Germans could still resort to force if arbitration
did not give them what they wanted. Only the
separate alliances of Poland and Czechoslovakia
with France might deter Germany. But now, by
the terms of the Locarno Treaties, France would
be arraigned as the aggressor if the French army
sought to come to the aid of their eastern allies
by the only means available to them – an attack
on Germany. Britain was to exercise this ‘lever-
age’ to the full when, thirteen years later, France
declared itself ready to aid its Czech ally against
Germany in 1938. Britain then insisted that,
should such an eventuality lead to war with
Germany, it was not bound to help France.
In the new spirit of conciliation, France also
relinquished prematurely its territorial guarantees
permitted by Versailles, the occupation of the
Rhineland zones. In order to prove their good-
will, Britain and France had pulled out their last
troops by 1930. The ‘goodwill’ and ‘faith’ were
not justified, as the later experience of the 1930s
was to show. Briand played this last card of defus-
ing the German problem by seeking to make
Germany and France the nucleus of a ‘new
Europe’, but in vain.
Where, then, was the most serious single
flaw in the way in which Britain and France,
with American financial connivance, dealt with
Germany? Was the right policy coercion or con-
ciliation? Both were tried, with some good results
and some bad. But the basic fault of Allied policy
lay in not maintaining Anglo-French unity after
the war. Allied policy of either coercion or con-
ciliation should have been based on strength, on
the capacity and determination to preserve peace
if ever again threatened by Germany. The French
realised this and tried to act as if they were strong.
It was Britain that basically undermined this
stance. Horrified by the Great War and the mil-
lions of dead and maimed, it attempted to with-
draw and limit its European commitments. At
Locarno it had refused to guarantee the frontiers
of Poland and Czechoslovakia, an open invitation
to German revisionism. Britain acknowledged
that its strategic ‘frontier’ now ran along the
Rhine, but the British Cabinet was not willing to
match this concept militarily by maintaining a
British army capable of defending this supposedly
‘joint’ frontier. France alone stood as guardian of
the European frontiers of Versailles, and France
by itself was too weak for that role. Briand’s
policy of reconciliation was sincere enough; it
seemed also the only way left to achieve French
security.
Despite the grave uncertainties of France’s
European position, and weakness of its inter-
national financial position, it achieved a spectacu-
lar domestic recovery in the 1920s. The majority
of Frenchmen resisted the siren call of those on
the right, the fascist Action Française, or the
Communist Party on the extreme left, who
sought to overthrow the institutions of the Third
Republic.
The elections of November 1919 were won
by groups of the conservative right allied in a
Bloc National. Led by an ex-socialist, Alexandre
Millerand, its commanding figure was Clemen-
ceau, the ‘father of victory’. Behind the Bloc stood
big business interests and the mass of voters, espe-
cially the peasantry frightened by the Bolshevik
bogey. They approved of a policy of dealing sternly
with Germany; exacting reparations rather than
paying taxes. Once elected, the Bloc National
reverted to the tradition of the Third Republic in
denying the presidency to Clemenceau in 1920.
They preferred a weak president, only this time
overdid it in electing a man who a few months later
had to retire into a mental home. Clemenceau’s
career, too, was ended.
The work of reconstruction was begun in
north-eastern France and with government cred-
its there was enough to do to ensure full employ-
ment in the 1920s. Some concessions were also
made to the workers in legislating for an eight-
hour day and conceding collective bargaining.
But control of industry was handed back to the
owners. The government was firmly opposed to
nationalisation and socialism. Among industrial
workers after the war there was much discon-
tent. Their wages had not kept pace with rising
prices. The main French trade union – the Con-
fédération Générale du Travail – was determined
to challenge the government in a series of large,
well-organised strikes. The socialist-inspired
strikes were as much political as economic.
Confident of the army and of majority electoral
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