Слике страница
PDF
ePub

in less than fifteen years. It was therefore decided to distribute in the North and East forty establishments corresponding to 25,000, 50,000 and 100,000 hectoliters a year. The small brewers, under this system, would have the right to use one-half of these establishments, the other half being given to important syndicates and brewers producing more than 20,000 hectoliters a year. By this arrangement the small brewers would not be forced to abandon their means of livelihood.

ORGANIZATION FOR REBUILDING

The French "spirit of activity and progress," referred to by the engineer Schrödter in his report, was again demonstrated by the creation of an organization entitled "Central Association for the Continuance of Industrial Activity in the Invaded Regions." Created on Nov. 22, 1915, it comprises nearly 2,000 companies belonging to the most diverse industries, divided into four groups: textile industries; metallurgy, mechanical, and electric constructions; agricultural industries, sugar factories, distilleries, breweries, mills, &c.; divers industries not comprised in any of the preceding groups. The Council of Administration of this association created a commission to study economic measures to be taken on evacuation and to determine clauses to be inserted in the armistice and the final treaty of peace concerning reparation.

At the beginning of 1916 the labors of the association were divided among ten regional committees, grouping the members by professions and regions, to facilitate the task of re-equipment, tools, stock, labor, credit, &c. On Aug. 2, 1916, the association formed the Central Bureau of Industrial Purchases for the Invaded Regions, which, on Aug. 6, 1917, was granted by the French Government a preliminary credit of 250,000,000 francs to enable it to proceed to the vast work of purchase required by the industrial rehabilitation of the invaded districts. Oct. 4 an agreement was signed which constituted this Central Bureau an official Governmental organization; the Office of Industrial Reconstitution created by the Ministry of Commerce gave it

On

various powers, such as to determine the basis of the purchase program, to find furnishers, and discuss with them; to prepare and control orders, to receive and store merchandise, to deliver the same to the manufacturers interested.

The Central Bureau bought for the State the stock and raw material, as well as the tool equipment and machinery, and delivered them to the manufacturers according to the resumption of activity in the liberated regions. These deliveries were based on the value of the raw materials and tools destroyed and charged against the total of the war indemnities to be paid by Germany. The accounts of this official organization were verified by the General Inspection of Finances; none of its officers was on a salary basis. The capital, fixed at a million francs, had been entirely subscribed by the members of the Central Association. The Office and Central Bureau had acquired or ordered several hundred million francs' worth of industrial material.

LABOR CRISIS AVERTED

New exertions were made necessary by the sudden evacuation of the occupied territory. A first credit of 2,000,000 francs, voted by the French Parliament, was placed at the disposition of the Ministry of Armament, which had been transformed (November, 1918) into a Ministry of Industrial Reconstruction. M. Loucheur conceived a vast program designed to turn all the productive activity of munition factories to peace production. The arsenal of Roannes was devoted to the construction and repair of railways. The vast establishments created at Bourges for the manufacture of explosives were devoted to chemical fertilizers for agriculture. Wood construction yards for military aviation were given the task of providing material for the rebuilding of homes and factories in the liberated districts. Telegraphic and telephonic apparatus was now produced by artillery, aeronautic, and naval establishments. Thus the workmen and workwomen of war factories were not thrown out of work, and the labor crisis feared by those who did not realize the gigantic nature of the task of reconstruction was in great part averted.

PROOF OF PURPOSE

That the destruction of the industrial life of Northern and Eastern France had been deliberate was proved in various ways. The Paris magazine, L'Illustration, on Nov. 30, 1918, showed, with confirmatory photographs, how the Germans had systematically wrecked the looms of the factories of St. Quentin which they had not burned or dismantled; again, on Feb. 8, it showed the work of the wrecking crews in the metallurgical factories of Pont-à-Vendin. On Feb. 15, again, it gave a photograph which showed the Germans actually at work upon their destruction of French industry.

