AN AUTHORITATIVE STATEMENT.

Marlborough Express, Volume LIV, Issue 84, 10 April 1920, Page 5

AN AUTHORITATIVE STATEMENT.

ALLIED PROPOSALS IGNORED

A DELICATE SITUATION

(Imperial News Service). (Received April 9, 8.40 p.m.) LONDON, April 8. It is learned authoritatively that France acted entirely on her own responsibility in deciding to advance m the neutral zone. Britain, Italy, .Belgium, and America all opposed such action. . The French military move has caused an obviously delicate situation. The British and French Governments are discussing the matter in the hope of easing the tension. When the trouble started in the neutral zone it was essential that steps should be taken to restore order, but the question was whether .Allied or German forces should tu.il>. One proposal was that Germany be auade responsible for restoring order and be allowed to send troops to the liuhr under the strictest guarantees, which defined that Marshal Foch and Allied officers should accompany the -German forces in order to determine when retirement was justified. % Anotlicr proposal was to leave .the ■decision to the German Government, strictly providing that if the zone< were not evacuated immediately circumstances permitted the Allies .would exercise the option of occupying important German centres. The German Government appears :to have acted precipitately, and France responded by adopting the plan which had been suggested as a ,last resort by th<; Allies as a whole. The Allies, except France, felt that ■Germany .ought to restore order, and they opposed the idea of their regular forces being called on except as a last resort to undertake what were virtually police duties. France, with "jher long experience of the German yoke and the'proved worth of German "assurances, evidently concluded that the German movement of troops into the neutral spne was undertaken, for some ulterior object. France doubtless acted in good tf&ith, but the immediate result of that responsibility for her action tconnot be shared by the Allies .as. a whole. Certainly there is no intension on the part oi the British Government to allow British soldiers to .act as police between hostile Gorman factions

The view taken in London is that <:ur army of oocupation is on the .Rhine for a totally different purpose. If and n-hen French suspicion of •ulterior German motives and the deliberate flaunting of the terms of the Peace Treaty 'become accomplished facts the situation would instantly •change, and the ■ Allies doubtless "would be prepared- to act vigorously and concertedly; but for the time 'Inking it may. be. taken that no British fcoldjer will, participate in the occupation of Germain cities in the. neu* tral zdnf). . , • . , •. > . .