What justice also demands, inspired by the same feeling, is the punishment of the guilty and effective guaranties against an active return of the spi… - Raymond Poincaré

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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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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

It was for all the members of the Cabinet a relief. Never before had a declaration of war been welcomed with such satisfaction. France having done all that was incumbent upon her to maintain peace and war having nevertheless become inevitable, it was a hundred times better that we should not have been led, even by repeated violation of our frontiers, to declare it ourselves. It was indispensable that Germany, who was entirely responsible for the aggression, should be led into publicly confessing her intentions. If we had had to declare war ourselves, the Russian alliance would have been contested, national unanimity would have been smashed, it would probably have meant Italy would have been forced by the clauses of the Triple Alliance to side against us.

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.

And, further, shall we be sure of finding the left bank free from German troops? Germany is supposedly going to undertake to have neither troops nor fortresses on the left bank and within a zone extending 50 km. east of the Rhine. But the Treaty does not provide for any permanent supervision of troops and armaments, on the left bank any more than elsewhere in Germany. In the absence of this permanent supervision, the clause stipulating that the League of Nations may order enquiries to be undertaken is in danger of being purely illusory. We can thus have no guarantee that after the expiry of the fifteen years and the evacuation of the left bank, the Germans will not filter troops by degrees into this district. Even supposing they have not previously done so, how can we prevent them doing it at the moment when we intend to re-occupy on account of their default? It will be simple for them to leap to the Rhine in a night and to seize this natural military frontier well ahead of us. The option to renew the occupation should not therefore from any point of view be substituted for occupation. It will then be simple for them to leap to the Rhine in a night and to seize this natural military frontier well ahead of us.

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