EFFECT ON LOCARNO

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1935, Page 9

EFFECT ON LOCARNO

FRANCO-SOVIET PACT

NEGATIVE REPLY TO GERMANY

BRITAIN AND FRANCE CONFER

(British Official Wireless.) (Received July 6, 11.30 a.m.) RUGBY, July. 5. A Note was handed 'to the German Ambassador in London today in reply to a recent inquiry from Berlin as to the effect of the conclusion of the Franco-Soviet Pact on undertakings given under the ' Locarno Treaty. A similar inquiry was addressed to the other Locarno Powers. The terms of the French Government's memorandum in reply have been carefully studied by his Majesty's Government, which has been in close consultation on the subject with the French Government. The British Note states that his Majesty's Government agrees with the view expressed in the French memorandum and' that so far as Britain is concerned the provisions of the Locarno Treaty are in no way modified or denned by the conclusion of the new treaty. On May 15 the French and Soviet Foreign Ministers issued a joint statement that in effect was an acceptance of Germany's offer of April 13 to enter into an Eastern European non-aggres-sion pact, even though other members signed mutual assistance treaties among themselves. It declared that the two Govern' ments were in complete agreement on the proposal—which M. Pierre Laval, then French Foreign Minister, talked over with M. Joseph Stalin, MM. Molotoff and Litvinoff—for a new Eastern European pact of non-aggression, consultation, and non-assistance to an aggressor. It constituted also an implied invitation to Germany and Poland to join the regional system that its sponsors believed had been so devised as to obviate their objections to, the original "Eastern Locarno."