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The annual payment [of German reparations] will very likely spread over some thirty years at least. It would therefore be fair and logical for the mi… - Raymond Poincaré
" "The annual payment [of German reparations] will very likely spread over some thirty years at least. It would therefore be fair and logical for the military occupation of the left bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads to last for the same length of time...There is, moreover, something quite unusual in the idea of renouncing a security before the amount secured has been completely paid...After the war of 1870, the Germans occupied various French provinces until they received the last centime of the indemnity imposed on France...It is argued that even when the occupation ceased, it could be resumed in the event of non-payment. This option to renew occupation may look tempting to-day on paper. But its bristling with drawbacks and risk. Let us imagine ourselves sixteen or seventeen years ahead. Germany has paid regularly for fifteen years. We have evacuated the whole left bank of the Rhine. We have returned to our side of the political frontiers which afford no military security. Imagine Germany again prey to Imperialism or imagine that she simply breaks faith. She suspends payment and we are obliged to reoccupy. We give the necessary orders, but who will vouch for our being able to carry them out without difficulty?
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About Raymond Poincaré
Raymond Poincaré (20 August 1860 – 15 October 1934) was a French statesman who served three times as Prime Minister (1912-13, 1922-24, 1926-29), and as President from 1913 to 1920. He led France during World War I and the Paris Peace Conference. He encouraged Russia's military mobilization at the beginning of the war and favored tough peace terms for Germany in the Treaty of Versailles, although his proposal to establish an independent state in the Rhineland was rejected. In his second term as Prime Minister, he ordered the occupation of the Ruhr when the Weimar Republic defaulted on its reparations, leading to hyperinflation. Between 1913 and 1934 he published ten volumes of memoirs, titled Au service de la France.
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Alternative Names:
Raymond Nicolas Landry Poincaré
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Additional quotes by Raymond Poincaré
The reduction of the executive power is the wish of neither the chambers nor the country...During all my magistracy, I will see, in accord with the responsible ministers, that the government of the republic maintains intact, under the control of parliament, the authority which it must have...It is possible for a people to be effectively pacific only on condition that they are always ready for war. A diminished France, a France exposed through her own fault to challenges or humiliations, would no longer be France.
What justice also demands, inspired by the same feeling, is the punishment of the guilty and effective guaranties against an active return of the spirit by which they were tempted; and it is logical to demand that these guaranties should be given, above all, to the nations that have been, and might again be most exposed to aggressions or threats, to those who have many times stood in danger of being submerged by the periodic tide of the same invasions. What justice banishes is the dream of conquest and imperialism, contempt for national will, the arbitrary exchange of provinces between states as though peoples were but articles of furniture or pawns in a game. The time is no more when diplomatists could meet to redraw with authority the map of the empires on the corner of a table. If you are to remake the map of the world it is in the name of the peoples, and on condition that you shall faithfully interpret their thoughts, and respect the right of nations, small and great, to dispose of themselves, and to reconcile it with the right, equally sacred, of ethnical and religious minorities - a formidable task, which science and history, your two advisers, will contribute to illumine and facilitate.
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