Socialist conference
FRENCH attitude — PREMIER’S striking speech
Paris, June 7. In the [French] Senate yesterday, M. Regimanset introduced an interpellation inviting M. Ribot to define the general policy of France. He said that the Senate was unanimously indignant when seven Frenchmen proposed to go to Stockholm to confer with Germans, and it wished to share Government’s responsibilities, being unable to admit that Frenchmen could show the least sign of halting when the country was still invaded.
M. Ribot replying said, that the German Socialists from the first were conscious accomplices in the crimes against humanity and even now approved atrocities by culpable silence. It was morally impossible for Frenchmen in the middle of the war and when France was still invaded to confer with such enemies.
Continuing his speech in the Senate, M. Ribot said: “Such confabulations in foreign towns can only create an illusion of peace that is dangerous. Never at any moment and especially when the struggle is the hardest because the end is approaching, can we leave such an illusion in the public mind and army. France requires all her strength especially moral strength as befits Frenchmen...”
