France not only had her condition in her mind, she had all her past:—reminiscences of invasions, from Attila on. Old obsessions, old policies revived:—the belief that she would never have safety except in a weak Central Europe—a doctrine she had repudiated—broke out.
She came to the peace table in Paris under an accepted program which said: Reparations, but no indemnities. And her bitterness so overwhelmed her that she forgot the principle pledge and demanded indemnities in full. She forgot her pledge to annex nothing and called for the Rhine Border. Every effort to reason with her, to persuade her not to ask the impossible of her beaten enemy, she interpreted as lack of sympathy, and pointed to her devastated region, her debts, her shrunken population. She accused of injustice those who felt that mercy is the great wisdom. Justice became her great cry. Intent on herself, her dreadful woes, her determination to have the last pound, she magnified her perils, saw combinations against her, and went about in Europe trying to arm other peoples, to build up a pro-France party. Any effort to persuade her that the spirit which underlay the Versailles Treaty was pro-humanity and not pro-French embittered and antagonized her. She resented the English effort to bring some kind of order into the Continent. She resented the conclusion of the world—slow enough though it was—to let Russia work out her own destiny.
No lover of France has any right to overlook or encourage this attitude. It is the most dangerous course she could take. She is building up anti-French antagonisms in beaten Europe, and she is alienating countries that want to bring the world onto a new basis of Good Will and who believe it can be done.
When M. Briand came to the Washington peace table, he left behind him a country in this abnormal mood—her thoughts centered on herself—her needs, her dangers. M. Briand knew well enough that she would not see the program that Mr. Hughes had thrown out as it was intended—a tremendously bold suggestion for world peace—a call to the sacrifice that each country must make if order was to be restored, the awful losses of recent years repaired. M. Briand knew that what France expected him to get at Washington was recognition, sympathy, guarantees. The last thing that she wanted brought back was a request to join in a program of sacrifice.