The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. MONDAY, JULY 18, 1938. STATE VISIT TO FRANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 167, 18 July 1938, Page 6

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

MONDAY, JULY 18, 1938. STATE VISIT TO FRANCE.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the urong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

The King and Queen will leave London to-morrow on a State visit to France. Such visits involve, besides months of preparatory work by Governments and officials, a great personal strain on the central figures, and for King George and Queen Elizabeth this will be the greater because of their brief experience of the Royal duties. The light which beats fiercely upon a Throne beats more fiercely when the occupants of that Throne visit a foreign land. But King George'a nineteen months of kingship have been for his people a period of increasing confidence in his ability to sur-tain the. great traditions of the British Crown. On December 11, 1030, his people might hope, but could not know, that ht— called unexpectedly to the Throne, and without special training for the Roy til duties —would be equal to the task which his brother's abdication put upon him. To-day they have confidence as well as hope. And in the particular task upon which he and the Queen are about to embark their confidence is strengthened by the knowledge that the State visit i≤ to be paid to France, to a. country bound to Britain by ties of traditional friendship, to the one great country (apart from the United States) which shares British ideals of national and international life.

The degree of present co-operation between , Britain and France is higher than is generally realised. At the end oil May, after the visit of the French Ministers to London " The Times" declared that " a closer defensive military accord was established than has ever before existed ... in time of peace. The details still remain to be elaborated between the.General Staffs; but it is understood that a draft plan was examined and approved, the principle of which is that the two Air Forces shall be developed on parallel and supplementary lines. Their respective parts ,in the defence scheme of the two countries [will be more clearly allotted; and facilities j-jritt be given to France for access to the resources of raw material in the Empire." The circumstances which have encouraged this new arrangement are not in need of recapitulation; they are well known to more people than those of Britain and France. It is an arrangement which, more than any speech or official declaration, proclaims to the world the determination of its parties to stand together. And the coming Royal visit to France will serve no end more important than that of showing to the world that the harmony of the Governments of Britain and France is not greater than the harmony of their peoples.