AMERICAN ATTITUDE

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1940, Page 7

AMERICAN ATTITUDE

NO.BRIEF GIVEN FRANCE Rec. 9.55 p.m. Vichy, Sept. 24. The Petain Government Foreign Minister, M. Paul Baudouin, to-day stated I that the granting by France to Japan of air bases in Indo-China and the right of the passage of 6000 troops was not an offensive action against China, but to cover a possible Japanese evacuation from Canton. France and Japan had signed a military agreement and a commercial agreement was bqing negotiated. Japan would receive economic preference over all Powers. "France," he added, "hopes that the signature of a pact in which she recognises Japan's dominating political economic interests in the Far East will prove the beginning of a loyal Franco"Apanese entente." The Axis Powers had not exerted pressure to secure acceptance of the ■ Japanese demands. France agreed to the concessions when Mr. Cordell Hull, Secretary of State for the United States, told her the United States realised the necessity of her doing so. According to a Washington message the State Department categorically denied M. Baudouin's statement that the United States had approved of French concessions to Japan in Indo-China. "This Government has not at any time or in any way approved of the French concessions to Japan," said the statement. "The attitude of this Government to developments in Indo-China is as was expressed by Mr. Hull to-day previously." Mr. Hull had declared that the status quo of Indo-China was upset through duress. He reiterated the United States' disapproval but did not indicate possible United States steps to give concrete weight to the disapproval.