Negotiation with Japan Preferred to War with All Advantages Resting with Aggressors Vichy, Sept. 29. French find complete justification for their realist policy is-i-vis Japan, which stamp ped the Franco-Japanese Indo-China pact, in the completion of the tripartite military alliance, political circles said today.
The Italian-German pledges to aid Japan against an aggressor would have been invoked imme diately against France had the Vichy Government continued its previous policy of supporting Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek ani id refused to negotiate with Japan on Japan's ultimatum, they added.
With Britain. "strategically _retreating" from China and the United States unprepared to help the French defend Indo-China's integrity, the French today feel satisfied that their pact with Japan was the only means of keeping their Far Eastern Empire intact.
The Alternatives The French, placed at a crossroads, had to choose, a policy between two Either to continue their policy, together with Britain and America, aiding China, which inevitably Would provoke Japan to attache Indo-China," In that emergency, the French, defeated in Europe by Ger many, would be helpless to resist 0 Japanese attack, The French could have agreed to negotiate with Japan and recognize Japan's position as the biggest Power in the Pacific with the mastery of the seas around Indo-China The Ministry of Colonies favoured the former; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the loter and French business. Circles, with tremendous investments In Indo-China and elsewhere in the For East, immediately rallied around the Foreign Office views.
'The Government realized that, after Mers-el-Kebir, Oran, was, attacked that' England' could not help the French in Indo-China if the frst alternative were adopted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.