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Show rFrancWill Not ; Yield Navy For ,Uss By Germans ,....;.. -c h.ts refused to "i'V iir.inobillKd 'L- ,. . .,, - Britain , i ": u-;on full observance rV"r Fieri-Gen::..!! armistice u:e reconciliation of Mar-"jr,.--i KvUHs Petain and : Vrre Laval, an official spokesman "dissipation of all nnsun-deauum' nnsun-deauum' between Peiain and !u;uunie ous.ed as vice preimei ,on December 13 was undertaken oy the 84-year-old marshal in a nfove to curb a violent campa gi I in the Para press against the Vichy government, it was stated. There was strong speculation I that the ardently pro-German Laval La-val might be restored to a place m the Vichy regime, perhaps as a special intermediary between Vi-cny Vi-cny and the German authorities in Paris. Petain's special emissary to Paris at present is Count Ferdinand Ferdi-nand de Brinon, who worked closely close-ly with Laval during the latter s striving for closer collaboration between France and Germany. A revision of Petain's cabinet and a reaffirmation of collaboration collabora-tion with Adolf Hitler was antici- UUil WlUll pated. ' Agovemment spokesman asserted as-serted Monday that as a result of the Pe tain-Laval meeting, aboard a railroad coach at La Ferte, 25 miles north of Vichy late Saturday, French domestic and foreign policy "has not undergone un-dergone the slightest cahnge" and remains exactly as it was the day Laval was ousted and temporarily placed under arrest. Petain remains the supreme chief of state with all power in his hands and any ultimate cabinet cabi-net shifts will not affect this authority, au-thority, the spokesman said. "France lives in the same regime as before and France's policy consists con-sists of respecting to the letter every line of the armistice convention," con-vention," he said. "It must be perfectly understood under-stood that our fleet will not be used against our former allies, just as it must be understood that we will continue to assure and safeguard safe-guard our empire overseas." (In Berlin, high German quarters quar-ters spoke cautiously of the ramifications rami-fications of the iPetain-Laval reconciliation, rec-onciliation, saying, "we have taken no official standpoint because it is a matter of French internal policy; pol-icy; we are waiting to see the significance sig-nificance thereof.') The official French radio Mon--day broadcast an explanation of the dramatic meeting of Marshal Petain and Laval. "It was for imperious reasons of domestic policy that Petain decided de-cided to deprive himself on December De-cember 13 of the aid of Laval, as Marshal Petain announced over the radio the next day," the broadcast broad-cast explanation said. "Because of circumstances those reasons could not be thoroughly explained to French opinion. As a result there was a certain amount of confusion in many rninds which the Paris newspapers did not hesitate to exploit and in7 crease, favored as they were by ' the difficulties of the moment. "However, the chief of state desires de-sires more than ever to have a union of all Frenchmen around him, more than ever he hopes to avoid the dangers of a division of opinion, more than ever he desires de-sires to dissipate the misunderstandings misunder-standings which could harm cordial cor-dial relations between the (German) (Ger-man) occupation authorities and the French government. "It is for these reasons that Petain Pe-tain desired to have Saturday's talk with Laval.'' |