BRITISH AID IN INDO-CHINA

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27036, 11 May 1953, Page 9

BRITISH AID IN INDO-CHINA

Mr Butler’s Promise

LONDON, May 8. “Anything Britain can do with net limited resources must and will be done to save the advance of communism in Indo-China,” the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr R. A. Butler) said today in an address at a luncheon given by the French Chamber of Commerce tn Britain. “Here is an instance where communism is making an advance of an imperial character, which it would be disastrous for the free nations of the world to ignore.” Mr Butler emphasised the importance of the nations of the free world working together, “It is really preposterous that up to this date our statesmen should have spent so much time in building up defence arrangements and trying to combine their foreign policies, and that so little attention should have been given to the fundamental basis of finance and economics. Without them these defence structures have no meaning whatever.” he said.

Dollar Gap Problem “Wherever you go in Europe you find the same problem of the gap between the dollar world and the nondollar world. We have done our best to suggest a means of bridging that gap and hitherto the response we have had has not been sufficient to enable us to foresee a successful conclusion of our efforts. “In thinking of the dollar gap it is the other side of the Atlantic that has io make advances, by better credit or policies in enabling us to trade with them as much as it is our duty to put our house in order. Until those conditions are available, we shall not get that basis of solidarity in the economy and finances of the free world that we need. “The issue of whether we have peace or war is by no means yet decided. It is in the balance. We have shown we are ready to make sacrifices, but what the statesmen of the free world have not yet achieved is the task of bringing our policies together and making it certain that we have a fundamental basis on which we can build.” *