THE ENGLISH ARE TODAY BEING GERMANY’S ADVOCATES

Have they forgotten that five years ago the Germans were planning to occupy Liverpool and hand over the British fleet?

PARIS, July 19. — While waiting for the English note to arrive, of which we know nothing yet, let us do a little retrospective history. The English today are the defenders of the Germans. They pretend not to understand why we French are taking pledges at the expense of a Germany which does not want to pay for the damage it has committed. It's very simple, though. If guarantees are essential to France... and to its allies of yesterday, for the present and for the future, it is because we know what crimes Germany is capable of during the war and what crimes would have been his terms of peace if victory had remained in his hands. Do we remember, for example, the program of the Pan-German League? This program was for a long time that of the entire German people. There remains - let us not have any illusions - the German dream, the dream which is being postponed, simply the realization until better times. Here it is in all its beauty: the annexations of the Russian Baltic provinces. Annexation of Belgium and the Belgian Congo, Annexation of the French territories of Belfort, Epinal, Toul, Verdun, Saint-Quentin, Amiens, Dieppe, Boulogne and Calais. Cession by England of all ports that can be used as naval bases. Taking possession of the entire English fleet which will have to surrender to Germany and be brought to Kiel. German occupation of Portsmouth, Liverpool, Glasgow and other cities, until payment of a large war indemnity. » Here is another program, that of the large industrial and agricultural associations: “Annexation of Briey, Longwy and the coal-mining territories of the departments of Nord, Pas-de-Calais and Belgium. Taking possession of large and medium-sized: agricultural and industrial property in these regions, French families replaced by the German population. Annexation of the entire French colonial empire; annexation of the entire coastal region from the Channel to the Somme and the countries crossed by the canals leading to this coast. Annexation of Verdun and Belfort, heavy war compensation to deprive France of any possibility of reconstituting itself. » And the “intellectuals” were no less eager. Let us judge by the demands of the “League of German Intellectuals”: “Make a clean slate of the French danger. Weaken France politically and economically. Annexation of the North and North-East of France, from Belfort to the sea. Properties and businesses taken from the French in these regions and handed over to German hands. Large war indemnity. Having been conquered, Belgium must remain politically, militarily and economically in German hands, with businesses and properties passing to Germans. » Our English friends have forgotten this literature. Not us, because we know that it remained engraved, in that year 1923, in the heart of all of Guillaume's former subjects, camouflaged as republicans.