An unskilled observer diagnoses some results of the fall of the French franc
We have heard a great deal, of late, concerning insults to foreigners—and more particularly, insults to Americans—in Paris. Not only have the New York dailies featured these insults, but practically all the newspapers from coast to coast have taken this opportunity to furnish their readers with a paucity of intelligent explanation and superfluity of picturesque detail. As a result, we find ourselves wondering how it should have come about that our noble country is violently hated and her citizens extensively razzed by that very race which, a short time ago, hailed America as the saviour of civilization and Americans as crusaders in a holy war waged against all things evil.
The provocation seems in no case exactly stupendous. Why, for instance, should a number of Yankees, caught in the extremely childish act of hurling whole loaves of bread to the historic carp at Fontainebleau, suffer a vigorous berating at the hands, or pens, of Parisian editors, on the extraordinarily dubious ground that such a deed constitutes an insult to la belle France? Why, moreover, should three overdressed, overintoxicated and otherwise overasinine “college boys” be selected for chastisement by a section of the Parisian populace—granted, that one member of the trio had pilfered (consciously, unconsciously or possibly fore-consciously) a spoon from Foyot’s magnificent restaurant? Finally, why should rubberneck wagons be held up and compelled to discharge their quaint and curious cargoes of sightseers upon the fevered streets of the outraged French capital? It all seems a bit odd, to say the least.
But oddity is most certainly in the air. Only the other day an odd thing happened. Mr. Blank, an American business man (and, incredibly enough, a personage of quite unimpeachable probity), returned to New York from Paris, where he had done business as usual with representatives of a number of important French firms. Weary with welldoing, down sat Mr. Blank in his New York office to enjoy a mild corona. At this moment, the director of a bank in Hartford, Connecticut, telephoned to say that a formidable sum had been mysteriously placed to Mr. Blank’s account by a certain Soandso. The garbled name of the donor did not immediately associate itself with anything in Mr. Blank’s mind; consequently Mr. Blank was nonplussed. But presently he began to sense a connection between the occult nomenclature and one of the Paris firms aforesaid. In a few minutes all was clear: a Frenchman, having made some money, was losing no time in sending it out of la belle France to be invested—by someone whom he trusted implicitly—in American securities.
Are these problems of foreigner-hating and of frenzied finance insoluble? One would think so, to judge by the utterances—either blatantly trivial or darkly ponderous—which they have provoked. But let us not be downhearted. Rather, taking the horns by the bull (so to speak) let us enjoy a brief but exhilarating dip in the not-too-distant past.
It will be remembered that after the socalled Great War was “won,” after the well-known Treaty of Versailles had “made the world safe for democracy,” the French Republic found itself in a horrid predicament. To obtain even a fraction of the vast sum which she demanded of her vanquished enemy, France was under the necessity of not only permitting, but encouraging, the prosperity of the German Republic. As will readily be seen, this predicament involved several rather annoying sacrifices on the part of the conqueror. It involved escorting the French people out of a simplified psychology of blood-and-thunder into a complicated psychology of peace-and-goodwill. It involved pricking a carefully manufactured bubble, wherein lurked the awful image of that unutterable monster: le boche. And from a moral standpoint, it involved being guilty of that rarest and most dangerous of international crimes: generosity.
To be sure, her material interests prompted France—victor in an “unselfish” struggle “for mankind”—to be generous in this particular case. But generosity involves, beyond everything else, daring; and daring implies exceptional strength. A bigger carp might have risen to so noble a loaf; but not la République française. La République française, it will be remembered, took the law into her own hands just as soon as Germany showed signs of definite economic improvement, tucked “martyred” Belgium under one arm for the sake of companionship and occupied the Ruhr. Thereby, as events have proved, la République française not only forfeited her chances of being paid by Germany, but lost the friendship of England and the admiration of America to boot.
