711.5112 France/6
Statement Made to the Associated Press by the French Minister for Foreign Affairs (Briand), April 6, 1927 1
At a time when the thought of the Western World is turning back to the solemn date of the entry of the United States into the War, I address to the American people the heartfelt expression of the very fraternal and trusting sentiments which will always be cherished for them by the French people. I have not forgotten that it fell to my lot to be the first to learn through an official communication from Mr. Sharp, then Ambassador of the United States at Paris, that the Federal Government had come to a decision which would exert such considerable influence in the history of the World War.
Ten years have gone by since the American nation, with magnificent enthusiasm, associated itself with the Allied Nations for the defense of threatened liberties, and in the course of those years the same spirit of justice and humanity has not ceased to inspire our two countries, equally concerned to bring the war to an end and to prevent its return.
France wishes around her an atmosphere of confidence and peace, and her efforts for this are shown by the signing of agreements aimed to remove the threat of conflicts. The limitation of armaments, sought also sincerely by our two Governments, is in response to the ardent wishes of the whole French people, on whom have weighed for more than half a century heavy military charges and who sustained for four years in their territory devastations not yet repaired.
The discussions over disarmament have brought out all the complexity of the technical problem submitted to the examination of experts, but they have served at least to make clear, politically, the common inspiration and identity of aims which exist between France and the United States. Two great democratic nations, devoted to [Page 612] the same ideal of peace, are following the same path towards the same end. The divergencies of views which may appear between them bear only on questions of procedure or method. And even where the proposals of France cannot meet those of the United States, they at least make clear to the American people how far France, with the one reservation of her security, is ready to go in the way of accomplishment.
Is it necessary to recall the French proposals at Geneva tending to limit the most dangerous threats of war in the future by the control of the industrial and chemical armaments of states? France went even further when she proposed the international establishment of a “General Staff of Peace”. Finally, in the organization of her own national forces, she gives, at this very moment, evidence of her eminently peaceful motives by contemplating the reconstitution of her armament from a purely defensive standpoint. The new military law at the present moment submitted to the French Parliament has indeed been conceived by men most inimical to the danger of militarism. It aims for the first time to “abolish the idea of profitable war” and to place upon all, both men and women, the abominable burden of war, the whole nation thus being placed on guard against a common danger. Does not such organization exclude all aggressive tendency?
More than this or that question of procedure in the technical framing of a project of disarmament, this fundamental question of a policy of peace, that is to say a will for peace and mind for peace, is what truly matters. For disarmament, after all, can only result from the will for peace on the part of the nations of the civilized world. And it is on this point that American thought is always sure to agree with French thought.
For those who devote themselves to this living reality of a policy of peace, the United States and France are already appearing in the world as being morally bound together. If there were any need between these two great democracies to testify more convincingly in favor of peace and to present to the peoples a more solemn example, France would be ready publicly to subscribe, with the United States, to any mutual engagement tending, as between those two countries, to “outlaw war”, to use an American expression. The renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy is a conception already familiar to the signatories of the Covenant of the League of Nations and of the Treaties of Locarno. Any engagement subscribed to in the same spirit by the United States with another nation such as France would greatly contribute in the eyes of the world to broaden and strengthen the foundation upon which the international policy of peace is being raised. Thus two great friendly nations, equally devoted to the cause of peace, would give the world the best illustrations [Page 613] of this truth, that the accomplishment most immediately to be attained is not so much disarmament as the practice of peace.
In memory of this tenth anniversary of the entrance of the United States into the war, the American Legion is preparing to make a pious pilgrimage to France where rest its dead and where it will hold its annual convention. I hope that the Legion will come here in as large numbers as possible. They will be welcome. From their too short stay among us they will carry away, I know, the memory of a France at work, as desirous of peace as she has been ardent in war, and widely open to all that is great and generous which makes her heart beat in unison with yours.