out of tune with the pressing claims of a disordered and disintegrating Europe, but is nonsensical from a fiscal standpoint. The close relation between the German indemnity and a tariff policy is apparent, since Germany must pay an indemnity, if she does pay one, in manufactured goods. It will be necessary to have this and other questions resulting from the war settled before Congress can act intelligently on the tariff or anything else. Even taxation, important as that is, is a matter that can be decided only after a peace policy has been determined. The amount we shall pay in taxes is clearly connected with such questions as disarmament, the American-owed debts of European powers, reparations, and a dozen other details. Moreover, the time has passed when Washington can discuss this issue in generalities. The last eight months have witnessed a sufficiency of ambiguous phrases. No proposal is entitled to the slightest interest now that is not made in definite terms. The world cares to hear nothing further about an "association of nations," "coöperation," and the like; it is now concerned only in a programme which sets out in precise terms just what these expressions mean.

tunate circumstance has been the encouragement it has given to Germany. The recent conduct of the German peace commissioners has opened many American eyes. Their spokesman, Doctor Simons, has taken a public stand which suggests the conqueror rather than the conquered. He has defiantly proclaimed the German belief that Germany does not regard itself as a defeated country and that it does not acknowledge responsibility for the war. In face of the fact that Germany, in signing the Treaty, specifically accepted this responsibility, and that the whole Treaty rests upon this acceptance, the new Simons doctrine amounts to little less than a repudiation of the work of Versailles. More and more is it becoming apparent that Germany proposes to ignore its signature that the one fixed determination in German foreign policy at present is the destruction of. the Versailles Treaty.

At no time since the Armistice has the Fatherland shown any contrition-that is not a German trait; but never have its public acts taken on the insolence and defiance that mark them now. What is the explanaWhat is the explanation? It seems evident enough. Germany is simply playing once more the old Bismarckian game of dividing the enemy. She has just one possible way of escaping the penalties of her crimes, and that is by separating the United States from the Allies. Germany knows that she was unbeaten up to the time that this country entered the war. The result of this coöperation was the Treaty of Versailles-which represented the most disastrous defeat ever suffered by a great power which survived as a a great power. This document is unique in human annals. It will take at least half a century to carry out its provisions. It necessarily assumes that the Powers, whose force compelled Germany to sign it, must remain united for the purpose of enforcing it. Something in the nature of a league of nations, in an alliance of the great non-Teutonic Powers, is implied in the very structure of the Treaty itself, for without this united force the details can never be carried

If Great Britain should withdraw its support of France, is it likely that Germany, with a population twice that of the Republic, and with great military skill and resources, will observe these severe stipulations? But the coöperation of the United States is just as essential. German statesmen can thus see one

possibility of breaking the Treaty and restoring Germany to her former strength; and that is by building a great wall between America and Europe. It is not surprising that many happenings of the last two years should encourage her. The failure of prompt ratification was the greatest victory Germany won since the destruction of the Fifth British Army in March, 1918. The fact that the responsibility for this failure is at least evenly distributed between the Senate and the Wilson Administration, that forces beyond the control of the American people placed them in this equivocal position, is not the point: the German masses cannot be expected to understand the intricacies of American politics or the play of personal and party passion in this country. That the American nation had officially rejected the product of Versailles was enough; to a people who could see nothing in the future but blackness the action of Washington opened up a new sunrise. The alliance which had accomplished the military destruction and which alone could keep down the Germanic menace was apparently broken. The present defiance of Germany is the inevitable consequence. So long as America remains aloof, invasions by the French army will not especially disturb the Fatherland; they are only temporary inconveniences. If this country maintains its present policy, aggression from France is a matter to which Germany herself can attend to in time.

The German-Americans Take Heart

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UT this indefinite position will have deplorable consequences at home as well as in Europe. Already voices which had been quiescent during the war are again becoming vocal. One of the worst consequences of the World War was the outbreak of hyphenism. The evidence which it afforded that there were certain elements in our population whose first allegiance was given to a European country and who, indeed, regarded the United States chiefly as an instrument for advancing the interests of a distant Fatherland, was something which struck deeply at the whole national structure. A particularly deplorable characteristic of hyphenism is that it is contagious. It is not exclusively a manifestation of the German and Irish immigrant, though in these directions it is most vociferous. It extends to al

most every element in our population. All during the Peace Conference the more recently arrived immigrants sought to use the United States to advance the interests of their European fatherlands. American Poles, CzechoAmerican Poles, Czechoslovaks, Italians, and Greeks seemed to think that it was the business of the American delegates to advance their purely particularistic "national aspirations" in Europe rather than attempt to settle all problems on their merits. All right-minded Americans can have only the greatest contempt for the ignorant and degraded campaign which Henry Ford is waging against the Jews; the atrocious falsehoods published about a world-wide Jewish conspiracy to exploit mankind are at once ludicrous and infamous. Yet these same Americans see in the Zionistic movement a menace to American solidarity; for anything that tends to make any section of the population transfer a modicum of its allegiance, even a sentimental and religious allegiance, to foreign soil is an impediment to that undivided devotion which true Americanism demands. Americanism, after all, is a jealous mistress, and can brook no rivals.

