851.00/26½a
Professor Felix Frankfurter to the Secretary of State 29
My Dear Mr. Secretary: This report is made in response to the telegraphic instructions of Acting Secretary Polk under date of July 1930 to “study and make a report for the information of the Department of the present situation in France”.
A preliminary word as to the extent and manner of the study is pertinent. From the first day of our arrival in Paris—throughout my stay I was, fortunately, accompanied by Mr. Max Lowenthal, whose critical faculties and imaginative industry were a most important help—I followed events and pursued inquiry with the present study in view, so that the whole of my stay in Paris, including the ten days preceding the receipt of the Department’s wire, was in fact devoted to the study requested. This anticipation enabled me to leave Paris in less than a week’s time after the receipt of the Department’s instructions. Altogether we were in France from July 12 to July 29. This entire period was passed in Paris, except one day at the cantonments of the United States troops at Gondrecourt and Demange-aux-Eaux, and the nearby hospital base at Bazeilles, and one day at Bordeaux, whence we sailed on July 30.
Throughout I kept in mind the dangers against generalizing about any people, particularly in war time, and particularly the French. I was also mindful that Paris, however controlling in French life, is not wholly France; that the feelings of those at the front and those at home are not wholly the same; that the people may think differently from the politicians.
Therefore, as to all phases I sought a quantitative judgment, and sought to test individual feelings, doubts and opinions by evidence [Page 39] weighty both in extent and authoritativeness, and by rigorous questioning, to shake down opinions to their residual foundation of facts. In this attitude we touched a wide variety of French life through typical representatives. We talked with French army officers of long service at the front as well as on the staff, army surgeons, French officials, English and American diplomatic officials resident in France during different periods of the war, English and American army officers, French and American journalists of different shades of opinion, members of the Chamber of Deputies, bankers, lawyers, business men, and “just people”. I purposely abstained, because the circumstances made it wise, from interviews with cabinet members.
1. Sources of unrest in French morale
That France is tired is surely by this time a platitude. One hears it everywhere, from everybody. In addition to this pervasive feeling of general tiredness there are a few basic facts which have profoundly affected French morale, and are still potent. The outstanding single fact is the enormous loss of lives. Whatever may be the authoritative figures (probably known in the War Department at Washington), the conservative estimates generally accepted in France place the loss in dead and permanently disabled at over 2,000,000. Much more important than the gross total is the widespread conviction among the French that France cannot afford to lose many more. This feeling has been much reinforced since the spring offensive. It is the universal testimony that a veritably tragic shudder went through France when the whole nation came to believe, largely as a result of the letters written home from the front, that 100,000 men were sacrificed through an offensive futile in result and generally regarded as unwise in conception. This heavy blow came on top of an abnormally severe winter, bringing widely felt hardships, especially through want of coal. Other economic conditions, the rising high cost of living, and a growing popular belief that wealth is largely immune from the costs of the war, also fed the flame of unrest.
These are the main factors. There are minor elements which serve as items of aggravation, such as the infrequency of furloughs for the men at the front (recently corrected by General Petain), and the resentment aroused in soldiers on leave by the sufferings of their families. All these enervating factors gained collective strength from the disheartening losses of the spring offensive, and together they undoubtedly intensified the French feeling of unrest into a state of deep depression.
This widespread feeling of war weariness and of decreasing hope has become manifest in several noticeable directions. In a subtle yet persistent way it has been availed of by peace propagandists to such [Page 40] a degree that the growing number of pacifist publications became the subject of interpellations in a secret session of the Senate. The most sinister effect, and the one most uncertain as to its future importance, has been the recrudescence of Caillaux. For some time he had been working under cover. Latterly he has come into the open, the financial policies of the government having given Caillaux’s conceded financial ability the opportunity for an effective reappearance. Making the most conservative discounts, allowing for all the personal and political feeling against him, it cannot be gainsaid that Caillaux is attaining a growing power in French political life. His interests are associated with the presence of M. Malvy in the Ribot cabinet. His importance is attested by the fact that in secret session the government recently confessed itself dependent upon the Caillaux group as represented by M. Malvy, for its supporting bloc. It does not seem at all likely that Caillaux will himself come into power for the present, or that, in office, he would open peace negotiations immediately. But he is distinctly associated with early peace aims. In private conversation he asserts that reasonable terms of peace could now be made. More than that, Caillaux is playing on a vague, though probably growing, suspicion, of England’s advantage as against France, from continuance of the war. Caillaux frankly avows hostility to England.
