SOLIDARITY WITH BRITAIN

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15033, 2 September 1922, Page 7

SOLIDARITY WITH BRITAIN

FRENCH AMABASSADOR’S FAITH

The French Ambassador in London, the Comte de Saint-Aulaire, received the French colony at the Embassy on the occasion of the National Fete. The Ambassador thanked those English friends who had defended France and depicted her as she really was, and said he was glad, in spite of many attaoks, to see that the good relations between the two countries had not been impaired. He continued: —“In the question of reparations, as in practically every other question, .the interest of the two countries is seen to be the same as soon as they are considered as a.whole. France Is the country which per inhabitant buys most in England of any country in the world. What would become of that magnificent market if France were ruined owing to the failure of Germany to repay the enormous sums which she owes to France? The solidarity between France and Great Britain corresponds no less to a harmony of sentiments than to a similarity of interests. These must help us to come to an agreement with regard to others which are of but secondary importance. The feelings to which I allude inspired the noble enthusiasm with which so many British cities, following the example of London, have helped our devastated regions. .Some week back these feelings moved the two countries to their innermost soul with the same holy emotion when King George made his pilgrimage to the cemeteries of Flanders, to those sacred graves which are as countless altars to Franco-British amity. The adoption by the League of Help of a French village, and the gesture of a French mother In placing a hunch of flowers from our fields on the grave of a British hero, infuse that friendship with a principle of life and, as it were, a renewal of youth. It is manifestations like these which forbid us to forget. They seem to say, ‘Remember that France and Greats Britain are for ever united because the strongest bond between nations, as well as between Individuals, is to have suffered together for the ame cause and to have remained faithful to ope another in spite of the most terrible ordeals."