maintained and regarded it with the cautious vision of cool cal¬ culation, but large sections of the nation as well. The business world in particular felt with scarcely con¬ cealed irritation this immense further strengthening of France’s power on the Continent. Her occupation of the Ruhr coal-field deprived England of all the suc¬ cesses she had gained in the War, and it was Marshal Foch and France, which he represented, and not the alert and painstaking diplomacy of England, which now were the victors.
Feeling in Italy also turned against France. Indeed, directly the War ended that friendship ceased to be exactly rosy, and now it turned into absolute hatred. The moment had come when the allies of yesterday might have become the foes of to-morrow. That this was not brought about was due mainly to the fact that Germany had no Enver Pasha, but merely a Cuno, for Chancellor.
In the spring of 1923, however, before the French occupation of the Ruhr could have been followed by a rebuilding of our military power, a new spirit would have had to be implanted in the German nation, its will-power strengthened, and the corrupters of that greatest of forces in a nation would have had to be destroyed.
Just as the bloodshed of 1918 was a retribution for the neglect in 1914 and 1915 to crush the Marxist serpent underfoot, so was there bound to be a terrible punishment in the spring of 1923 for failing to seize the opportunity which was offered for finally destroy¬ ing the handiwork of the Marxist traitors and murder¬ ers of the nation. Only bourgeois minds could have arrived at the incredible conception that Marxism could possibly now be other than it had been, and that the canaille who had led in 1918, and who, then, without a qualm, used two million dead as steps up to seats in the Government, would now be ready to pay service to the nation’s sense of right. It was incredible folly to expect that those traitors would suddenly turn into fighters for Germany’s