A pamphlet printed in German and presented by M. Klotz, French Minister of Finance, to the Peace Conference, was laid before the Commission of Reparations. This "confidential" note, published in 1916 under the direction and by the order of the German High Staff, was addressed to all Chambers of Commerce and all industrial associations of Germany, with the object outlined in the preface, namely, “to furnish a deep and thoroughgoing knowledge of the industrial and economic conditions of the occupied territory." This extract speaks for itself:

In the region of Sedan-Rethel the damage done is exceptionally serious. Out of fifteen establishments, six weaving factories were completely destroyed, that is to say, all machines and installations were removed from the buildings, and lie exposed to the air like so much old junk. The buildings have also greatly suffered by reason of being shot down or by breaches made in the walls by shellfire, by the removal of the flooring and the partial removal of the walls. If, therefore, these factories wish to continue their activity after the end of the war, it will be necessary to re-equip the factories completely anew. It is certain that none of the ten factories enumerated will be able to function, even partially, within at least one year after the conclusion of peace, unless the machine factories interested are able to deliver within that period.

The damage done the weaving factories of the North was also described. Establishments counting 1,900 looms could resume activity only within one or two years, &c. A further passage, which

studied the results of this destruction on the prosperity of German industry, is given below:

The French weaving industry will have lost during the war many outlets. Το regain them, and to recover from the terrible blow inflicted on the weaving industry in the occupied regions, it is particularly important for Germany to start up again as quickly as possible after the war its weaving factories, whose productive power, thanks to the prompt acquisition of raw material and thread, have remained intact. If the relations of commercial policy between France and Germany prove to be favorable, a market of enormous importance, notably for German constructors of textile machines, will be opened in the North of France.

The pamphlet treated from the same viewpoint the condition of other French industries, ceramic, metallurgic, coal, sugar, &c. A photograph showing the destruction of 350 looms in the Cattelain factory at Boussière, near Cambrai, was laid before the Peace Conference with this document, and is reproduced in the rotogravure pages of this issue of CURRENT HISTORY. The comment of L'Illustration upon it is as follows:

This photograph✦✦✦ is a living evidence of this colossal Machiavellianism. To the written revelation of the criminal deed it juxtaposes the very picture of the crime. We see the boches, hammer in hand, resting for a moment from their labors to be photographed in the accomplishment of their "duty."

After

having taken away all the machinery reduced to old junk, the Germans set the buildings on fire, buildings which, it should be noted, were far from the battleline. Our document furnishes an illustration which the German High Staff had not foreseen. It is a damning document to be introduced into the trial. By a cynical fancy on the part of the destroyers, it has simply registered the destructive gesture.

L'Illustration concludes by deducing from this sight of a French factory being annihilated, "where brutes pose laugh. ing amongst the shattered looms," that France must have immediate, total, pitiless restitution. Machine must be paid by machine; tools, plows, looms must be replaced, number by number. France cannot consider Germany's economic necessities when her own economic life, destroyed by Germany with refined calculation, must be revived. Germany must pay.

DESCHANEL GIVES DATA

On the third anniversary of the union of large French associations known as "All France Afoot for Victory and Right," of which Paul Deschanel and Ernest Lavisse are Presidents, a national demonstration occurred on March 8, 1919, at the Palace of the Trocadéro, Paris, in the presence of a great audience, among whom were representatives of the invaded regions. All the delegates of the Peace Conference were invited to this solemn ceremony. M. Deschanel delivered an address in which he spoke of the systematic nature of the German crime, whereby the German Empire became a vast engine of demolition. "We have," he said, "the names, the dates, the places of this great drama, of this frightful crime unique in history which we now place before your eyes." Among the details presented by M. Deschanel were the following:

Beyond the former battleline is absolute ruin. All capital, all instruments have disappeared. All industrial machinery has been stolen and remounted in German factories. The soil is exhausted. All agricultural material and the producers have been taken away. There are no more cattle; 2,650,000 hectares of cultivatable land have been devastated, of which it will be impossible to redeem 100,000, and 800,000 will be redeemed only with the greatest difficulty: 300,000 hectares of forests have been destroyed.

