SummoniDg the spirit of Locarno The Treaty is signed in the suite which was later to bear its name.
Their endeavours, which coincided with a period of economic revival and growth in Europe, soon acquired an aura of success. Some progress was made towards moderating the impact of the peace settlement: Cologne was evacuated in January 1926; the Inter-Allied Control Commission, which had been meant to supervise Germany's disarmament, was wound-up in the following year; and Gennany's acceptance of a new reparations settlement, the Young Plan, in 1929 led to a withdrawal of all foreign forces from the Rhineland five years earlier than originally anticipated. As confidence-building exercises the 'tea-parties' did much to reduce French doubts about Germany's intentions. But the modalities of Locamo diplomacy also helped create an illusion of reconciliation in western Europe. Expectations were raised that could not always be realized, and this in tum led to frustration and disappointment. Typical was the meeting between Briand and Stresemann at Thoiry, a. hamlet in the French Jura, in September 1926. There over an ample luncheon, which included five bottles of table wine and one of Champagne, the two statesmen explored the basis of a bargain on reparations and the Rhineland which seemed to take little account either of the political opposition they were likely to encounter in Paris and Berlin, or of the reactions of fmancial markets in London and New York. Indeed, it remains a matter for speculation whether the French could ever have voluntarily accepted a stronger Germany free from the limitations of Versailles, or whether the Germans could ever have reconciled 26