Aug. 24.
Tre courtesy of M. Poinecaré's rejoinder to the British Note, on which the French papers dwell with satisfaction—they would surely not have expected him to be abusive—does nothing to diminish the breach between the two countries. There appears no sign of the slightest departure. from the attitude which drew forth the British Note. Verbal protestations there are that. the French Government ''had always taken into account the difficulties of some of their Allies', particularly the unemployment in England, but very little apparent evidence of their substantiation in fact. The legality of the occupation is hotly conteSted,.on this indeed there might be endless argument and it is hard to say that France had not. justification for going into the Ruhr. Annexationist aims are repudiated, and surely they can never have seriously been supposed to exist: but while the occupation will certainly continue until passive resistance stops, there is no guarantee how soon even after that it will be discontinued. As a whole, the reply does nothing to remove what Lord Curzon described as "the painful impression that Britain's ce-operation is unwelcome except on the ground of complete adhesion to the French and Belgian views."
The part of the French Note which reads least pleasantly is that which deals with the Allies' war debts to Great Britain. It will be remembered that the British Note pointed out that this debt alone is more than what Great Britain owes and is now steadily repaying to the United States. Nevertheless, Lord Curzon said, Great Britain was quite prepared, if her views as to a general settlement were met, to ask no more both in reparations from Germany and repayment by the Allies, than would, together, cover her debt to America; she would write down the Allies' debt to herself to the amount of the difference between what Germany paid and the sum due to America. The French reply rather unworthily twists this into a suggestion that whatever Great Britain cannot get out of Germany France must make good. The remarkable generosity of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.