The Ruhr is " pledge, but not a paying pledge, in the present state of relations between France and Germany so long og the Reich pays the Ruhr miners not to work, France and Belgium will be short of coal.
It will, therefore, be important to know, in the event of Germany agreeing to cease passive resistance, whether the payments to the Ruhr miners are or are not covered by the term. The plain fact is that the Ruhr is of no use to France except as a means of pressure on her debtor, and she calculates that, sooner or later, Germany will pay her to get out.. In the meantime the coal is not being produced and everybody is the poorer, but obviously the French cannot let go.
M. Valet has no belief in the Rhineland Republic movement, which he stigmatizes- frankly as "bluff." He could not find a single person of any consequence who supported cither Dr. Dorten's or Herr (Mattes's republic: "we don't want a Rhineland by the grace of France' was the generally expressed view; ' we are Germans, and we thave not the slightest reason to desire separation from the rest of Germany." M. Valet concludes that if the Rhinelanders want to manage their own affairs by means of an autonomy ous government, they are quite capable of making their own arrangements. Nothing could be more. fatal to the success of such a plan than the -suspicion that. it was: being helped along by the Allies.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.