NEEDS OF FRANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 September 1918, Page 3

NEEDS OF FRANCE.

«a . STATEMENT BY MISSIONER. "My impression of this port," said M. Motte (a leading woollen manufacturer and spinner of Koubaix, and a member of the French Mission visiting Australia) to a Sydney gathering a few days ago (says the Sydney Morning Heraid) "is that it is quite sufficient for 100,000,000 people if you had them. I was much struck with the immense quantity of wool I saw in Woolloomooloo Bay. We want that wool on the other side. We want it badly to give work to our men. There are certainly in the Department du Nord, where I com from, 1,000,000 people who live on wool. Ido not mean they eat it. These men have been fighting for four years, while their wives and children have been in bondage under the German yoke. When the war in over we will want your support. You will have to give us all the necessary support so that our men can go back to work immediately. We must organise so that the day the war is over the raw material will be poured out of Australia into France to set the wheels going again, otherwise our workmen will starve, as heir women and children have been tarving for four years. France must ;.o helped. The alliance must go on after ' ths war. We must never forget the iVmd we have entered into. Northern France has been one of the best customers, and it is only business to support a customer, especially a customer like Ronbaix, where we are good pays. We are full of 'spring and "buck,' but we are •ji-oatly handicapped. We will now work "to rebuild France, just as our fathers worked to bxiild it. We must never forget there has been a war. Tell -our tradesmen, your commercial travellers and your workers never to forget that Germany has been our enemy for four years and more. Germany set the world on fire, and during these four ' -cars our mankind has been killed off. It ,vould be too easy if the Germans were •ot punished. They must be made to •el and realise their position. The Germans went to war to satisfy their pasions. If thev had waited 50 years they vould have been masters of the word vithout war. But they wanted to settle bv military means to satisty -heir passion. They must be made to suffer, and the only thing for civilised „eople like the Allies to do is to make M,em realise their position. Your workmen should realise that they must support their brothers-tie workmen ot Northern France."