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it and that, on the whole, the treaty was pretty fair. The European Allies were happy with his formulation. Lloyd George, always sensitive to political considerations, said, “The English public, like the French public, thinks the Germans must above all acknowledge their obligation to compensate us for all the consequences of their aggression. When this is done we will come to the question of Germany’s capacity to pay; we all think she will be unable to pay more than this document requires of her.” If the Germans balked at paying a particular category of damages, Loucheur thought, the Allies could always threaten them with an unlimited claim. No one thought there would be any difficulty over the clauses themselves. 37

16

Deadlock Over the German Terms

REPARATIONS HAD STILL not been settled when Wilson arrived back in Paris on March 14—and neither had the Rhineland. The president had a quick private meeting with Lloyd George, who suggested that some sort of military guarantee, plus of course his beloved Channel tunnel, might satisfy the French. The two decided to offer to come to France’s aid if Germany attacked. In return, France would have to drop its plans for a separate Rhine state. Clemenceau could be brought round, Wilson thought: “When you have hooked him, you first draw in a little, then give liberty to the line, then draw him back, finally wear him out, break him down, and land him.” 1

That afternoon Clemenceau joined the two men at the Crillon. He talked again of France’s sufferings, its fears for the future, its need for Germany to stop at the Rhine. Lloyd George and Wilson produced their proposal. Clemenceau was delighted but asked for time to think it over. For two days Clemenceau and his closest advisers, including his foreign minister, Pichon, and Tardieu, mulled over the new proposal. He did not bother to consult his cabinet or Poincaré. Tardieu conceded that they would be criminal to turn it down, but there was still a problem: “A French Government satisfied with only this and nothing more would be equally guilty.” France, said the official reply on March 18, needed other guarantees: an Allied occupation of the Rhineland and the bridgeheads for at least five years; no German troops there and none within fifty miles of the east bank of the river. Wilson was greatly irritated. Talking to the French was like handling a rubber ball: “You tried to make an impression but as soon as you moved your finger the ball was as round as ever.” Even Balfour was moved from his customary calm. France, he told Lloyd George, would be better off working for a strong international system, “the very possibility of which many of them regard with ill-concealed derision.” Without that, “no manipulation of the Rhine frontier is going to make France anything more than a second-rate Power, trembling at the nod of its great neighbours on the East, and depending from day to day on the changes and chances of a shifting diplomacy and uncertain alliances.” 2

The next month saw memoranda and notes hurtling back and forth as the French tried to surround the Anglo-American guarantee with additional provisions. Day after day Clemenceau and his colleagues buttonholed the British and the Americans with new proposals: to enlarge the demilitarized zone on the east bank, to set up a commission of inspection with sweeping powers, or to give France the right to occupy the Rhineland if Germany violated any of the other provisions of the peace treaty, from disarmament to reparations payments.3

And they renewed their demand for the Saar, where the southwestern edge of the Rhineland met Alsace-Lorraine. What had been a quiet farming country with beautiful river valleys had become a major coal mining and manufacturing area in the nineteenth century. In 1919, when coal supplied almost all of Europe’s fuel needs, that made the region very valuable. Inconveniently for France, almost all of the Saar’s 650,000 inhabitants were German. The French tried historical arguments: the town of Saarlouis had been built by Louis XIV, the region had briefly