XII

FRENCH THOUGHT BACK OF THE WAR-II

Manufacturer, Peace Advocate and Agitator

France's Master Manufacturer

NO ONLY a few men in France is accorded in

dustrial supremacy. One of these everybody in France agrees is Eugene Schneider, owner and active manager of the world-famed Le Creusot works, and whose artillery has attracted the attention of all nations. There are those in France who say that Monsieur Schneider is the leading business man of the Republic. He is still a young man, only forty-six years old. Earnestness and sincerity are the qualities which first strike the observer when meeting this unusual man.

But it is not in his constructive business genius and its remarkable results that Monsieur Schneider takes most pride. On the contrary, it is the social betterment of his forty thousand employees which to him, and, indeed, to his whole family, are the chief source of gratification.

In familiar talk at a family luncheon the conversation turned, of course, to France's desperate crisis.

Madame Schneider's comments are typical of those of many French women of the highest classes.

"We are all one family," said Madame Schneider. "Since four generations the contact was always absolutely close. The elderly people say with pride and devotion: 'I worked under the orders of your grandfather and father,' and should anything happen to one of our children we feel the whole population would go through the same anxiety as ourselves. Everybody in the place is ready to help and protect them, if needed, as we are ready to help and protect any of theirs!"

"You see," said Monsieur Schneider, "it is the spirit back of any enterprise that makes it successful, and not merely the mechanics of business plan and detail."

"And," remarked Madame Schneider, "just that is the most remarkable thing in regenerated France. It began a few years before the war. The young generation talked of the serious, the elevated. We noticed it in our sons, and everybody else's children we found to be just the same. The solid, the noble, a mixture of energy and kindness are in vogue; the frivolous is no longer fashionable."

"Yes," said Monsieur Schneider, "this spirit of our people is the soul of the conflict, so far as France is concerned. It surprised everybody, even ourselves; most of all, it surprised the Germans. They thought us decadent; they found us and we found ourselves, recrudescent. Indeed, they did find us weak, in the sense that we were not prepared. But now we are

strong; from the first day we grew stronger. we were weakest; now we are strongest."

At first

"What, Monsieur Schneider, is the opinion of the French business world as to the real cause of this war?" I asked.

"The carrying into action of the German tendency to take what they want, or think they need, whether it belongs to them or not," answered the famous French gun manufacturer. "It is part of the German mental make-up to take, take, take. We have been threatened with this for more than forty years. There was always over us the shadow of aggression."

"Do you mean that French business opinion thought Germany intended to take anything from France, in a physical sense, such as territory or colonies?" I inquired.

"Yes, we are convinced that this was Germany's purpose," he replied. "The northern and eastern parts of our country are very, very rich. Our best ore and coal mines are there; our best agricultural district is there; our finest textile establishments, such as lace factories, are there; our greatest, or at least very important, steel and iron works are there. And this territory adjoins Germany or Belgium. The Germans said: 'We like that country-why not take it?' There is the adjacent district, with its ports of Calais, Le Havre, Dunkirk and Cherbourg. The Germans said: 'These ports are good for us to have, too. we look across the Channel to England. we could at least divide the Channel with England. They would be an immense advantage in our program of sea power; in any event, it is good for us to have them. Let us take them then.'"

From them

With them

"But," I remarked, "would not Germany see that

this might be another Alsace and Lorraine-a source of trouble and of possible revolution within her own dominion? If so, would the Germans want to take this French territory as a matter of cold deliberate plan? Would she not have another hostile population on her hands?”

"She would not reason so from her experience in Alsace and Lorraine," Monsieur Schneider responded. "Many of the inhabitants of those provinces left rather than to endure German rule. Others stayed

for as long as twenty years, and then left. The places of all these were taken by Germans. So Germany could well reason that the Champaigne, Picardy and other districts would also become Germanized. I do not think that the difficulty of an unfriendly population would have deterred her."

"But may not Germany have learned a lesson from her own experience with Alsace and Lorraine, just as the British did from their treatment of us and our revolution, which their treatment caused?"

"Perhaps she might," answered Monsieur Schneider. "Perhaps she has learned that kindness, rather than force, is the wise treatment of a subject people. But all of that is immaterial in view of her actual purpose to take and our purpose to resist being taken. We do not intend that France shall become Germanized."

"But," I remarked, in surprise, "do French business men really think that the Germans intend to Germanize France ?"

"Why, they were doing it already. Perhaps it would have been wiser for them if they had gone on with their program of peaceful Germanization."

"What do you mean by peaceful Germanization?" "Why," said Monsieur Schneider, "all over France German business men were coming in and taking our commerce. German laborers were displacing French working men. And with all this went Germany's desire to be the first Power of Europe, and later on, of the world."

"But what we Americans can not see is how Germany's asserting that she was the first Power would hurt France, or any other nation, practically. Would not French business men go on doing their business, French working men continue at their labor and France exist?"

"Well," answered Monsieur Schneider, "that might be if they only intended to assert that they were the first Power. But then they would at once use their power to take our place (and, perhaps, later on, your own place) in the commerce of the world. Then, of course, we might still exist, but under German power, and only to do as we should be told to do by Germany and the Germans, and never to do what we might want to do ourselves."

"Do you mean that, even without war? Just by the fact that Germany claimed to be and was acknowledged to be the first Power of Europe?" I asked.

"Yes, indeed," said Monsieur Schneider, "more concrete and immediate. If Germany wins, a great part of France is gone. That is plain from what already has happened. Germany to-day occupies some of the richest territory of France-the mining district, where also is located our best textile and metal industriesis still in German hands now. It is clear to us that