After the failure of the Paris Conference, which terminated abruptly on January 4, 1923, the French press declared that France and Belgium intended to force Germany to pay the sums stipulated in the May, 1921, schedule, but that the measures adopted would be purely economic. On January 9, Poincaré told the Chamber of Deputies that the Allied Governments (with the exception of the British) had decided to send engineers and experts into the Ruhr, and that there was no thought of extending the French military occupation beyond the actual positions already held in the Rhineland nor of the permanent occupation of the Ruhr. A limited number of French and Belgian troops would form a body-guard for the new Ruhr Commission. The plan was to supervise the distribution of coal and coke, and to have sent to France and Belgium and Italy sufficient to pay the reparation amounts in default and for the current year. The great industrialists and the German people, dependent upon Ruhr coal, would hasten to comply with the orders of the Reparations Commission. It would soon be seen that the Germans had been bluffing. As for the inhabitants of the Ruhr, no difficulties were anticipated. In fact, they were ill disposed toward the capitalists and the Berlin Government. Under French control they would be well paid and would have better and more abundant food. The French soon discovered that they had as completely misjudged the reaction of the Germans to the Ruhr invasion as the Germans had misjudged the reaction of the Belgians in 1914. In the twentieth century national feeling still transcends class feeling; and men do not live by bread alone. Force of any kind is resented by the common people, but most hateful is the force of the foreigner. Was it strange to expect that the Germans of the Ruhr would act differently from the Belgians and French in Northern France? Speaking at Péronne in the last year of the war, Clemenceau made a statement that I have never forgotten: “Partout il y a des ruines, mais les hommes, eux, ne sont pas en ruines, et, de même que les Français ont étonné le monde dans la guerre, ils l’étonneront encore dans la paix.”[27] One cannot draw a boundary-line and say that the common people on one side of the line are men, with noble sentiments, and on the other side animals, with no sentiments at all. There may be a difference, through culture, in the educated classes of different nations; but, given the same degree of civilization, human nature is pretty much the same. When the French entered the Ruhr they found that the Germans were loyal to their country, and acted as they had acted, when the tables were turned. This upset the calculations of Paris and Brussels, and confronted the two Governments with the problem of breaking down the passive resistance of millions of people.