The sugar industry has been laid low. Of 213 sugar factories, 145 are ruined; French sugar production has fallen to one-third of what it was before the war. The establishments of mechanical construction have been destroyed; at Denain, the workshops of the French Society of Mechanical Construction were stripped of tools, machinery, and raw materials. The metal frameworks, the firebricks, and the machines and tools were sent to Germany. The buildings were dynamited on departure. Two-thirds of the coal district of the North and the Pas-deCalais have been ravaged, 220 pits made unusable. A production of more than 20,000,000 tons, or 50 per cent. of the whole national output, has been suppressed. The workmen have been thrown

out of employment and their families reduced to distress. Fourmies, the famous centre of the weaving of fine wool, has been reduced to five factories.

Some interesting data were given by M. Deschanel concerning the German organization for this work of destruction. In 1917, he said, a German service was created at Lille under the title, "Commission of Destruction of the Industrial Establishments of the North of France." At the order of this commission all the factories of that region were made useless. Herr Schrödter of Düsseldorf said at a meeting of industrials that German industry would thus be relieved of an embarrassing competition. At Valenciennes another bureau was engaged in the destruction of factories; this bureau was at first under the direction of Captain Beucking, a manufacturer of Cologne; he was replaced in 1917 by Lieutenant Kohlmann, representing metallurgical factories of Dortmund. These officers were charged with requisition of industrial material. Another officer, Herr Goetz, a wool manufacturer, was in charge of textiles, and directed the requisition of mattress wool, linen thread, linens, &c. Other commissions removed all motor and electric apparatus; still others dealt with mines and forests.

GERMANS IN BRIEY BASIN

Special discussions and disputes have arisen concerning the utilization by the Germans of the basin of Briey. The French demand for the Saar Valley is based in part on the damage done in Briey. An investigation reported by the Havas Agency and published in the Temps on March 7, 1919, gave the following results:

In fifty-one months of exploitation the Germans extracted from thirteen ore mines 15,000,000 tons of mineral. Only three mines out of eighteen were flooded. A total of 62,000,000 tons of iron was extracted from the iron mines of Lorraine from 1914 to 1918, far less than the normal production. The metallurgical factories of Briey were not utilized. The mines and factories in Briey were left almost intact. Work could be continued

immediately if the 20,000 workmen employed before the war had not disappeared. The question of replacing them offered great difficulties. The factories, on the other hand, had been completely destroyed. Not one of the gigantic installations had been left unwrecked. Machinery not transportable was broken to pieces by powerful battering-rams. All the firebricks of the ovens were torn. away; all the water, steam, air, and gas pipes were punctured; the giant converters were overthrown and dynamited, the rolling mills broken to pieces. Coppers, bronzes, motors, and everything utilizable were taken away. To repair the damage done may take five or ten years. The stoppage of production of cast iron and steel would paralyze even longer all the secondary industries which transform this cast iron and steel into multiple machines and tools productive of work and national wealth. These were feats which must be considered by the Commission of Indemnities.

PETITION BY INHABITANTS

The following petition by the inhabitants of the liberated regions, the initiative of which was taken by the Union of Great French Associations, obtained no less than 3,000,000 signatures:

To the members of the Government, the Senate, and the Chamber of Deputies: We, the undersigned Frenchmen, liberated by the valor of our soldiers from the odious yoke of the enemy, citizens conscious of their duty toward their country, desirous of serving the general interest of the country and the greatness of the republic by working with all their energy for the resumption of national activity in the departments devastated by a military occupation whose cruelty is unexampled in history, have the honor to lay before you the following considerations:

The regions of the north and neatheast, which were always counted as the richest of France, have been systematically ravaged by the Germans. By covering them with ruins the enemy pursued the design, long since determined on, of destroying one of the most productive sources of French prosperity. In constant violation of all laws of war, in contempt of all guarantees of international justice, the enemy pursued methodically, with barbarous zeal, his work of pillage and destruction, with the confessed object of forbidding us forever all hope of reconstruction.

