A. —5d

No. 7. The Minister for Foreign Affairs to M. de Fleuriau, Ambassador of the French Republic in London. Paris, June 4, 1925. The British Ambassador, acting on instructions from his Government, has communicated to me a despatch (of which a translation is enclosed) addressed to him by Mr. Chamberlain on the 28th May last. This despatch formulates the views of the British Government on the French draft reply to the German proposals of the 9th February for a pact of security. Annexed to it is an amended text of the French draft reply. The French Government much appreciate the frank and friendly tone of the British reply. They do not fail to recognise the effort made by the British Government to meet the French point of view. They desire especially to record their high appreciation that the British Government still hold to the idea which found expression in 1919 in the signature of the guarantee treaties, and recognise the importance for the cause of peace of a close collaboration between the two nations. They have observed with particular gratification that the views of the British Government correspond with their own as regards the necessity for France to send a reply to the German proposals setting forth the views common to the Allies. In our desire to achieve so important an agreement between France and England we have made a fresh effort to meet the objections of the British Government and to reconcile the anxiety which they evidently feel regarding any general extension of the joint guarantee of the arbitration treaties. We realise that in present circumstances the fact that the constituent elements of the British Empire are scattered throughout the world leads His Majesty's Government to limit their undertakings on the European continent to those which they consider essential, even when their interests are indistinguishable from those of the continental Powers. Mr. Chamberlain's despatch to Lord Crewe makes it clear that His Majesty's Government feel themselves unable to assume fresh obligations regarding the situation created in Europe by the peace treaties except in so far as concerns the maintenance of the existing territorial arrangement on the western frontier of Germany. The French Government are glad to note, however, that the British Government do not thereby intend either themselves to question, or to encourage any other Power to question, the provisions of the treaties which form the basis of the public law of Europe. Further, we fully understand that their refusal to bind themselves definitely in advance except as concerns the Rhineland means only that the British Government, without disinteresting themselves in what might happen at other points, merely reserve their full liberty of examination and decision. For their part, the French Government consider that their anxiety to maintain the general peace and the liberty of all the nations of Europe as well as the exigencies of their own national defence, preclude them from limiting their preoccupations to solicitude for their own security alone. Their view is that any attempt to modify by force the state of affairs created by the treaties would constitute a menace to peace to which France could not remain indifferent. That is why, in their draft reply to the German proposals, they consider it essential to preserve their liberty to go to the assistance of States to which they deem it necessary to grant their guarantee without it being possible for the provisions of the proposed Rhineland Pact to block their way and thus ( to be turned against them. The verbal explanations which have reached them from the British Government have given them a firm assurance of this. In our eyes this is an essential condition of the proposed pact; and in view of the capital importance of this reservation for the maintenance of peace it is indispensable that it should be clearly expressed in the reply to Germany ; to keep silence on this point would be to risk giving rise to wrong interpretations of the Rhineland Pact and encouraging dangerous aspirations. Such is the object of the new wording proposed for paragraph 2 of section IY and of the restoration of paragraph 4 of section V, appropriately amended. In paragraph 2 of section IV the new French formula lays down, with this object, that the eventual Franco-German arbitration treaty must allow of coercive action being taken not only where such action shall be taken " consistently with the provisions of treaties in force between the parties " (which corresponds to the idea contemplated by the British Government), but also " in the case of failure to observe a treaty guaranteed by the parties or by any one of them." France intends in this way to reserve her action in the case of a violation of an eventual arbitration treaty between Germany and Poland, for example, or between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Paragraph 4 of section V, while leaving England and the other Powers signatory of the Rhineland Pact quite free to withhold their guarantee from arbitration treaties between Germany and her eastern or southern neighbours, aims at giving France the right to guarantee these treaties herself so as to ensure their full effectiveness and to remove still further the possibility of forcible intervention. The other changes introduced into the British wording represent nothing but what appears to be in French a clearer expression of our common views. Thus the idea contained in section VI of the British draft is expressed and transferred in the form of an addition to paragraph 3 of section V, where it fits in naturally. The British section VII thus becomes section VI, and at this point the French Government, while agreeing to replace the idea of the co-ordination of the agreements by the idea of making them simultaneous, as proposed in the English text, think it nevertheless necessary in conformity with the general idea which pervades the whole draft, to restore the principle that the agreements to be come to ought to be registered by the League of Nations and placed , under its auspices. This is, moreover, the idea expressed by Mr. Chamberlain in his speech of the 12th March last to the Council of the League of Nations and also in his despatch of the 28th May to Lord Crewe. As regards the projected arbitration treaty between Belgium and Germany, we have inserted straightaway a positive formula subject to the consent of the Belgian Government which we have reason to believe will probably be forthcoming.

11