ALLIED CO-OPERATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 March 1940, Page 5

ALLIED CO-OPERATION

EXTENSION TO COLONIES

PERMANENT RESULTS AIMED AT. WELFARE OF THE NATIVE INHABITANTS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, March 18. The Colonia] Secretary, Mr. MacDonald, and his French colleague, M. Georges Mandel, who had already conferred on Saturday and Sunday, met again this morning and agreed upon further measures to be taken to perfect the collaboration between the British and French colonial empires within the framework of the general agreement of November last.

In many parts of the world their colonial territories are neighbours, and the Ministers feel that both Governments have much to gain from the experience of the other. They therefore decided that the Colonial Office and the Ministry of Colonies should henceforth keep in constant touch and that an organisation should be created both in London and in Paris to maintain permanent liaison between the two departments. This collaboration, which must have as its principal object the greater wellbeing of colonial peoples, will be extended to the colonies themselves. There will be conferences from time to time between the governors of the neighbouring British and French colonial territories. This contact will also be established, between the administrative and specialist officers of the territories.

Meanwhile officers of the Colonial Office who accompanied Mr MacDonald have taken advantage of their visit to Paris to settle with their French colleagues a number of common problems regarding production, trade and communications.

Referring to the conversations in Paris, "The Times" says in an editorial: “The co-operation between Great Britain and France involves as a matter of course co-operation between the British and French Empires. The object is to work out and apply a method of cooperation which will be of permanent value in the development of the two colonial empires and which promotes the welfare of all their inhabitants.”