Owing to the division in Socialist and Labour ranks, to the growing fear and dislike of 'confiscatory' legislation, by a peasant population and a large _petit rentier_ class, conservative elements are bound to be predominant in France for a long time. Those elements are frankly sceptical of any League of Nations device. A League of Nations would rob them of what in the Chamber of Deputies a Nationalist called 'the Right of Victory.' But the alternative to a League as a means of security is military predominance, and France has bent her energies since the Armistice to securing it. To-day, the military predominance of France on the Continent is vastly greater than that of Germany ever was. Her chief antagonist is not only disarmed--forbidden to manufacture heavy artillery, tanks or fighting aircraft--but as we have seen, is crippled in economic life by the loss of nearly all his iron and much of his coal. France not only retains her armament, but is to-day spending more upon it than before the War. The expenditure for the army in 1920 amounted to 5000 millions of francs, whereas in 1914 it was only 1200 millions. Translate this expenditure even with due regard to the changed price level into terms of policy, and it means, _inter alia_, that the Russo-Polish war and Feisal's deposition in Syria are burdens beyond her capacity. And this is only the beginning. Within a few months France has revived the full flower of the Napoleonic tradition so far as the use of satellite military States is concerned. Poland is only one of many instruments now being industriously fashioned by the artisans of the French military renaissance. In the Ukraine, in Hungary, in Czecho-Slovakia, in Rumania, in Yugo-Slavia; in Syria, Greece, Turkey, and Africa, French military and financial organisers are at work. M. Clemenceau, in one of his statements to the Chamber[54] on France's future policy, outlined the method:--