Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-07-28
BY FRANK II. SIMONDS.

v VIEWED diSpassionately, all the
recent hurly-burly in the French
! " Parliament over the Mellon
! Berenger debt settlement falls
little short of sheer comedy. All
the appeals to patriotic emotions, mo-
bilizing of veterans, foundations of
eloquence amount to nothing more than
frantic effort on the part of French
| politicians to escape from the conse-
quences of their own performances
Ever since Secretary Mellon and Sen
ator EArenger, then also French Am
bassador in Washington, set their hands
to the debt treaty, nothing in this
world has been more certain than that
no further modification no new revi-
sion downward had the smallest pros
pect of receiving the assent of the
American Congress. The bargain,
which to American eyes seemed gener-
ous-since almost half the total of the
obligation was forgiven-represente
our last word.
Moreover. it was perfectly clear that
while the French might resort to the
rather thin device of paying without
signing. in the end, before August /,
| 1929, they would have to face the issue
Squarely, since then they would have to
ratify or pay S40O,000.000 in cold cash.
And If there were a certain number of
Americans who continued to denounce
the arrangement as inequitable, or at
least ungenerouS, no man in his senses
could mistake the immutable will of the
vast majority of the American cleo
torate.
But the Frenchman has never been
able to bring himself to believe that the
American attitude was real and that
payment or default, honoring or repudi-
ating his signature. was the only alter
native for him. And the French poll
tician has just as frankly exploited
popular emotion against paying as the
American has against revision. He has
built up a vast and seducing legend
of ultimate cancellation, somehow pro-
cured by himself And in dealing with
his own electors he has now clustered
and now calculated on American gen.
crosby. He has told the French tax
payer that he could not be made to
pay. which is true. since We are not
going to war to collect: he has stuffed
him to the ears with nonsense of the
patriotic cum bunkum sort. He has
dwelt upon French dead and French
devastations, imminent justice and alb
solute right.
Poincare About Faces
And while M. Poincare now appears
in the light Of common sense, urging
the ratification of debt duly contract
ed and legally established. his. after
all. is the major fault. For when he
took Office just three years ago, at the
moment when the fall of the franc had
precipitated a panic, it was wholly
within his power to force the French
Chamber to. ratify the debt settlements.
He had for the moment the authority.
if not the form. of a dictator. In the
presence of national ruin the politicians
had stampeded and the public was
quiescent.
But Poincare procrastinated. He
could not quite make up his mind that
Washington meant business. He still
resented the notion of France paying
war debts to either an American or
British ally He believed. correctly as
the event proved, that he could save the
franc without recourse to American or
British loans. And so he missed the
tide Sterilization came without ratifl-
cation. But henceforth his very success
in restoring French credit was destruc-
tive of the last basis of argument for
debt cancellation or revision, since al