ANGLO-FRENCH CO-OPERATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19248, 12 August 1924, Page 8

ANGLO-FRENCH CO-OPERA-TION.

CONFERENCE OF PREMIERS. JOINT VISIT TO GENEVA. THE DAWES P.EPOBT. (Feosi Ocm Own Correspondent.) LONDON, July 2. M. Horriot, the new Prime Minister of Franco, and Mr Ramsay MacDonald have spent part of a week-end together. Distinguished French journalists came over in the hope of being able to tell the French people exactly what transpired at the meeting, but they, as well as the English press, have not been taken into the confidence of the Premier. Instead, an official communique on the discussions nas been issued, from the oreign Office. It states: — “A friendly and informal discussion took place on the several questions arising out of the Dawes Report, and the measures to be taken in order to put it into execution. No definite conclusions could, of course, be arrived at pending consultation with the Italian and Belgian Governments. “The conversation revealed general agreement between the French and British points of view, and on the part of the two Prime Ministers a common determination to meet the difficulties which beset their countries, and, indeed, tne whole world by continuous co-operation. It was agreed that, subject to the convenience of the other Allies, a conference should be held in London not later than the middle of July, for the purpose of definitely settling the procedure to be adopted. The two Prime Ministers agreed to pay a brief visit to Geneva together at the opening of the Assembly of the League of Nations m September next.” Various conjectures have been made regarding the subjects discussed by the two Premiers. The Morning Post, for instance, “has reason to believe, “that the conversations. though cordial, did not enter into details. No assurances were given regarding security' or sanctions should Germany default, and, indeed, there was not much discussion on the Dawes Report, but Mr MacDonald is reported to have laid stress on the advantages of general disarmament, and to have given some assurance, though vague in character, that should Germany default in carrying out the experts’ recommendation Great Britain would be found at the side of her Allies. “It is understood,” the Morning Post further remarks, “that the question of Russia was also raised, and that M. Herriot gave an assurance that before he would make any definite overtures to the Bolshevists he would first of all communicate his plans to Great Britain and the United States. The two statesmen also had some talk about their own parliamentary difficulties, ana the sympathy which M. Herriot felt for Mr MacDonald in that respect was fully reciprocated by the sympathy which Mr MacDonald felt for M. Herriot. It is even said that Mr MacDonald mentioned Mr Lloyd George, and that M. Herriot in his turn alho had something to say about M. Millerand and Poincare.” ‘ OCCUPATION OF THE RUHR. General Nollet, the new Minister of War in Franco, accompanied by M. Herriot as far as Dover, and M Peretti Della Rocoa, Secretary-general of the Foreign Office, came over to Chequers. “Both sides being in principle favourable to the policy of th.o Dawes Report,” says the Daily Chronicle, " the need is to "remove obstacles to its adoption. If these the rnost obvious is the present. French occupation of the Ruhr. M. Herriot has declared himself against the Ruhr method. But if he agrees to abandon it, it will presumably be on condition she will ask something in return. What will that something be? Remembering fhat French popular opinion chiefly values the Ruhr as a pledge ot national security, it would seem likely that his equivalent would bo sought on the security side. “This tallies with the renewed talk about security in the French press, and also with the circumstances that M. Herriot’s companion as far as Dover was General Nollet. General Nollot’s appointment provoked a storm of protest from the German reactionaries, but it is not a protest which British opinion should in the least degree countenance. The General, who has hitherto been head of the Inter-Allied Disarmament Commission, has in that post shown great ability and great loyalty to his Allies, and we all owe him a debt for what has been dope to make German disarmament real. Ho has thereby become one of the best-hated living Frenchmen among all such Germans as wish to revive German militarism; but ho is not the less our friend for that. It would be a grave injustice, and alsi a signal folly, to confuse him with annexationist French officials like M. Tirard or Gonerad de Metz.”

KERNEL OF THE QUESTION, Lo Temps, of Paris, considers that the kernel of the whole question with which Mr MacDonald and __ M. Herriot have to deal is to agree upon the means by which Germany is to make annual payments imposed upon her by the experts’ plan. It points to the danger to British trade which must arise from the impulse given to German trade as soon as the credit of German industry is restored by successful application to the experts’ scheme, but does not agree with Mr LJoyd George that the period of danger is limited to four years. It considers, on the contrary, that the burden of payments when the scheme is in full working order will spur Germany on to still further efforts. Le Temps has no faith in any system of cukrantees, however ingenious. France, it says, requires not ‘ guarantees/ but certitudes. To ask for certitudes means that all parties interested, and in the first place the Allies of France should be invited to organise payment of reparations in such a manner that it will be accomplished with certainty, and that payment will consolidate instead of threatening peace. Guarantees will' be useless if the application of the experts’ plan is to provoke a fever of commercial expansion in Germany and a meat recrudescence of unemployment in England. The essential problem is the method of payment. “We know, in fact,” says the Daily Telegraph, “ That the Prime Minister surprised oven M. Herriot by the strong feeling with which he. spoke at Chequers of France’s need of security and his agreement to the resumption of Allied military control over the disarmament of Germany. Nothing in the proceedings is more notable that the agreement between the two Prime Ministers that means should ho devised for the safeguarding of France’s security by a mutual Pact of Guarantees under the aegis of the League of Nations—a matter which will bo more ripe for decision by the time that they and the other Allied statesmen appear at the League Council and Assembly in about two months’ time. The idea of attaining French security by this means is now much more than ‘in the air,’ and M. Herriot has made plain at the Chequers meeting that the occupation of the Ruhr was never regarded by him as having any importance in this connection. That occupation, military as well as economic, he does not desire to continue once the Dawes scheme is in full operation and the required, guarantees for its continuance have been provided. Among these he has suggested the retention by the Allies, acting together, of control of the throe Ruhr ports occupied in 1921. ‘So far as informal and general discussion between the two Prime Ministers could prepare the way for the settlement so long delayed and so bitterly needed, a remarkable and invaluable advance is to bo recorded as the outcome of the meeting at Chequers. To have ouocted a complele change in the moral conditions of discussion as between our own and the French Governments is not everything, but it is almost everything, for the greatest by far of all the obstacles in the oath to settlement has been the existence as between those Governments of a latent diversity of aims and antagonism of wills which now at last have disappeared, ..never, we earnestly hope, to trouble the cause of peace in Europe again.”