LATE NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 29, 3 August 1923, Page 8

LATE NEWS

BRITAIN AND FRANCE

RELATIONS DISCUSSED

CRITICISM IN COMMONS

THE POLICY OF DRIFT,

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.— COPTMOBI.)

(AUSTRALIAN • NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.)

(Received 3rd August, 2 p.m.)

LONDON, 2nd August.

In the House of Commons, discussing the Premier, Mr. Baldwin's statement, which is identical with Lord Curzon's, Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald. Leader of the Opposition, expressed profound dissatisfaction with the replies from France and Belgium. However, there was one point of satisfaction, and that was that the Government had at last determined to devise and pursue a policy of its own.

He urged Mr. Baldwin to give a definite assurance that he would call the House together, if the circumstances arose. The first point of the new departure was the end of all secrecy. We had nothing to hide or be ashamed of. It was clear that France was not in the Ruhr ior reparations, but the policy was prompted by warlike feelings not satisfied as to the result of the war. It was an attempt to continue the war after formal peace had been declared. He claimed that Britain economically was far more depleted than France. The first thing to do was to come to a settlement with Germany and also an agreement with France and the other Allies regarding the inter-Allied debt.

Mr. Austen Chamberlain deprecated the suggestion that we should rank ourselves definitely on the side of Germany. That would be a grave decision. The benevolent, passive attitude to the French promised by Mr. Bonar Law had given way to an active attitude, but it made the relations no better, and brought a solution no nearer. Since January there had been a dangerous change in the European situation. The French and British Governments had drifted steadily further apart. This policy, while it failed to restrain France, failed to secure relief from Germany and encouraged her.