4 AUGUST 1917, Page 2

H. Ribot. the French Premier, has promptly denied the allegations

of HerrIfichaelis. It was true, he told the Chamber on Tuesday, that the ex-Tsar had in February last agreed to support the claim ef France to Alsace-Lorraine, and, if necessary, to assist in the 'establishment of a-self-governing buffer-State on the left bank of the Rhine. But France had no "vast plans of conquest," desiring only to recover what is-as her own. IL Ribot reminded the Chamber that on March 21st he had repudiated all policy of conquest or Of enforced annexation, and that on" May 22nd he had defined the French idea of peace as one "based upon the rights of peoples." 'Herr Michaelis, he said, had imputed ambitions to a sorely injured Prance to divert attention from the evidence of Germany's blood- guiltiness.