it fully accomplish this object? Does it make war henceforth an impossibility? I would not venture to affirm that; I do not wish to mislead my country. (Applause from the Left, the Extreme Left, and the Centre) Does it relieve us of the duty of keeping a sharp eye on international developments? (Excellent! Excellent!) Does it make it unnecessary for us to provide for our own safety if, unhappily, some crisis should arise that placed us in danger? I say, no! (General applause) But in forming an opinion of this document, we must first of all ask ourselves two questions: What was the situation before Locarno? And, if it were not for Locarno, what would the situation be to-day? (Excellent! Excellent!)

Had we rejected the Locarno Agreement offhand, where should we be now? Gentlemen, do you think that Europe would have remained just where it was? You, whose duty it is to follow international events with an attentive eye, should not forget that, when the negotiations that were to eventuate in this Agreement started, other feelers had already been thrown out between certain European Governments. Had our conversations at Locarno failed, might we not now face a new grouping of the Powers extremely perilous for France? Did we not see powerful statesmen hasten to Berlin in the hope of dissuading the German Government from a reconciliation with France? You must keep that in mind in judging the history of this Agreement.

Gentlemen, it takes a certain moral courage to enter negotiations such as these. It is easier for a public man to keep out of commitments like this for which I have assumed responsibility. (Excellent! Excellent!) But shall a great country like France have its foreign policy paralyzed by hypercritical indecision? (Applause from the

Left, the Extreme Left, and the Centre) All I did, however, as Foreign Minister in the Cabinet of my friend Painlevé, who was one of the staunchest promoters of this Accord, was to follow a course set for me by one of my predecessors, the Honorable M. Herriot. (Applause from the Extreme Left and Left) It was a course that I myself sought to follow in 1921, under conditions that it may not be irrelevant to recall. (Applause from the Extreme Left, the Left, and the Centre) I speak without the slightest arrière-pensée of criticism or recrimination against anybody; nor have I complaints to make about the Treaty of Versailles. That Treaty is what it is. Drafted to settle very complex and difficult questions, it was naturally defective in many respects. If I had been entrusted with its negotiation, should I have done better? I do not know. (Scattered applause)

What most impressed me during the debate on the Versailles Treaty was that tragic colloquy in the Chamber concerning the imperative necessity of ensuring the security of France. That was the first thought in the mind of every member. The detailed provisions of the Treaty, important as they were, were wholly secondary to this great purpose. We had just emerged from a frightful war; we had but a single thought to avoid another war. Our whole attention was centred on that point.

This is the phase of the debate to which I refer. The question had been raised whether we were sure that the article of the Treaty by which the United States and England jointly guaranteed us from attack, and for which we had surrendered our claim to a natural frontier, would be ratified? The speakers who questioned this cited disturbing rumors from the United States indicating that the Treaty might not be approved by her

Senate. And our Honorable Premier at that time, whom no one can reproach with failing to do his utmost to ensure our country's safety, said: 'I hope that the United States will ratify the Treaty.' When an orator exclaimed: 'But if the Treaty is not ratified by the United States, what will become of the English guaranty?' M. Clemenceau answered: 'I hope that the English guaranty will hold.' Thereupon these doubters still insisted: 'But is n't this British guaranty conditional upon the guaranty of the United States? The two go together, and if one fails, and then the second fails, what will happen?' And I can still see M. Clemenceau lifting his arms and saying: 'Then then there would be no Treaty at all. There would be nothing.'

Very well, gentlemen. When the hazard of circumstances put me in office in 1921, I considered it my first duty to devote all the energy, the intelligence, the courage, I possessed to trying to repair that breach. (Applause from the Left, the Extreme Left, and several benches of the Centre) I believed that in so doing I should have the support of every public man in my country, no matter to what Party he belonged. At the Cannes Conference, and even before that Conference, negotiations having that end in view were begun with representatives of the British Government. They were received favorably. I recall that at that time gentlemen like Winston Churchill and Austen Chamberlain, whose friendship for France you well know, for they have given ample proof of it (Excellent! Excellent!), favored in principle such a guaranty. These gentlemen are again in power. It was understood that a British guaranty would be given. The text of the projected Agreement is now public property.

Simultaneously, gentlemen, the germ of the Geneva Protocol was born at

Cannes. We laid the plans there for an all-European conference at Genoa, to which no country was to be admitted until it had signed a pact of nonaggression. That plan contemplated a vast peace-project, a comprehensive international association that we thought we might be able to induce the nations of Europe to enter. Were we contemplating an ordinary alliance between England and France like the others with which we are familiar? Not at all, gentlemen. You will find in the Blue Book which the British Government has published upon these proceedings that our conversations contemplated that, when a treaty of guaranty had been concluded between Great Britain and France, Germany might and ought to become a party to that treaty.

