STATE BANQUET

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 123, 9 March 1950, Page 5

STATE BANQUET

FRENCH PRESIDENT IN LONDON DAY OF PAGEANTRY (N .Z.P. right) LONDON, March 7. His Majesty the King and the President of France (M. Vincent Auriol) toasted each other in champagne at a State banquet at Buckingham Palace to-night. The banquet v/as the climax of a day of pageantry in which London gave one of the greatest ovations in its history to the French President and Mrs Auriol, who are paying their first State visit to Britain since the Second World War.

Soon after M. Auriol’s arrival at the Palace this afternoon, His Majesty invested him with the insignia of a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (Civil Division 1, which is the highest rank in the second oldest order of British chivalry. Mounted police Avere called to Buckingham Palace to control 50,000 people who had gathered to watch *he guests arrive for the'State banquet. Immediately the Palace floodlighting was switched on, the crowd began chanting “We want the King.”

Their Majesties, the President and Mrs Auriol came on the Palace balcony at 11 p.m. G.M.T. and waved lo the excited watchers. His Majesty, in proposing M. Auriol's health at the State banquet, said: “Three years ago the Treaty of Dunkirk set the seal on the fellowship of our . two peoples, consecrated by their sacrifices. . Since that date, we have come to recognise that we_ are united by bonds closer than the obligations of any formal alliance. lam confident that our two countries, supported by the peace-loving concert, wider than Europe, to which we both belong, will maintain and further the ideals for which we both stand.” His Majesty then drank to the health of Mr and Mrs Auriol and to the “prosperity and happiness of France.” M. Auriol, replying, said: “We shall not forget the long, painful hours, when the whole of France, oppressed and tortured, struggled in the dark to prepare.for the liberation of the niorroAV, listening to the dauntless voice of Mr Churchill hurling at the enemy the defiance of a united Britain. Our friendship was sealed for all time -by those trials, more cruel even than those which we suffered together in World War I.” M. Auriol said that the solidarity of France and England was a reassurance to all free nations. “The peoples of the world to-day, in a large measure, are dependent on our resolution to act in concert,” he said.