FRANCE AND BRITAIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 June 1946, Page 5

FRANCE AND BRITAIN

•GOUIN STRESSES NEED FOR COMMON POLICY FUTURE DEFENCE QUESTIONS LONDON, May 30. “Now that American financial assistance will ensure France’s economic re-establishment, the time is nearer for Britain and France to consider a common policy aimed at making sure there is no further aggressiveness from renascent .Germany,” said the French President (M. Gouin) in an interview with the Paris correspondent of The Times. “A defensive British-French alliance would prove a valuable safeguard.” M. Gouin said, he regarded the French-American financial agreement as a great achievement in international co-operation. He admitted that the French Government had placed French requirements higher than the credits allowed, but added that private credits in America, the arrangement of which was proceeding favourably,, would practically make up the deficiency. M. Gouin said a settlement of the German problem, which was plainly a pivotal issue for France, could not be achieved piecemeal. He considered the present approach to the peace settlement was misguided and therein lay a stumbling block to the early conclusion of the Four-Power negotiations. . , „ M. Gouin said he envisaged for Germany not merely the strictest form of political, economic, and miliary control, but a quasi-permanent occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr—not by France alone.