2. Effect on French morale of America’s entrance into the war
The arrival of American troops and the belief that the United States will largely take over France’s burden have oxyg[en]ized France and greatly checked the peace tendencies of the spring. America’s participation is the note of hope in the press, men at the front speak about it with eager persistence, it served as the most effective answer by Ribot to the attack, in secret session, against the government’s conduct of the war. For the present the expectation that America will soon be at the front is the fact that envelops one in France. Their hopes in us are surely touching; their hopes have no less the seeds of danger. For the expectations aroused are too exuberant and dangerously vague. If American troops in great numbers will not be in France by the end of the year, if the winter should again be a hard one, if the Russian situation should become worse instead of better, the diverse elements of impatience may well give Caillaux and his friends their opportunity.
3. France’s war aims in their bearing upon France’s stability
There is then at present, thanks supremely to the American intervention, a decided strengthening of spirit. But what is the native [Page 41] foundation of the endurance of the French fighting spirit? Apart from disciplined obedience, what inner cause holds them in the fight? The presence of Germans on French soil is surely the controlling answer. That is enough to assure France’s persistence under normal conditions. But there is a growing feeling, which unusual hardship, as time passes, may raise to a dangerous degree, that in any event French soil will be restored to France. German occupation, then, furnishes no unequivocal affirmative aim of the war. There is Alsace-Lorraine; but one is astounded to find among responsible French opinion the feeling that Alsace-Lorraine may not be worth fighting for much longer. Particularly to southern and western Frenchmen do Alsace and Lorraine seem rather remote. These are feelings not now in the ascendant, but they are feelings entertained with sufficient depth and to a sufficient extent to be kept in mind as important in any evaluation of the present and future forces of wartime France.
There is hardly a trace in France of the larger aim which brought the United States into the war, or at least animates our prosecution of it, namely, to have issue from the war not only the failure of German aggression, but the frustration, through an international partnership, a league of nations, of any future aggression. The program is not discussed in the Chamber of Deputies, it is not made the subject of speeches by the government, the press is silent about it. The important exception is M. Leon Bourgeois. Otherwise the scheme of a league to enforce peace is regarded as too “utopian”—the impatient adjective one hears from practically all to whom the subject is mentioned. They are, they say, too busy with the war to indulge in “philosophizing”. It is too vague, they contend; they do not understand it. M. Bourgeois is trying to direct attention to it; he is urging upon his colleagues the appointment of a committee for its study. However, the strong impression left on one’s mind is that Bourgeois is, as yet, a voice crying in the wilderness.
4. Scope of America’s activity in France
The evident danger to the realization of America’s war aims, because of an inadequate comprehension of these aims in France, makes indispensable a consideration no less of the larger aspects of the French state of mind than of the people’s fighting morale. The diagnosis of existing French opinion which discloses a grave impediment to the accomplishment of that which is behind our material contributions also discloses that this source of danger can be counteracted, and some of the means by which this can be done. The basic necessity for such action, and the directions it can effectively [Page 42] take, are among the most impelling aspects of the French situation.
Very little impetus can be expected to come out of France itself for a sympathetic and cooperating understanding by the French of the war purposes of the United States. They have hardly, if at all, broken through the surface crust of the popular mind. They have not been accorded more than the beginning of a serious discussion, even in that narrowly limited section which has given them any thought at all. The portions of the President’s speeches dealing with a sound future world organization, which in the United States is deemed the very condition of our war participation, are either unknown in France, or deemed aspiring rhetoric.
The need of community of purposes between the two republics is obvious. The conclusion is no less inevitable that, in the present state of the French mind, we must take thought how we can be best assured of French understanding and belief in such purposes. We ourselves must build towards an opinion in France for a league of nations, or we may later be without supporting knowledge in our French allies for such a claim by us. Fortunately the means seem ready to hand for making the purposes of the United States, which are conceived to be the world’s purposes, a reality in France. French conditions make clear that some such course can be safely undertaken by the United States, with every solicitude for French susceptibilities. For the outstanding facts in France to-day, so far as the United States is concerned, are the great leverage this country now has in France, and the commanding authority enjoyed by President Wilson. The problem is how this leverage and this authority may be exercised.
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Respectfully submitted,