It may help to clear the issue if we disregard the attitude of the two Governments in naming the sides to the dispute, and if instead of speaking of the “French” or the “British” sides we speak of the “Keep-Germany-down” and the “Give-Germany-a-chance” sides, or better, if we call them the “Insisters,” who insist upon the uttermost farthing of repayment and penitence from Germany, and the “Believers,” who don’t. For it is upon Germany that the whole dispute turns. There is a very powerful “Insister” party in Great Britain; there is a growing “Believer” party in France. And while France has been steadily “Insister” since the armistice, Britain and the British Government have changed round from “Insister” to “Believer” in the last year or so. This change has produced extraordinary strains and recriminations between French and British political groups and individuals, as such changes of front must always do. Such disputes often make far more noise than deep and vital national misunderstandings, and it is well that the intelligent observer, and particularly the American observer, should distinguish the note of the disconcerted party man in a rage from the note of genuine patriotic anger. The beginnings of the present trouble are to be found in the Versailles Conference. There the only “Relievers” seem to have been the American representatives. Those were the days of the British Khaki election, when “Hang the Kaiser” and “Make the Germans Pay!” were the slogans that carried Mr. Lloyd George to power. For about four months the dispute went on between moderation and overwhelming demands. America stood alone for moderation. The British insisted upon the uttermost farthing, at least as strenuously as the French, and it was Gen. Smuts, of all people, who added the last straw to the intolerable burden of indebtedness that was then piled upon vanquished and ruined Germany. And both America and Britain were parties to the arrangements that give France the power, the Shylock right, of carving into Germany and disintegrating her more and more if Germany fail to keep up with the impossible payments that were then fixed upon her. The position of the French Government in this business is therefore a perfectly legal and logical one. France can adhere, as M. Briand says she will, to the Treaty of Versailles, she can flout and disregard any disposition of the Washington Conference to qualify or revise that treaty, and the British Government, in a hopelessly embarrassed and illogical position, can appeal only to the hard logic of reality. Britain is much more dependent upon her overseas trade than France, and so the British have earlier realized the enormous injury that the social and economic breakdown of Russia has done and the still more enormous injury that the breaking up of Central European civilization will do. “You are quite within your rights,” these newly converted “Relievers” say to the obdurate “Insisters,” “but you will wreck all Europe.”