THE ENTENTE WITH FRANCE

Evening Star, Issue 23123, 24 November 1938, Page 19

THE ENTENTE WITH FRANCE

"It is only in the middle of the road that there cnn possibly be an Anglo-French Entente. The two countries cannot long inarch together if either of them has doctrinal or selfish designs. They must stand on a basis of moderation and mediation," writes Mr Sisley* Huddleston, who has lived many years in France, in the ' Contemporary Review.'.

" A military entente—whether militant for ideas or interests—would not last. It would bo dissolved in bickerings and recriminations. The common denominator must be a profound and equal resolve to achieve peace. There would be no reason to welcome the entente for its own sake; still less reason if it were regarded as a sheer necessity, to which Great Britain is, after vears of refusal, finally driven because there is no other point d'appiu on a hostile continent but France. ." Were the new entente a confession

of despair, an indication that the negotiations for a more general pact to replace the Locarno Treaty have hopelessly broken down, then, despite the regal trappings and the popular enthusiasm, we should be registering the gravest of diplomatic defeats. " No, the new entente must be the starting point of a diplomatic victory which will consist neither in refusing to the discontented nations of Europe their just demands, nor in weakly conceding under menaces their unjust claims, but in discovering how it is

possible to establish fairer conditions of international existence in the European framework.”