Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 37. (1984)

ORDE, Anne: France and the Genoa Conference of 1922

France and the Genoa Conference of 1922

327

economy, and government. However, before foreign capital could be made available to help a country, foreign investors must be assured that their property and rights would be secure. Governments desiring foreign credit must therefore undertake to recognise all public debts and obligations, to restore or pay compensation for property that was taken over, and to give legal protection to contracts. All nations should undertake to refrain from propaganda against others, and to refrain from aggression against their neighbours. The resolution ended by stating that if, in order to secure the conditions necessary for the development of trade, the Soviet government demanded official recognition, the Allies would only give it if the Soviet government accepted the above conditions6 *).

From the start the project for the conference was greeted with suspicion in France, and it is the purpose of this article to examine this suspicion, its reasons and its manifestations. In the first place it was feared that the British were aiming at a revision of the peace settlement, especially of reparations, which could only be to France’s disadvantage’). This fear, strong before Briand’s visit to London, was not removed by his acceptance of Lloyd George’s linking of reparations with European reconstruction. Relations with Britain had been strained by a number of recent episodes, and the prospect of an Anglo-French pact was not a significant comfort8). Important sections of the French parliament and press were becoming increasingly critical of Briand’s foreign policy, fearing that his pursuit of conciliation with Germany and Britain meant sacrificing France’s rights under the peace treaty. These anxieties were forcibly expressed in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies after Briand returned from London; they were shared by the President of the Republic, Millerand, and some ministers; and, inflamed by the reports of the Cannes conference, they were the main cause of Briand’s resignation on 12 January. The new prime minister, Poincaré, had been waiting in the wings as the man who stood for the strict application of the peace treaty. He did not like conferences and had just, in one of his regular newspaper articles, denounced “le projet théátral” of the economic conference where everything, beginning with the Treaty of Versailles, would be called in question9).

6) DBFP 1/19 (1974) no. 1-6.

’) See for example memorandum by Seydoux, Sous-directeur des affaires commerciales in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 29 November 1921: Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres Paris Papiers d’Agents (hereafter PA) Millerand 19 (documents in the Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres are hereafter cited as MAE with series, country where relevant, and volume number): “Les renseignements de Londres et de Berlin montrent combién il est indispensable que le gouvernement frangais prenne lui-méme position dans la question des réparations s’il ne veut se trouver devant un plan concerté ä Londres entre les Anglais et les Allemands et qui peut nous étre imposé avec une précipitation brutale qui nous piacéra dans la situation politique la plus difficile”.

8) Orde Great Britain and International Security 8—13; DBFP 1/15 no. 110. From the first Lloyd George’s ideas on the subject were different from Briand’s, and the divergence became clearer at Cannes: DBFP 1/19 no. 1, 3, 10, 17; Orde Great Britain and International Security 15-19.

9) Raymond Poincaré Chronique de la quinzaine in Revue des deux mondes 1 Jan-