Foreign News: 20-Year Pact

• Share

Eight articles of the mutual assistance pact which General Charles de Gaulle and Marshal Joseph Stalin negotiated in Moscow were made public last week.

They provided 1) that the treaty, like the Anglo-Russian pact, should continue in force for 20 years, and in perpetuity thereafter unless denounced, after a year's warning, by either party; 2) that both countries would cooperate to end German aggression now and in the future; 3) that neither nation will enter into alliances or coalitions disgreeable to the other. The treaty's preamble resolved "to collaborate with a view to creating an international system of security. . . ." Next step: a similar Anglo-French pact.

General de Gaulle was also reported to have brought back from Moscow Russia's agreement to a plan to amputate the Rhineland from the Reich, convert it into an independent state under international, mainly French supervision. Twice before—in 1801-15 and 1919-30—France had briefly held the left bank of the Rhine. This time France intended her "Left Bank" plan to be more permanent. But whether or not General de Gaulle had convinced the Kremlin of the validity of Foch's dictum—". . . the Rhine is the military frontier of the western European nations against Germany" — his 20-year pact meant that he had brought France from 1939's mass of military wreckage and mobs of frightened fugitives back to her old standing as a No. 1 European power. And he had made himself one of the new Europe's most potent statesmen.