n FROM THE TREATY TO CONFERENCE OF LONDON 29

The arguments as to the illegality of the Sanctionswere indisputable, and Mr. Lloyd George made noattempt to answer them. He announced that theSanctions would be put into operation immediately.

The rupture of the negotiations was received inParis " with a sigh of relief," 1 and orders weretelegraphed by Marshal Foch for his troops to marchat 7 a.m. next morning.

No new Separation scheme, therefore, emergedfrom the Conference of London. Mr. Lloyd George' sacquiescence in the Decisions of Paris had led him toofar. Some measure of personal annoyance at thedemeanour of the German representatives and thefailure of what, in its inception, may have beenintended as bluff, had ended in his agreeing to anattempt to enforce the Decisions by the invasion ofGermany. The economic penalties, whether theywere legal or not, were so obviously ineffective forthe purpose of collecting money, that they can hardlyhave been intended for that purpose, and were ratherdesigned to frighten Germany into putting her nameto what she could not, and did not intend to perform,by threatening a serious step in the direction of thepolicy, openly advocated in certain French quarters,of permanently detaching the Rhine provinces fromthe German Commonwealth. The grave feature ofthe Conference of London lay partly in Great Britain'slending herself to a furtherance of this policy, and

1 The Times, March 8, 1921.