But the most offensive revival of hyphenism is that which is now being exerted in the interest of Germany. In February a large crowd of disloyal American citizens gathered in Madison Square Garden, New York City, nominally to protest against the presence of Negro troops in German cities-this despite the fact that no Negro troops had been so stationed for six months; really to praise Germany, to abuse the new American President, to advocate the cause of Germanism in the United States, and to create a public sentiment that would separate the United States from Great Britain and France and transform our country into an agency for destroying the Treaty of Versailles. This meeting was really a great service to the cause of international decency; for it had the effect of widely advertising the Germanic purpose, of awakening the anti-Germanic impulses of the American people, and of starting forces at work that more than counteracted its malignant influence. The resurrection of certain disreputable characters who had not blatantly exhibited themselves since April, 1917, proved to be the precise stimulus which Americanism needed. The lack of an American policy on the Treaty was really the cause of this and numerous other manifestations of a new Germanic

propaganda. One of the most effective ways of crushing these disintegrating forces and of hastening that process of amalgamation in which the future of the nation depends is to end the period of inaction. America's entrance into the war at once ended hyphenism and transformed all the elements in the population

always excepting the minute minority of professional agitators-into a solid and compact phalanx of Americans. Our entrance into the peace, if it is emphatic and definite, will have the same effect.

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Industrial Recovery Awaits Peace

T IS also apparent that there can be no permanent improvement in industrial and agricultural conditions until this uncertainty is removed. The loss of the European market is the chief reason for the economic troubles that now afflict us. So long as the United States Government financed the exportation of our great commodities to Europe, as it did for more than a year following the Armistice, this nation could enjoy boom times. But that is a process which cannot go on indefinitely; the rehabilitated War Finance Corporation may accomplish something, but no one expects that body to solve all the problems now facing the agricultural districts. The trouble that chiefly accounts for the existing depression is the sensational slump in the prices of those great commodities which largely explain our national prosperity-grain, cotton, pig iron, copper, and the like. It is true that the 1920 exports of wheat were nearly twice as large as those of 1919, and the greatest in our history; yet these exports largely represent the carrying out of contracts entered into last summer, in the prosperous season, and, while the outlook for this year is becoming brighter, there is little expectation that the record of the year just closed will be duplicated in 1921. The prosperity of one large section of the country, the South, depends almost exclusively upon cotton, and here the prospect is really disheartening. So large a part of last year's crop is still unmarketed that the planters have little incentive to grow a new one in 1921. Prices are so low that the loans made to finance operations in 1920 are unpaid, and the wherewithal to grow a new crop is therefore not readily obtainable. This does not mean that Europe has outgrown her need for the surplus product of our farms or plantations or our

factories. The world is not facing a period of overproduction—rather the reverse. It simply means that the mechanism of distribution has collapsed. Upon one point all economists and financial authorities are agreed; and that is that there will be no permanent change in agricultural and industrial conditions until a peace settlement has been made and the world started on the way to recovery. Legislation by Congress may help, but will not permanently relieve the ills of the farmers, the planters, the manufacturers, the bankers, and the merchants; the real difficulty is fundamental, and that is the existence of a chaotic world.

More and more the fact is becoming clear that mankind is facing an entirely new period in its industrial development and its political organization. As the question of the German indemnity is studied, the strange character of this new existence is manifest. It has now become a commonplace of newspaper discussion that the Germans can pay their indemnity in only one form-that of goods and services. There is only about $3,000,000,000 of gold in the world; Germany possesses only a fractional amount of this; whether the proposed indemnity is placed at $55,000,000,000, its face value, or at $20,000,000,000, its discount its discount value, the idea that Germany can pay in any way except labor is, of course, absurd. The last great war indemnity actually collected, the $1,000,000,000 paid by France in 1871, was paid in the shape of foreign securities held by the French people, who took French bonds in exchange the Government selling the securities for cash in foreign markets, particularly England. Germany does not possess a large stock of foreign investments, and can thus raise only a small part of her indemnity this way. Of course she could pay any indemnity demanded in paper marks-but such payments would merely amount to a promissory note, which, in the present condition of German credit, would not possess great value. No, Germany can pay only by her labor-by actually rebuilding with the hands of German workmen the territories destroyed or by producing goods. The first suggestion does not altogether please the French; especially they do not wish an army of German workmen in districts where there is much French population. The prolonged presence of hundreds of thousands of German workmen would cause all kinds of social troubles. Besides, the French wish to reserve this vast amount of

employment for French workmen. Thus, from whatever possible points of view the question is considered, the same fact stands out-that only by manufactured products can Germany discharge her debt to mankind.

Far-Reaching Influences of an Indemnity

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HIS means the growth of an enormous German foreign trade-a phenomenon which the enemies of the Fatherland cannot regard with complacency. While the United States would be affected, we should not suffer so greatly from the competition as other countries, especially Great Britain. Just what effect the flooding of the world with German low-priced products would have on British industry is something to which the British people are now giving much thought. Far more than British industry is at stake; the matter affects British politics, British social life, and the position of Great Britain as a great Power. The foreign trade of the United States can be destroyed and we can make economic adjustments that will still permit us to exist as a great and rich nation. Not so Great Britain. The inevitable result of the loss of her foreign trade would be an enormous reduction in population, with all the misery which that implies. One effect would probably be the transference of a large share of the population of the British Isles to the United States and to the British Colonies. In the early days of the Nineteenth Century there were only about 10,000,000 men and women and children in England, Scotland, and Wales; in those days Great Britain was an economic entity, herself raising the nation's food supply: in the Napoleonic wars, indeed, the farms of Great Britain, by feeding the continent, performed much the same function that American farms performed in the recent war. At present the population is about 41,000,000.

The presence of so many people in such a small area is an artificial state of affairs. It is made possible because England has become a great workshop and has built up an enormous foreign trade. The British have existed only by importing raw materials, exchanging the manufactured products with the rest of the world for the food which they cannot grow themselves. Without this foreign trade Great Britain would be compelled to reduce its population to a size which could be supported by British agriculture. Under normal cir