Driven to the Brink

Toulouse, a city in southern France, City Hall, the temporary seat of the French government.

Inside the conference room, all the Cabinet Ministers of the French government had gathered. There was only one matter for discussion today: Minister of Foreign Affairs Théophile Delcassé had sent back the Germans' terms by Telegram. What they now had to discuss was whether they should accept those terms.

President Poincaré and Prime Minister René Viviani had already read the Telegram. Yet both men wore extremely grim expressions. The Cabinet Ministers did not need to think hard to guess that the Germans' demands must be exceptionally harsh. Otherwise, their faces would not have looked so dreadful.

"Everyone is here, yes? Then the meeting will now begin," President Poincaré said.

At once, the conference room fell silent as a graveyard. Everyone shut their mouths and stopped whispering among themselves.

"Gentlemen, the Germans have put forward a total of five conditions. We will now inform everyone of these conditions. Then we shall discuss whether we should accept the Germans' terms," President Poincaré said.

"The first concerns war reparations. The Germans demand that we pay them one hundred billion Marks in reparations. Through the efforts of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the sum has been reduced to fifty-five billion Marks. The Germans' attitude is already extremely firm; they will not allow us to reduce it any further," President Poincaré said.

"God! One hundred billion Marks? Have the Germans gone mad?"

"How could they so utterly lose their conscience and demand such enormous reparations? Do they intend to rob the French Republic of its very last Franc?"

Upon learning the amount of the reparations, the ministers immediately cried out in alarm. Although they had already guessed that the reparations Germany demanded would not be small, they had never expected