M. GAZEL'S CAREER

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 21, 25 July 1945, Page 8

M. GAZEL'S CAREER

WIDE EXPERIENCE

(Special P.A. Correspondent.)

LONDON, July 23,

M. Gazel, who is at present in London and has called on the High Commissioner, Mr. Jordan, said that his work in New Zealand would cover every phase of relations between the two countries. "I hope," he said, "to make the official bonds as tight and sympathetic as our unofficial relations already are." • France, M. Gazel said, was particularly interested in New Zealand because she hoped to re-establish direct importation of wool from the Dominion. Though a limited supply had been received through the wool control, France's textile industries were working very slowly because of wool shortage. France was directly interested in the Pacific, where her possessions include New Caledonia and the Society Islands, and her interests included partnerships in the New Hebrides Condominium. It was hoped that trade would be established between those islands and the Dominion, and ultimately between Indo-China and New Zealand.

M. Gazel intends to travel to New Zealand via the United States, the Society Islands, and New Caledonia, calling on the Governors in the islands. He will be accompanied to New Zealand by his wife, and possibly their 20-year-old son. His married daughter is in Tangier. He will also take a diplomatic secretary and attache, and a commercial attache. An air attache and a Press attache will probably be appointed later. He will also be accompanied by private secretaries and two personal servants.

EDUCATED AT OXFORD

M. Gazel has had a distinguished career. He was educated in England at a private school,, then at, St. Edwards Public School, Oxford, which accounts for his perfect English. He completed his education in France and served in the French artillery during most of the 1914-18 war. In 1917 he was sent to Russia with a French military mission and witnessed the start of the Bolshevik revolution. Returning to the Western Front, he saw the end of the war with a French unit' attached to the American Army.

At the conclusion of hostilities M. Gazel entered the diplomatic service. His first post was as French atfache at Budapest. Next he went to Madrid as first secretary, and later he was at Brussels, Madrid, and Berne as counsellor. He was at Berne in 1939, but resigned from the Vichy regime in 1942 when the Germans occupied all France. He attempted to return to France. In Paris the Germans confiscated his papers and passport and told him to hold himself at their disposal. But M. .Gazel returned to Switzerland, slipping under the barbed wire. He remained there without his papers until France was liberated, living at Geneva. He returned to Paris last October.

In addition to the posts he has held in various parts of Europe before the war, M. Gazel served twice in the economic department of the French Foreign Office, when he negotiated at least 100 commercial commissions with several countries. He was a member of the French delegation which attended the Five-Power Conference in London in 1932. and of the French delegation to the World Economic Conference in 1933. In 1930 he was one of his country's representatives at the reparationo rnpfer^^cp. at The Hague.