FRENCH NOT AT ADVANTAGE IN BERLIN DISPUTE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 91, 6 September 1948, Page 5

FRENCH NOT AT ADVANTAGE IN BERLIN DISPUTE

Doing Little To Regain Prestige (By Reece Smith, New Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist) Frankfurt, July 29. Showing up to no great advantage in the Berlin business are the French, who hold quarter shares in the administration of the city. I have heard it suggested more than once in Germany that if the French want to claim the privileges of a great power, it is time they did a little more towards earning them. '

When Berlin was at its touchiest, j France was doing nothing in the air ' lift. General Koenig was out of town much of the time, and as against the determination to remain expressed by Britain and America, France was reported- as tolerably willing to get out if pressure increased. For some of the vital days she did not even have a government of her own. Her most striking contribution to the Berlin scene seemed to be a tricolour oh a bent pole atop the German 1870 Victory monument. The Frencli may feel badly about the Germans in general and 1870 in particular, but sticking up a flag in this manner is more the action of school boys than statesmen. It is fully recognised that France was occupied during the war, fought over and looted to some extent, and the endeavours of ;the Resistance are known everywhere. But plenty of her people got along with the Germans. The France of the. Resistance was also the France of Laval, and, in the words of an Englishwoman in blockaded Berlin, it now behoves the French to do more to retrieve themselves than stick a flag on the 1870 monument. A part of the energy she is expending on a sour scented operation in Indo China might be something of a help lin Berlin just now. Germans rate France as third to Britain and America as an occupation power. British officials say the French zone is being pretty well harnessed to France’s economy, ahd the old agreement about no reparations out of current production is gathering nearly as much . dust in the far west of Germany, as in the far East.

A feeling is apparent that the old business of Germany winning one war and looting, and the French winning the next and looting, is going on as usual. A rather fresher approach seems indicated, if Europe is to become sound territory for Life Assurance Companies, i One good feature, so I was told, is that the administrators in the French zone, perhaps giddy with following changes of Government in Paris, are going ahead according to a set programme of their own, so the Germans at least know where they stand. In education this programme fe said to be better than that of any of the other occupying powers. • This array of facts may not be fair to the French. There is much they can say in rebuttal. But absence of such rebuttal suggests their official channels of publicity must be almost as sadly clogged as those of correspondents in Saigon.