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France fought her furious battles of 1915-16 while the Great Pacifier was Premier of France, but Germany had invaded La Patrie. In 1917 secret peace overtures were made to M. Briand (no longer Premier) by German Civil Commissioner von der Lancken. These overtures M. Briand carried to French Foreign Minister Ribot who denounced them as a "snare."
After the War, Aristide Briand (who from childhood to old age always said he "wanted" to be a sailor or sea captain) sailed away from France, represented her at the Washington Conference. There, as his enemies charged ever after, "he failed to safeguard the interests of France" (i. e. he yielded enough to make the signing of the Washington Treaty possible).
Broadly speaking, the Great Pacifier remained French Foreign Minister from 1925 until a few months ago. Frequently, he was also Premier. Having no head for figures and proud of it, telling his constituents truthfully that he had never owned a stock or bond, Aristide Briand was not the man who saved the franc (Poincare) or steered French foreign policy through the shoals of Reparations (experts of the Bank of France). But more than any other man Aristide Briand did make Peace (he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926).
"Spirit of Locarno." In 1925 was held the Locarno Conference, and for years afterwards Franco-German relations were on a friendly basis called "the Spirit of Locarno." There was also the Thoiry Conference at which M. Briand and Dr. Stresemann, as they said, "embodied this spirit into something more concrete" (TIME, Sept. 27, 1926).
Dr. Stresemann died, and his death was perhaps the death knell of M. Briand (TIME, Oct. 3, 1929). But it was Depression and the breakdown of the Young Plan which gave a mortal wound to the Spirit of Locarno. No financier, M. Briand was not responsible and could do nothing when Peace turned out to be so largely a matter of economics. Old fashioned, the Great Pacifier lived and died supposing that diplomacy was a profession, whereas it now runs errands for the Machine Age.
As a pacifier at the very top of his diplomatic profession, Aristide Briand shot his last bolt when he proposed "The United States of Europe" (TIME. Sept. 23, 1929). This proposal he made at Geneva and at luncheon, as a gentleman proposes. Rare wines had been sipped and the assembled statesmen were toying with exquisite liqueurs, but Aristide Briand modestly said afterward that he proposed the United States of Europe "between a pear and some cheese."
The profoundest economists agree upon the Great Pacifier's proposal. By instinct, by an exercise of his powers of genius, he proposed what should indeed be done: The states of Europe should mutually cooperate as do America's 48 united States. Just now, as Aristide Briand goes to his grave, the Balkan states are hamstringing each other by embargoes murderous to trade, and Austria, last week, was about to enact the Death penalty for exporting money from Austria.
Famed German biographer Dr. Emil Ludwig wrote of the Great Frenchman just before his death: "Briand is above all else an artist who listens, learns and acts as children and women do—without a system, simply by instinct. . . . Most of his ideas, and certainly his best ones, have come to him suddenly."