FRANCO-RUSSIAN PACT

Evening Star, Issue 22272, 25 February 1936, Page 9

FRANCO-RUSSIAN PACT

CONSIDERATION OF GERMAN ' REACTIONS THREE-POWER CONFERENCE IN VIEW Press Association — By Telegraph—Copyright PARIS, February 23. The Cabinet is expected to consider to-morrow possible German reactions to ratification of the Franco-Russian Pact and the prospects of a conference of aerial and naval forces, to whicli Germany will bo invited. Ministerial utterances to-day indicate that the Government has no intention of abandoning ratification of the pact. NO INFRINGEMENT OF LOCARNO BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S ATTITUDE LONDON, February 24. The Paris correspondent of ‘ The Times,’ recalling that the British Government, on the advice of the Crown law officers, decided that the FrancoSoviet pact did not infringe Locarno, otherwise the French would not have signed it, says: “The French would not barter Locarno against any conceivable treaty that the present or the predictable future could olfer. France is confident that Germany will think carefully before proceeding with dangerous and unjustified treaty-breaking in the Rhineland in face of the solid AngloFrench front.” The ‘ Manchester Guardian’s ’ Berlin correspondent says: “The failure of German diplomacy' to enlist British influence against the pact lessened German warmth towards England and revived allegations of hypocrisy. Whatever arguments can be adduced about the wickedness ,of Germany’s neighbours it is realised here that rearmament, in defiance of Versailles, would be accomplished at a heavy diplomatic price. Encircled more firmly than imperial Germany in 1914, and more severely so in an economic sense, Nazi Germany witnesses the rebirth of the Franco-Russian entente, and greatly fears a repetition of history by a renewal of the Anglo-Russian entente.”