The extension of the French occupation cut off the British in the Cologne area from contact with unoccupied Germany and led to an insistent demand in the British press for the withdrawal of the Army of Occupation, following the American example. Critics of the Bonar Law Government declared that Great Britain was being unnecessarily humiliated on the Rhine. Had it not been for commercial interests involved, such a complaint would have received little attention. It is a quality of British officials to be fair-minded; and, while they did not relish the position they were in, the military and civil authorities at Cologne realized that the location of the Ruhr Valley made it necessary for the French to extend their lines around the British zone. The opposition of British commercial interests and of Liberal and Labor leaders in Parliament was far more serious. In the first three months of 1923 the Ruhr occupation caused serious losses to British firms, which were scarcely offset by the German orders for Welsh coal and the consequent profit to the shipping trade. It was realized that Germany could not find the credits to continue buying in British markets. The two war premiers, Asquith and Lloyd George, declared in Parliament that four months of the Ruhr experiment were sufficient to show the disaster of the undertaking, not only to Germany and France, but to the entire world. They insisted on British intervention. Lord Robert Cecil proposed that the Government invite the French Government to bring the question before the League of Nations. The Poincaré Cabinet was disappointed in the failure of Italy to back the Ruhr policy more vigorously, and was alarmed over the growing opposition in Belgian labor and shipping circles. Protests had come in from Sweden, Holland, and Switzerland. The two latter countries declared that their treaty rights on the Rhine had been infringed upon, and that their industries had suffered from the failure to get Ruhr coal. Most serious of all was the split in the great steel organization in France, which had been supporting the Poincaré Government, if not actually inspiring it. The Schneiders, the largest single firm in France, which owned Le Creusot, withdrew from the Société des Forges de France in April as a protest against the policy of the Wendel and other groups, who believed that if France stuck it out Germany would surrender unconditionally. The Schneiders did not relish the idea of Ruhr products competing in French markets.