The Anglo-French Talks

Southland Times, Issue 23675, 25 November 1938, Page 4

The Anglo-French Talks

It is to be hoped that Mr Chamberlain’s stormy passage across the English Channel will not prove to have been a symbolical approach to the AngloFrench talks now taking place in Paris. There are signs, indeed, that indoor storms are brewing and that the Prime Minister has stepped from an unquiet sea into an atmosphere of political disturbance. On the eve of Mr Chamberlain’s departure from London the French Prime Minister was threatening to postpone the meetings, to convoke the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate and seek a vote of confidence if his finance programme were not approved “without major modifications.” A later message states that the Cabinet has “finalized its policy”, but in the meantime there are rumours of an approaching general strike, 17,000 metal workers have already thrown down their tools, the newspapers are asking why Herr von Ribbentrop is making a visit to Paris at this particular

time—apparently overlooking the fact that a Franco-German nonaggression pact is ready for publication—and a former Minister, M. Frossard, wants M. Daladier and M. Bonnet to tell Mr Chamberlain that “peace has not returned after the Munich Agreement and the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia has not appeased the appetite of the Reich.” It must be admitted, of course, that almost every day brings new reasons for French uneasiness. Reports from Berlin suggest that Germany is waiting hopefully or expectantly —for the appearance of a fascist regime in France; and although the country has its political destiny in its own hands the growth of unrest coincides uncomfortably with the rumours of German pressure. Moreover the frontier agreement with Czechoslovakia seems to have been a perfect piece of diplomatic timing. The announcement, on the eve of the AngloFrench talks, that Germany has gained a motor highway which had not been mentioned at Munich because of British opposition, is not likely to encourage French opinion to accept larger doses of appeasement. Finally, the defeat of the Hungarian Government, accompanied by a suggestion of German pressure in Budapest, is one more sign that the Naris adhere to their programme of expansion and that the pace might even be accelerated. Into the atmosphere of unrest created in Paris by these reports from the storm centres of Europe comes Mr Chamberlain, an imperturbable Englishman committed to a policy that requires rather more faith in the innate goodness of statesmen than the sceptical French might be capable of feeling in the midst of their domestic and external difficulties. Perhaps the most significant comment on the possible drift of the conversations comes from The Times, which says editorially that there must be “definite uneasiness” in Anglo-French relations as long as France has commitments in Eastern Europe to which Britain is not a party, “but in which, at the moment, she might reluctantly become involved through her commitments to France.” It is not unlikely that the Paris talks will introduce a change of direction in French foreign policy. Whether or not the change can be accomplished without disturbance on a large scale is a question that will be asked" many times in the capitals of Europe in the next few days.