FRENCH FEARS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26353, 7 January 1947, Page 4

FRENCH FEARS

GERMAN PEACE TREATY PROXIMITY TO DANGER ZONE Addressing members of the French community in Wellington at the customary New Year’s Day gathering, the Minister, M. Armand Gazel, alluded to the fact that within a few days a new President of the Republic would be elected. France, the Minister said, had not had a President since the resignation of M. Albert Lebrun, at Vichy, in 1940. “ Since then France has existed without a Constitution,” M. Gazel continued. “However, our country is at last to emerge from that provisional situation. All French people and friends of France desire that in so doing France will tackle victoriously her economic and financial restoration.” Under the Presidency of M. Leon Blum, who had courageously assumed direction during a difficult situation, the Government had made Draconian decisions with a view to balancing the Budget. The Government which would succeed the present ope after the election of the President of the Republic would have no light task in maintaining effectively that budgetary, balance, in continuing to expand production in all spheres, and rebuilding that which the war had destroyed. Moreover, it would have to put into shape the French Union within whose bosom Metropolitan France and all her overseas territories would group together harmoniously. Last, but not least, it would participate with the Allies in the elaboration of a peace treaty, to settle the fate of Germany. Unfortunately, there was reason to fear that, as a result of rivalry between the Allies and lack of appreciation of certain essential factors of the problem, the treaty would once again be “but a mediocre compromise from which the Germans will soon free themselves." France, which in 70 years had three times suffered, and each time more severely, from her bad neighbour, knew from experience that she could not exclusively rely on a hypothetical morale and political reeducation of the Germans, nor on international collaboration, no matter what attractive form it might take “ France is too close to the danger to be satisfied with abstract, theoretical, and easy solutions,” said M. Gazel. “It is, therefore, not without apprehension that she watches preparations being made for the fate and future status of Germany by an Areopagus which will be dominated by conceptions foreign to the practical security of the Reich’s neighbours.” “On this first day of a year which promises to be decisive for the restoration of France and for her security, let us make a sincere wish to see born and affirmed that peace of souls to which all men of goodwill aspire, that peace of the world which can only be reached by a policy of uncompromising security,” the Minister concluded.