Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [129]
Lloyd George presented the memorandum to his colleagues on the Council of Four. It urged the peacemakers to make a moderate peace that would last. “You may strip Germany of her colonies, reduce her armaments to a mere police force and her navy to that of a fifth-rate power,” he wrote; “all the same in the end if she feels that she has been unjustly treated in the peace of 1919 she will find means of exacting retribution from her conquerors.” They must not leave Europe another poisoned legacy by placing millions of Germans or Hungarians or other minorities under alien rule. They must not stimulate the revolutionary forces burning their way through Europe. Above all, they must not drive Germany into a corner. “The greatest danger that I see in the present situation is that Germany may throw in her lot with Bolshevism and place her resources, her brains, her vast organising power at the disposal of the revolutionary fanatics whose dream it is to conquer the world for Bolshevism by force of arms.” Lloyd George painted an alternative future, where Britain, the United States, France and Italy would agree to limit their naval building and their armies, and where the League of Nations, the guardian “of international right and international liberty throughout the world,” would admit a new, democratic Germany, as soon as it was sufficiently stable.
How was this to be achieved? Germany should still lose territory, but not as much as some people wanted. Poland should still have its corridor to the sea, but as few Germans as possible should end up under Polish rule. The Rhineland, suitably demilitarized, should stay with Germany. Lloyd George was less categorical on the Saar; perhaps France could have the 1814 frontiers, or merely ownership of the coal mines. Germany must, of course, give up all its colonies. And, yes, it should pay reparations. Wilson approved on almost every count—after all, he could have written much of the Fontainebleau Memorandum himself. The French, however, were furious. “If you find the peace too harsh,” Clemenceau wrote to Lloyd George, “let us give Germany back her colonies and her fleet, and let us not impose upon the continental nations alone—France, Belgium, Bohemia and Poland—the territorial concessions required to appease the beaten aggressor.” It was, he added, “a sheer illusion” to think that Germany could be appeased by moderate terms.7
Illusion or not, the British were determined to disengage themselves from the Continent and its problems. A balance of power there had always served Britain well; intervention was needed only when a single nation threatened to dominate the whole. Germany had been that threat, but it would be foolish now to destroy it and leave France supreme. As passions cooled, the British remembered both their old rivalry with France and the potential for friendship between Germany and Britain. British industries needed markets; there were 70 million Germans. Britain wanted stability on the Continent, not the sort of chaos that could so clearly be seen farther east; a solid Germany at Europe’s center could provide that.
In the short run, the Fontainebleau Memorandum accomplished little. The British and the French continued to squabble over their share of reparations. The French refused to produce an estimate of either their damages or what they wanted Germany to pay. “It was a crime,” Wilson exclaimed to Grayson, “to waste time when every hour meant so much to the settlement of world conditions along proper lines.” And yet he feared that, if he pushed his allies too hard, their governments might fall and the peace be delayed still further.8
Clemenceau now appeared to be hardening his position on Germany. Britain and the United States, he pointed out, were protected by the sea. “We must have an equivalent on land.