The twofold mandate from voters to those who represent them in matters of foreign policy is: make us secure, and make us prosper. That is why the struggle for the possession of coal, iron, oil, and world markets, and not international coöperation as embodied in the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice, underlies the history of Europe since 1918, and furnishes an appallingly sordid explanation of the policies followed by European statesmen in the Saar, the Ruhr, Upper Silesia, Eastern Galicia, the Banat of Temesvár, the Donetz region of Ukrainia, the Caucasus, northern Persia, and the Mosul region of Turkey. If Germany and Russia could be permanently deprived of the resources essential to war that abound in these disputed territories, their man-power would count for little. They would be reduced to a state of vassalage, and the strength of the nations possessing or controlling these regions would be correspondingly increased. Under the spell of this idea France is trying to reconstruct Europe, and she has been able to find support for her policy among those to whom German and Russian coal, iron, and oil have been allotted, and to whom German and Russian sea-ports and provinces have been given. In the Near East France was willing to let Great Britain have a free hand in the Caucasus and Persia and to sacrifice the right to Mosul recognized in the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. To Rumania were handed over Bessarabia and the iron and coal in Temesvár. Germany’s coal supplies passed under Franco-Polish control, and the French hope that Poland has become by the possession of Upper Silesia and Eastern Galicia a state strong enough to be a permanent barrier between Germany and Russia. As an additional safeguard against the regrouping of the Teutonic element in central Europe and its contact with Hungary and Russia, the Little Entente was formed. For France the next move in the international game is to settle the reparations question with Germany and to make peace with Russia in such a way that Germany will lose control of her essential resources for war making and will be cut off permanently from the temptation of forming with Russia an alliance to shake off the stranglehold of the victors in the World War upon these two powers. France believes that Great Britain’s interests in Asia and her anxiety to prevent Germany from making another effort to compete with her for world markets and the carrying trade will eventually induce the British to acquiesce in the French scheme for a new European balance of power directed against both Germany and Russia.