Prior to this famous occupation of the Ruhr, a great many Anglo-Saxons had assumed that la République française was not getting a square deal. And no wonder; for rarely did a vanquished—let alone a victorious—nation indulge in more self-pity than did France after the treaty of Versailles. One would have thought that France was the victim of a plot on the part of the nefarious Allies, that the Huns were masters of Europe, and that le Bon Dieu was not in His Heaven. Every time a French war monument was dedicated, for example, the orator of the occasion (invariably a hand-picked politician) bewailed France’s woes in terms calculated to convey the impression that no other country since the world began had ever experienced real misfortune. But with the occupation of the Ruhr, the song changed. From a mutilated martyr, a crucified cripple and everything utterly miserable or entirely hapless that the imagination of man could picture, la République française suddenly was transformed into a nation, armed to the teeth, which knew its rights and was going to get them—and Heaven help the rest of the world! Whereupon the rest of the world waggishly put its thumbs to its nose and the Ruhr occupation proved, despite everything claimed for it by the astute M. Poincaré, one vast substantial fizzle.
So much for not very ancient history. And now, taking the bull by the horns instead of vice versa, let us frankly ask ourselves: just what is all the anti-America outcry about? And how comes it that the French franc inhabits nether regions of finance? In other words, who made la République française what she is today?
The recent tumble of the franc appears to be the result of an effort, on the part of certain of the more ill-intentioned Frenchmen, to pay off France’s internal debt in debased currency, i.e. to make the proverbially thrifty French peasant foot the bills of the Great War for Humanity. Appearances may, perhaps, be deceptive, but one thing is sure: the leaky thesis that naughty foreigners are to blame for the fall of the franc has very little truth in it.
Nor should the gentle reader, at this point, accuse us of dogmatizing beyond our depth. In order to understand how certain of the French politicians (observing that the German mark had tobogganed and that Germany had acquitted her internal obligations in depreciated currency and that the mark had been stabilized and that now Germany—despite France’s best efforts—stood upon her feet) decided to turn a similar trick themselves with the franc, we need not possess the mentality of a Maynard Keynes. Nor is it at all probable that we suffer from auditory hallucinations when we hear these shrewd messieurs saying to each other: “Why not divert the attention of the French people in particular and of the world in general from our primary problem, France’s internal debt, to our secondary problem, France’s foreign indebtedness? To accomplish this will not be difficult. Let us promulgate a thoroughly organised newspaper campaign against ‘foreigners’ on the ground that said ‘foreigners’ (whom we shall slowly but surely reveal in their true colours, as our former allies, the English and more particularly the Americans) ‘speculate’ and thereby ruin the franc. Mischief being afoot, let us convert into dollars whatever francs we already possess and can beg or borrow; whereupon the franc will, so to speak, ruin itself. We shall then be able to do as Germany did: pay off our debts to our people in depreciated paper. Like the Germans, we shall be able to demand that our currency be stabilized at a low point. Our peasants will thus be the losers; we ourselves—having dollars, not francs, in our pockets—cannot possibly suffer—and tout va bien qui finit bien.”
Whosoever disapproves of this possibly startling analysis is hereby cordially invited to furnish a better explanation of existing conditions. There is no denying that all is not well. There is also no denying that the xenophobia camouflage has proved singularly unsuccessful. Of course, insults to “foreigners” and demonstrations against Americans do occur. But these insults and demonstrations are not authentic and almost everybody knows it—even the frantically ignorant American newspaper editors who wonderingly state that it is “well-dressed crowds” who are to blame, not honest-to-goodness Hell-bent-for-election mobs. In point of fact, such picturesque crises de nerfs are completely unspontaneous. They are staged by an element whose motto is sauve qui peut, whose political ideals are fascist and whose ability to combine the science of politics with the art of profiteering is well known to anyone even superficially acquainted with la belle France of postbellum days. Reduced to its lowest terms, the supposedly obscure situation becomes, alas, all too obvious. And what, precisely, do we mean by “lowest terms”? We mean this: a certain group of French profiteers, having succeeded in not fighting the war and having partially succeeded in debasing the franc for their own benefit, are now trying to “cover up”—by making, of the erstwhile dearly beloved United States of America, one vast substantial goat.
From Vanity Fair, January 1927.