Showdown Thought Likely Between U.S. And France

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30783, 22 June 1965, Page 7

Showdown Thought Likely Between U.S. And France

(From FRANK OLIVER, Special Correspondent N.Z.P.AJ WASHINGTON, June 21. It seems inescapable that relations between this country and France are reaching some kind of unpleasant climax and that, as one commentator says, a showdown is inevitable.

Since de Gaulle came to post-war power there have been many fueds between the two old allies but this time there is a difference. Not only are there strained relations at the official level but also between peoples. Newspaper reports of tangles between French people and American tourists in Paris make unpleasant reading. Over here a French consul in a major city recently is said to have told his colleagues that when he held a reception for 500 American guests exactly 20 were willing to attend.

One foreign correspondent from America visiting Paris reports being officially told it was “idiotic for Americans to say we (the French) don’t like them.” The correspondent goes on to relate some unpleasant experiences and says, “with such friends who needs enemies?” Indoctrination Claim

Some sections of the American press accuse de Gaulle of hiding from Frenchmen some of the things he is doing against the United States, that French people have no reason to dislike Americans but are indoctrinated with animus by the de Gaulle regime.

One respected columnist insists that on the very day the United States intervened in the Dominican Republic de Gaulle ordered every French ambassador in Latin-America to try to sabotage the American action by covertly attacking it in every way. Another columnist says bluntly that the American Embassy in Paris has warned Washington that it might just as well reconcile itself to a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation without France and he also repeats the report that at least five ambassadors in Latin-America were instructed by Paris to work actively against American policy in the Dominican Republic. It is argued by some writers that if the French people knew of these things they would be up in arms. The flow of distorted information to the French results in the French people being gradually infected by anti-U.S. propaganda. Against de Gaulle

For this side of the ocean it must be said that there is remarkably little anti-French feeling but a growing surge of anti-de Gaulle feeling. This is far from new but it has lately risen to very high proportions. Observers are now accusing him of tireless efforts to destroy the leadership of, as one writer puts it, “the only country remotely capable of leading the free world.” It is also being said, and written, that unnamed officials on this side are now convinced de Gaulle wants to scuttle N.A.T.O. because’ he is not allowed to run it. Many Americans are suspicious of what they call de Gaulle as “cottoning up” to Moscow and there are reports in the press that de Gaulle quite recently described West Germany as unpleasantly capitalistic and the Soviet Union as more congenial to him. There are forecasts that things are going to get worse before thev get better and then as the French elections near the anti-American tone of the de Gaulle campaign will increase

“Bath of Animosity”

William S. White, a columnist said to be the journalist closest to the President, has written of a “ceaseless bath of animosity pouring out from the de Gaulle-controlled radio and television and the de Gaulle - dominated press" which “surpasses in venom anything said against us behind the iron curtain... with the one exception of Red China.” In the meantime a “New York Times” correspondent writes from Paris that while the French Government is admittedly disturbed by the degree of hostile feeling that has mounted in the United States “it remains convinced that this is a transitory and non-essential factor to relationships between the two countries.” a sentiment which ! seems to have caused some smiles on this side and more [than one guffaw. T he same renort quotes the French as believing that the nncsesvinn nf great nower in the world has created an American desire to act as the

world’s gendarme and with saying that while the Americans can destroy the world they cannot conquer it. Increased Irritation This sort of comment of course, serves only to increase the irritation with de Gaulle on this side of the ocean and those who look on such comments more coolly see only how little the French understand what the Americans are trying to do and what are their aims. This is especially so when they read, as they did recently, that the French Government feels the United States has not reconciled itself to the disparity between its military power and its political capabilities.

Anyhow these happenings and statements on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be creating a rift between Washington and Paris that widens

alarmingly and which, in private conversation, is being likened to the political rift between Moscow and Peking. It has not yet reached unbridgeable proportions, many in the United States think, but as someone said in private conversation with some fervour, “it will take a hell of a lot of closing.” A lot of shirts in the United States are being kept on by people who are saying of France what so many abroad say of America at stated intervals, well, after all, it is election year.