The President's News Conference

PRIME MINISTER LAVAL'S VISIT

THE PRESIDENT. I am very glad to welcome the correspondents of the French press to the United States. We are glad that you may enlarge your acquaintance in our country and amongst our people.

I wanted to express the appreciation that I feel and that I know the whole country feels at the coming of the President of the Council of Ministers of France. He has done a great honor to our country, and especially so in these times of very grave responsibilities. I am confident that his visit will result in profits for the future. I need not repeat to you that the purpose of our conversations has been to find fields from which contributions can be made to the enlargement of good will and confidence both in the relations of both our countries and in the economic world.

I have sometimes said that we are suffering more from frozen confidence than we are from frozen securities. And the press of our country plays a major part in the development of good will and such confidence as the world is today in need of, in search for fields for cooperation and constructive action. And I trust that the French press may carry away with you pleasant recollections of the United States, and that you will realize the thorough good will and the friendliness of the American people.

The President of the Council and myself have been engaged in drafting up a preliminary draft--a short statement to be issued upon Mr. Laval's departure, and we are to have a further meeting at 10:30 tomorrow to consider that draft.

Further than that, I haven't anything more that I can tell you today.