The President Speaks for France
The quality which above all has made M. Vincent Auriol a very successful President of the French Republic can be called political courage. It is the quality which has again and again taken him clean out of the well-worn paths of bazaar-opening French Presidents, to claim all the political rights given him under the constitution of the Fourth Republic and to make his charac- teristic contribution to stability and continuity. And it is this same quality which has led him to cross the Atlantic as the first French President to visit the United States, to tell first the Washington Press Club and then the United States Congress itself, in no uncertain manner, that it was an insult to suggest that France could be neutral in the face of aggression, and even to address the Conference of American Foreign Ministers, despite the protest of one of their number that, from a Latin- American point of view, France was just another colonial power. He has had the Press officers falling over themselves to explain that it was a mere coincidence that he happened to address Congress on the day they were to vote on the supply of troops to Europe (though he has not let the coincidence cramp his style). He has carefully explained that he stands above party but has at the same time recommended a programme of inter- national action which must be anathema to the largest party in France—the Communists. He has refused to be put off by the many important issues that divide the French and American Governments—the inclusion of Germans in the Atlantic Treaty forces, co-operation with Franco Spain, the tendency of the Americans and the British to monopolise the Atlantic naval forces, and the possible invitation to Greece and Turkey to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. He has even shown annoyance at the, attentions of Press photographers—a singularly un-American act. But be has been conspicuously successful in his main object of improving the understanding between the United States and France.
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