FRENCH RADICALS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 8 April 1929, Page 9

FRENCH RADICALS

ATTITUDE TO ALSACE, TRUCE WITH GOVERNMENT. PARIS, March 25. Efforts are being made to persuade the Radicals to vote in support of the Government policy in Alsace, now being discussed in tne Chamber, and so to obtain an imposing majority which will impress foreign opinion. It is even suggested that such a truce between tno Radicals and the Government is likely to be extended over the whole period of the international negotiations of the reparations experts and the ratification by the Chamber of the agreement reachTlie Volonte, however, advises the Radical Party to abstain in a body, and so to keep their hands free to deal with the Alsatian question when opportunity arises. The religious question which is at the bottom of the Alsatian trouble complicates the whole consideration ol it by French parties. Church and State are not separated in Alsace, and the French Catholics, so Nationalist in other matters, cannot be acquitted of having encouraged the movement which had now led to- autononiism. Indeed, the Vic-toire only this moraine; says outonomism would not existbut. for Alsatian hatred of x.he trench secularist laws. The Radicals and the Socialists, on the other hand, who would like see- the law applied to- Alsace, are there in the position of being tho most. pro-French of the parties.