FRANCE AND ENGLAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23691, 24 December 1938, Page 12

FRANCE AND ENGLAND

By Winston S. Churchill, P.C., M.P.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THEIR CO-OPERATION

Speculation has been rife about the purpose and the result of the visit of the British Prime Minister and Lord Halifax to Paris. In tiie grey aftermath of Munich it was certainly necessary that the Ministers at the head of both countries should take stock of their position and of their mutual relations.

science and machinery could to-day give an easier and broader life for all but for this external menace which casts its shadow across so many lands.

Is Nazi aggression to be resisted or are the Western democracies to sit by with folded hands and watch resignedly the formidable events which impend in the centre and east of Europe? We remember the sardonic wartime joke about the optimist and the pessimist. The optimist was the man who did not mind what happened, so long as it did not happen to him. The pessimist was the man who lived with the optimist. Is this then to describe our joint or respective future?

An immense change has occurred In the balances of Europe; and farreaching reactions are also in progress in the public minds of both the western democracies. Great Britain is divided upon foreign policy as she has never been for 50 years. Political controversy is lively, and will become more severe. In France the impact of September's grim event has struck all the more deeply because it has been borne in silence. The Chamber endorsed MM. Daladier's and Bonnet's action almost unanimously, one single member of the Right, M. de Kerilis, alone voting with the Communists against it. But every section of French society has been shaken to its foundations.

It is now known that during the late crisis, Herr Hitler concentrated three-quarters of his armies against Czechoslovakia, and left on the French frontier, to guard his uncom-. pleted defences, a force far inferior to the French army. Everything we have learned of those days shows the solid state and quality of the French army. The sober confidence expressed in it by its chiefs was confirmed by everything that happened in the.mobilisation.

The bloodless conquest and virtual absorption of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany has transformed the military position of France. All her system of alliances in Eastern Europe has collapsed, and can never be reconstituted, except perhaps after a lapse of years and in an entirely different form. Hitherto, France and Great Britain have had the feeling that they were stronger than Germany. Henceforward a different order prevails. We have seen what Herr Hitler has been able to accomplish in spite of his weakness. We have now to learn how he will use his strength. If Munich and other triumphs were gained in the greenwood, what will be done in the dry?

Although the German army is growing stronger month by month, and although Germany possesses double the man-power of France, it must not be forgotten that the French reserves of trained soldiers are at present far larger than those of Germany. It is only three years since conscription was reintroduced, in breech of treaty engagements, throughout Germany. There are therefore only three annual quotas of traind reservists. These quotas are no doubt numerically equal to five or six annual quotas of French Reservists. But France has 20 quotas of men who have been trained; and for all of these there are well-established and matured formations. Besides this, the shortage of officers in Germany is grievous and cannot speedily be repaired. Either Herr Hitler must be a desperate gambler, or he must have felt pretty sure he would be let alone to work his will on the Czech Republic. As these fa,cts soak into the French nation they are bound to stir deep feeling. No one who has studied the history of France since 1870 can doubt that a fire is smouldering; but no one can say how and where it will manifest itself.

The statesmen of Great Britain and France have written, or will write, their names upon pieces of paper which Hitler willingly signs: but no one in either country feels any more security from such pious and vague affirmations of good will than the nations of the world felt about the Kellogg Pact, to which all subscribed.

It must be frankly admitted that the friends of France in England have sustained an impression of bewilderment. Even I, who for 30 years have steadfastly pursued, in peace, in war, in after-war, the cause of Anglo-French solidarity, am now somewhat baffled. One does not know what the new France stands for, or amounts to, at the present time, or what internal changes lie ahead of the Third Republic. These changes may be drastic. I have no djubt that by one road or another they will end in a reassertion of the French will-to-live. No one who knows the endurance and strength of France can believe the defeatist tales which are spread so eagerly, that that great nation is willing to resign itself to the role of a minor Power. There must be, and there, will be, a vehement revival on both sides of the Channel. But how it will come in France, and in what form, is a mystery of the future.

Too little attention has been paid to the remarkable speech of the Comte de Paris, in which he condemned the capitulation of Munich. This speech should recall to their duty certain elements of the Right who have allowed their alienation from the republic to lead them to take a poorer view of the strength of their country than is warranted by the circumstances. The reasons why France does not present herself in her full strength at the present time are not to be found among the working masses, who are also the soldiers of France, but in certain strata of the middle-class and the well-to-do. Something of this kind can also be seen in Great Britain.

The outbreak of strikes and disorders, fomented by the parties of the Left, may have the effect of momentarily weakening France, but it would be a great mistake to regard them as a sign of morbid weakness. The principle which united the mass of the French people in resistance to the dictatorships of the totalitarian Powers has been rudely shaken. The Socialist and Communist workmen who obeyed a few weeks ago the mobilisation orders with devotion and punctuality are no longer held to their duty by the theme of resistance to foreign tyranny. They do not quite understand what high world obiect they are now to toil for. If it is merely to be an appeasement of Nazi and Fascist dictators by concessions to their demands and submission to their wills, why should the hours of work be lengthened? The sun shines on a fair land; leisure is- sweet to the working masses. Undoubtedly

The two great peoples whose fortunes are interwoven should search their hearts. It is certain that they have only to rouse themselves in their true strength and in. the spirit of old days to put themselves in a position of security amid present dangers. They still have the power to command and safeguard their future, with which are intertwined the liberties gained for all the world by the long forging of the British parliamentary system and the swift, hard lessons of the French Revolution. Above all. it is indispensable that renewed exertions and sacrifices should be made by the British and French peoples, and that they should repel as a mortal thrust any manoeuvre to separate them from each other. • (World Copyright 1938 by CO-OPERATION.) (Reproduction, even in part, strictly forbidden.)