A VERITABLE LIE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 4710, 7 November 1917, Page 5

A VERITABLE LIE.

EX-CHANCELLOR’S VERSION7~

FRANCE HAS NO PLANS OF CONQUEST.

The allegations made by Dr Micliaelis, the ex-German Imperial Chancellor, to a party of German jounalists, that France had made an agreement with the Czar s Government to pursue ‘ f vast plans of conquest,” were denied bv M. Ribot, the French* Premier, in the Chamber of Deputies on July 31. He said:— ‘‘There are great inexactitudes—there is, indeed, a veritable lie—in the version of the Chancellor, notably as regards the role which lie attributes to President Poincare of having o-iven orders to sign the treaty over "the head of M. Briaiid. The Chambers"know liow things happened. M. Doumergue, after liis conversations with the Czar, asked and obtaned from M. Briand authorisation to take note of the promises of the Czar to support our claim to AlsaceLorraine, torn by violence from us, and, to leave us free to seek guarantees against further aggression, not by annexing to France territories on the left bank of the Rhine, hut by making, if need be, of these territories an autonomous State, protecting us as well as Belgium against invasion from beyond the Rhine.” “We never thought of doing what Bismarck did in 1871. . We therefoie have a right to give a denial to the allegaton of the Chancellor, who evidentlv knows of the letters exchanged iiiFebmary 1917 with Petrograd, and who has taken the liberty of rai sifying the sense of them, as the most illustrious of his predecessors did with the Fins telegram. V believer the Russian Government consents to publish these letters, we shall raise no objection to it. . . M. Ribot repeated again the 'ai ioiis declarations he had made on di - ferent dates renouncing a policy■ot conquest and annexation by force. “That,” he said, “is not the French ,poJicy. We groaned under the. oppression of this policy forty-five yews U and the revenge which no wish to°talip to-dav tlie veveiige.^ .tions the-ideas of justice, liberty, and AlsacA and Lorraine must return to France, because they belong to because they do not belong to most, who took them, not by persuasion as we did, but by violence—bv the iude rio-lit of war, which We repudiate. Me want* none of these violent, annexa-.tiont-wo want simply tile restitution nf what belongs to us. ’ . ~ M. Ribot recalled the terms of the after the secret sitting, and added What does the Chancellor, .want-. Ho is trying to distract attention from the terrible responsibility- - which weighs upon the conscience or the German Emperor and his 'counsellors after the. publication of the decisions 'reached on July 5 at- the. Potsdayn Council.