War, as it was made by the Germans in our regions, had, from the start and in all its aspects, the character of an abominable undertaking of spoliation and destruction. It was not enough for the imperial armies to reduce to ashes twenty cities and a hundred villages; it was not enough for them, even after summary executions which were pure assassinations, to inflict upon our inhabitants the worst moral sufferings. Acting by order and following a plan minutely prepared, the Germans pillaged public and private property; took away, to send to Germany, the furniture of individuals, the raw materials necessary for industry, the machinery and tools of the factories, agricultural material, the implements of artisans and peasants. From leaders to simple soldiers theft and rapine were erected into a system. Thus a laborious population was reduced to forced inactivity and to the most extreme misery; thus was annihilated one of the most powerful centres created by the genius, the courage, and the productive power of the French people.

We have undergone the shame of deportations en masse; we have seen our brothers, our sons, and our daughters taken away and forced to work for the enemy; we have known the martyrdom of a slavery like that of the darkest and most barbarous times. In the German conception the weakening of our race was to complete the devastation of our country, to reduce us to misery for long years, and thus prevent all French competition with German industry. These crimes have been formally denounced by the indignation of the whole civilized world; they have been proved by investigations whose sincerity no one would dare deny.

And this is the result, that in the hour of victory the liberated regions, because of the destruction wrought and the crushing money payments exacted from the towns and communes, cannot by their own means, despite the ardor for work shown by their populations, who have passed through such an ordeal, guarantee their economic rehabilitation. If they should not obtain full and complete reparation they would, for long years, suffer the consequences of the German crimes and undoubtedly would sink beneath the burden.

DEMAND FULL REPARATION

Even though conquered by the arms of the allied nations, Germany would have attained one of her essential ends if she succeeded in ruining certain of our large industrial centres while developing her own productive means. This would be a monstrous iniquity, against which every human conscience would be in duty bound to revolt. It could not be admitted that the populations which faced invasion with

unshakable and patriotic firmness, whose confidence in the sacred cause of right and liberty has never faltered during these four years of privation and suffering, should remain, even in victory, unhappy victims of German barbarism.

Sharer with the whole of France in the struggle for the dignity of the independent existence of the country, we expect the whole of France to proclaim herself the sharer of our legitimate claims. We demand all justice for the crime committed, all reparation for the damage done.

In this war, which she did not desire, and which was imposed upon her by predatory powers, France has consented to the most painful sacrifices in the cause of humanity. The heroism of her soldiers, the admirable moral resistance of her people, the ruins of her soil, and the blood of her children, all that has made the grandeur of this war and given the possibility of common victory, assures her the incontrovertible right to exact those reparations and guarantees without which there would be no just and enduring peace. France will not permit the inhabitants of the regions most cruelly tried to be condemned irremediably to misery.

The undersigned consequently, invoking their cruel sufferings and their complete ruin, declare that any peace which does not provide for the punishment of the guilty, and which does not compel the enemy to restore to their former economic power the regions devastated by him, to indemnify the towns, the communes and the individuals ruined by his exactions, his despoliations and his thefts, would be a shameful sanction of the violation of law and of French downfall.

They ask the members of the Government, the Senate, and the Chamber of Deputies, respectfully but energetically, to use all the moral authority given to France by the imperishable memory of her glorious dead, the heroism of her soldiers, and the ardor for work as well as for war of her whole people, to the end that the immense injury suffered by the invaded departments shall be completely repaired by the enemy, according to the principles of justice for which we have struggled and suffered, and that the peace treaty shall stipulate in the most precise and formal manner the principles and conditions of full reparation for these injuries.

THE

Egyptian Unrest Under British Rule

The Insurrection of March, 1919

HE state of unrest in Egypt, leading to the March insurrection, was explained as due to various causes by Dr. George Samme, Director of the Oriental Correspondence, in an interview with a newspaper representative in Paris. As an immediate cause he cited the refusal of admission to the delegates of the Egyptian Nationalists as participating members of the Peace Conference -a refusal due to a special request made by England. In 1914, he said, Egyptians were Germanophile, believing in the victory of Germany, which would have liberated Egypt from English occupation. During the uncertain period of the war from 1915 to 1918, Egyptian sentiment hesitated. But on the victory of the Allies in 1918, two movements sprang up, the first of which was for the right of peoples to dispose of themselves according to the doctrine of President Wilson, the second the Nationalist movement, developing from the belief that the Peace Conference had not created a new era of

[blocks in formation]
« ПретходнаНастави »