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France (Question of German reparations)

1922. The question of German reparations continued to occupy a foremost place in the foreign and domestic counsels of France, leading early in January, 1923, to French occupation of the Ruhr industrial district of Germany. (See REPARATIONS, p. 94.) A series of conferences among the Entente premiers on this reparations question and on Near Eastern questions developed wide differences between France and England and continually threatened a breach in the Entente. In the Near East, French policy appeared at first to be generally favorable to the Turkish Nationalists, but later, at Lausanne, this attitude was changed and France in general stood with England at that conference against the extreme pretensions pretensions of the Turks. The failure of Germany to pay reparations and France's own advances to her devastated areas and to her soldiers injured in the war left the government at the end of 1922 facing an enormous deficit. Reconstruction of roads, railways, and canals in the devastated areas was reported to be practically complete at the close of 1922, but over 200,000 buildings destroyed or seriously damaged in the war remained to be rebuilt, including about 3,000 factories. Of 9,116,383 acres of land laid waste, there were still about 4,000,000 acres to be readapted to culture.

Two agreements with Germany for reparation in kind were in partial operation in the last months of 1922. By the first agreement, signed originally at Wiesbaden, August, 1921, Germany had agreed to deliver to France seven billion marks' worth of material in three years for the reconstruction of French dev-