PLEDGES OF HELP

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 9, 12 January 1938, Page 16

PLEDGES OF HELP

THE POSITION OF FRANCE

Interesting disclosures on recent critical events in Europe were made in a lecture by M. Berenger, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French Senate, says the Paris correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post."

M. Berenger said that on March 7, 1936, when the German reoccupation of the demilitarised zone became known af Warsaw, Colonel Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, informed j France that if a Franco-German war resulted from the action Poland would mobilise and place herself at the side of France. Colonel Beck also confided to friends that in such an eventuality he would resign from the Government and go to the front at the head of his regiment.

The lecturer further stated that the Yugoslav Government also informed the French Foreign Office that it was ready to order mobilisation to assist France if war resulted from the reoccupation. "If France did not mobilise," continued the lecturer, "it was for very honourable motives, of which the chief was the determination always to march in step with England in all our military and naval action." FRENCHMEN WARNED. M. Berenger advised Frenchmen "to reflect before criticising Viscount Halifax's visit to Germany and the Earl of Perth's diplomatic discussion at Rome." France, he said, would lose nothing through these "semi-official consultations" and "would fall into the most dangerous of traps if she relaxed in the slightest degree her close union with Great Britain."

The lecturer closed with these words; "The British community and the French Republic are today sufficiently armed. Tomorrow they will be more so. They represent 500,000,000 human beings who 20 years ago gave proof of their courage, tenacity, and success.

"Present on all the continents, keeping watch on all .the.oceans, vigilant in all the skies/they have the authority, in agreement v/ith the United States, to summon the world to a supreme rally for peace." '

He said that the final aim of Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini was to establish a German Empire in Central Europe and restore the Roman Empire on all Mediterranean shores. In case of a conflict, he said, France could count on the British Empire, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and "perhaps Russia."