This, gentlemen, is the very essence of the Locarno Pact. When the Honorable M. Herriot secured the acceptance at London of the reparation plan with which you are familiar, the question of a rapprochement between the different nations of Europe naturally arose again. It was necessary for the successful execution of this plan. Then it was that the suggestion of Herr Stresemann - that is, of the German Government was first conceived. I welcomed that suggestion heartily. I believe that it embodied the very idea I had at Cannes. I feel that all that has happened since 1921 has only strengthened our motives for making such a pact, the necessity of which I clearly see and to the success of which I have contributed to my utmost ability. (Excellent! Excellent!)

Gentlemen, I do not regret what I have done. (Lively applause) I have not taken the step lightly; I have not acted without mature reflection. Yesterday I heard an honorable member of the Chamber, a member who fought through the war and who fears that we

may sometime have another war, dwell with great feeling and emotion upon the apparent weaknesses of the Locarno Accord and the dangers that he conceives still threaten us from Germany. He insinuated that I might perhaps be less alive to Germany's intimidating figure because my gaze was too exclusively centred upon France herself. Let me say, gentlemen, that I too lived through the war. We stood together in those tragic hours. That gentleman knows that in the darkest and most agonizing moment of that conflict, during the battle of Verdun, and when our valiant ally, Serbia, reeled under a double blow, the man who had the perilous honor of carrying the crushing responsibilities of the premiership was the man who now stands before you.

I had to look facts in the face. We were at war. We must win. I saw, gentlemen, at that time, sights so horrible and butchery so revolting, my heart so overflowed with anguish, that I swore then and there that if ever we won the victory and the hazard of circumstances called me again to power I would devote all my energy and strength and will and thought to the cause of peace, to preventing a recurrence of such atrocities. (Lively applause from the Left, the Extreme Left, the Centre, and some benches of the Right)

But if we are to have peace, we must not merely talk peace. We must have peace in our own hearts. We must have the will to peace. We must seize every occasion and every opportunity to promote peace, for Peace is an exigent mistress more exigent than War

herself.

War can never occur except when some unexpected event sweeps the people off their feet before they have time to reflect. But peace, gentlemen, demands unremitting and continuous service, persistent service, an enduring

and uncapricious loyalty. Hypocritical doubt, skepticism, excessive distrust these things, let me repeat, spell paralysis, and that is not a condition favorable to peace. (Applause from the Left, the Extreme Left, and the Centre) Too often is the German nation pictured to us as a compact bloc, impenetrable, from which you cannot detach the smallest particle. A man like Erzberger, who made timid approaches to peace, was to be commended. But when certain public men in France sought hopefully to support his policy, to what ridicule they exposed themselves! People shouted: 'A trap, a snare! Erzberger! A German like all the others!' And a few days later a German chauvinist assassinated the very man they reviled because he considered him a traitor to Germany!

When my former Cabinet was in power in 1921 and we were faced with the impossibility of securing the transfer of the billions of marks of gold which we were to collect from Germany, and therefore had to devise some more practical way of obtaining reparations, we recurred to the idea of deliveries in kind. Was that not really the first step toward the Dawes Plan? But when my colleague, M. Loucheur, began to negotiate with Rathenau, what did they say? 'Rathenau? Why, he's simply out to trick you.' For that is always the way in our country. We have such a poor opinion of ourselves that the mere announcement that we are negotiating with somebody else is greeted with a protest that we have already been tricked. As if there were no Frenchmen capable of defending the interests of their country! (Applause from the Left) Rathenau, too, was a German like the others, and a German, they said, would cheat us. And yet only a short time after he put his signature at the bottom of our contract he too was accused of treason to his

country and died at the hands of an assassin.

Whenever we embark upon a positive policy we are bound to meet skepticism and distrust, and it takes a certain kind of courage to face it. It is much easier to do nothing. It is simple enough to sit down and let events take their course; or to deliver resounding orations full of patriotic fireworks; or to talk eloquently about peace and do nothing to make peace practicable. But to take a real step toward peace, to make an honest conciliatory gesture, is more difficult. (Applause from the Left, the Extreme Left, and the Centre) That is always a dangerous thing for a public man to do.

I do not exaggerate the merits of the Locarno Agreement. I know its limitations. I frankly admit its inadequacies. But I also know that it has provisions of value. One of its greatest services has been to revive confidence among nations, to cast a little sunbeam into Europe's dark and menacing shadows a ray of hope. (Lively applause from the Left, the Extreme Left, and the Centre) It has thus conferred a blessing on our country where there are so many veils of mourning, where we see so many young warcripples involuntarily burdening society because it has helped mothers, when they gaze upon their sons, to hope that these may never suffer like mutilation upon a future battlefield. If that were all the benefit we derived from this document, I tell you I should take pride in having signed it. To encourage such hopes is already a step toward peace.

