has
expressed its sympathy for the sufferings of France. In fact, any
Socialist who dared to champion the cause of France immediately lost his
influence and position in Socialist circles. As to the _Daily Herald_,
had it been edited in Berlin it could not more faithfully have supported
German interests. When Alsace Lorraine was restored to France, it
published an article showing how deeply the inhabitants of this province
resented being transferred from the German Empire to the French
Republic[792]; when a general strike threatened this country, it seized
the opportunity to come out with an appeal in enormous capitals to
revise the Versailles Treaty; in the matter of reparations its efforts
to let Germany off altogether have been, as it itself observed,
"unceasing." "The plain fact is," it declared on December 17, 1921,
"that these fantastic reparation demands cannot be met; and that every
payment by which Germany attempts to meet them will only work further
havoc to our own commerce and our own industry. We have urged that
ceaselessly for three years. To-day even the Premier begins to see that
we were right, that the interests of this country demand the scrapping
of _the whole bad business of 'making Germany pay_.'"[793]

Indeed, when the interests of Germany were concerned, this paper, which
Lenin has described as "our own organ," but which might still more truly
be claimed by Ludendorff and Stinnes, was quite ready to throw Socialism
to the winds and plead the cause of capital. At the very moment that it
was advocating the Labour policy of a capital levy on all fortunes
exceeding L5,000 in this country, the _Daily Herald_ waxed almost
tearful over the iniquity of France in attempting to touch the pockets
of German multi-millionaires whose profits, it went on to explain
elaborately, were not nearly as huge as might appear in view of the
decline in the purchasing power of the mark. The decline in the
purchasing power of the pound had, however, never been taken into
account when assessing the profits of British employers of labour.[794]

We have only to follow point by point the policy of the British Labour
Party since the war to recognize that whilst the measures it advocated
might be of doubtful benefit to the workers, there could be no doubt
whatever of the benefit they would confer on Germany. With a million and
a quarter unemployed and large numbers of the working classes unable to
find homes, the professed repre