Papers written by Curzon on the Near and Middle East [‎73r] (145/348)

[This Docament is the Property of His Britannic Majesty’s Government.]
EASTERN.
[March 23.]
CONFIDENTIAL.
Section 1.
[C 6247/2740/18] No. 1 .
Earl Curzon to Lord Hardinge (Paris).
(No. 887.)
My Lord, Foreign Office, March 23. 1921.
THE French Ambassador asked to see me this afternoon and raised at once
the question, as to which there appears to be some misunderstanding between the
French and British Governments, of the new customs arrangement being set up, as
one of the agreed sanctions, in the territory beyond the Rhine. This misappre
hension related to two points. In the first place, the French had offered to assist
the British and the Americans with soldiers to constitute the necessary cordon along
the new customs line. This, the Ambassador assured me, had not been done with
the slightest intention of encroaching upon the spheres of occupation, either of
America or of Great Britain, in which they had no right or desire to interfere, but
solely because their superior local force would enable them without difficulty to
produce the men whom the Allied Powers, owning to their greatly decreased effectives,
might find it difficult to supply. It w r as, in fact, an act of courtesy on the part of
the French Commander-in-chief.
I gladly accepted this explanation, and had indeed, as I said, entertained no
other view r .
The second misunderstanding had arisen in connection with the arrangements
to be made on the customs line. At the Ambassadors' Conference in Paris your
Excellency, he understood, had raised some objection to the French proposals, but
in reality these referred not to the new line on the eastern side of the occupied
territory, but to the old line that separated the French and Belgian territory from
the occupied areas. The proposals made bv the French Government related to this
older line, and they realised quite well that the new trans-Rhenish customs barrier
could only be set up as a result of agreement between the Allied Powers.
I said that the telegrams which I had received from Paris as to the Allied
Conference yesterday did not seem to me quite to bear out this contention, for it
wns clear to me that the French Government had there been speaking of the new
customs frontier, and had reproached His Majesty’s Government for their slowness
in carrying it into effect; M. Jules Cambon having actually used the word
“tergiversation” in connection with the British attitude—a phrase which your
Lordship had naturally and properly resented. There was real reason for thinking
that the French were desirous of moving with unreasonable precipitation in the
matter. What had, in fact, been the procedure laid down ? The Supreme
Conference had instructed the Rhineland Commission to prepare a report
which should contain proposals for the organisation of the area and
the institution of the tariffs to be imposed therein. This report had
only reached His Majesty’s Government through the Ambassador' Conference
a few days before. It had been examined in the Cabinet only yesterday;
it was found to raise questions of a very difficult and technical character. For my
own part, I could not but regret the haste wuth which, in our desire to satisfy the
French, we had. almost without investigation, accepted this particular sanction at
the recent London Conference. The more I looked into it the more did it seem to
be fraught with great difficulties and perils, not the least of which was that, in our
desire to hit Germany, we might injure and even ruin the occupied territories
themselves.
The question was emphatically one for experts to thrash out, and at
the Cabinet yesterday a committee of experts had been set up with instructions
to examine the report and to report upon it to His Majesty’s Government
with all possible expedition. Further, we were sending out a technical
adviser to Coblenz to assist our representative there, and although it was
nothing like as easy for us to find a staff of customs officials as it was
for the French, who had a great organisation almost upon the spot, yet we
should do our best to supply what was necessary in this respect. All this, however,
meant a little delay. It was out of the question that the French Government,
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