But this might be a dangerous step if it were not accompanied by more solid things. Gentlemen, if we are to have assured peace, Europe must organize herself. Do you not see, even since Locarno, many a firebrand flaring up here and there, dangerously close to

the powder barrels we have not yet removed? If you do not want a new explosion, you must be on your guard.

'Harbor our strength,' you say. Certainly. If there were anything in the Locarno Treaty that involved weakening us, lessening our ability to defend ourselves against any peril, then I should say: 'Do not ratify it. It is your duty to refuse your signature.' But there is nothing of the kind in this Agreement. The Treaty of Locarno does not rob us of any element of our security.

If other pacts are made, conceived in the same spirit, the spirit of the League of Nations; if the disposition of nations becomes more conciliatory; if even in Germany the people turn away from the pernicious counselors who still too often catch their ears, and seriously espouse the cause of peace, it will not be the result of any single piece of paper written in black and white, but of a great movement increasing from day to day and carrying the nations with it. If such a movement once starts in every country regardless of party lines, I am convinced that it will bear us forward into an era of permanent peace. (Applause from the Left, Extreme Left, and Centre)

At present we are still at the beginning. Bear that in mind. And this beginning, this germinating hope, we must not crush. One of the members had said that I planted a tiny olive tree on the banks of Lake Maggiore - very pretty to look at, but affording little shade. Gentlemen, I did not do even that. I did not plant even a tiny olive tree, but only a seed. That seed has begun to stir. The surface of the soil is breaking. A tender shoot is seeking the sun. It wants to find it. It will grow unless some brutal foot crushes it. And if, unhappily, it must be crushed, I hope at least that it will not be a French foot that commits that crime.

(Lively applause from the Left, the Extreme Left, the Centre, and some benches of the Right)

Gentlemen, face things as they are with confidence and resolution. Recall the facile sarcasm at first heaped on the League of Nations. That has passed. Those witticisms, those allusions to the Tower of Babel, are things of yesterday. Regardless of such raillery, our greatest and most serious-minded statesmen, supported by the instinctive common-sense of their own peoples, did not laugh. And it is because the League has struck root in the hearts of the common people that it has survived and keeps on growing.

Matter-of-fact men asked: 'How will you keep a sudden war from breaking out? It will have done its damage before you can call your League Council together. And after you have convened your Council, how are you to secure united action? During the interval the conflagration will get beyond control.'

One day when I was Foreign Minister, and had the honor to be President of the League of Nations, a telegram came notifying me that hostilities had actually broken out between two nations and blood had been shed. Armies had crossed frontiers, guns were thundering, rifles were cracking. There was every reason to believe that the conflict might not be confined to the two countries every cause to fear a repetition of one of those frightful crises when the bloody-pinioned birds of war sweep in sombre flocks across the skies. What was to be done?

I immediately assumed the responsibility incumbent upon me. In accord with the General Secretariat of the League, I convoked at Paris an emergency meeting of the Council and instantly notified the two nations that they must halt their armies. Ah, if any statesman had done that sort of thing a

few years before what a butt of ridicule he would have been! The Council of the League met; the two nations summoned before it sent their representatives. We asked them: 'Do you accept our decision as arbiters?' They answered: 'Yes.' I said: "That is not enough. In order that our arbiters may investigate the circumstances properly, I direct you to recall your troops to your own territories. No more rifles, no more cannon. Nothing but justice.' And those two nations, let it be said to their honor, answered: 'We agree. Our cannon shall be silent. We will withdraw our troops. We await your decision.' Two days later that war was over. (Lively applause from the Left, the Extreme Left, the Centre, and some benches of the Right)

Do you know the most terrible thing about a declaration of war? It is that the governments who make them are not their own masters. (Applause from the Left and the Extreme Left) An incident occurs; the sensational press exploits it and plays upon the overexcited patriotism of the people; national pride becomes involved; the emotions swamp the reason; and, before the common-sense of the rank and file of the population has an opportunity to manifest itself, war has broken out and the land is covered with blood and ruins. It will always be so until we learn to set up judges between nations as we have set up judges between individuals. (Lively applause from the Left, the Extreme Left, and the Centre) I saw in Geneva in 1924 how certain slanders and misinterpreted acts of ours had exposed us to the suspicion of harboring evil designs. I overheard the way they talked about us. Men are now present in this Chamber who were there with me and who know what I mean. It was a most painful experience. I was conscious that the representatives of other Powers held