Ernest Bevin, Alfred Duff Cooper, Georges Bidault and René Massigli signed at Dunkirk, on 4 March 1947, the Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and France. The authentic texts are English and French, in duplicate. UNTS registers it as No. 132; UKTS as Treaty Series 73 (1947).

Article I provides for consultation and agreed action, within the UN Charter (Article 107 while it remains operative), if a German policy of aggression threatens the security of either party. Article II requires the other party to give at once all military and other support in its power if hostilities with Germany begin, including after an armed attack within the meaning of Article 51. This is not an operations or occupation handbook.

Article III requires consultation if Germany fails to meet economic obligations from the Instrument of Surrender. Article IV organises bilateral economic consultation, having regard to the other members of the United Nations. Article V subordinates the treaty to the Charter and forbids an alliance directed against the other party.

Article VI: ratifications are exchanged in London; the treaty enters into force immediately on the exchange. The exchange took place on 8 September 1947. The term is fifty years, then without limit unless denounced a year in advance. Registration with the United Nations: 31 October 1947.

The preamble recalls the mutual-assistance alliances each party already had with the USSR and calls for a treaty of the Powers responsible for Germany. A year later, the Brussels Treaty (17 March 1948) widened the formula to Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, in the Western Union.

Wikipedia dates expiry to 8 September 1997, fifty years after the exchange of ratifications. The Brussels Pact, not this instrument, became the WEU frame. This is not a handbook of European defence today.

Cover: Dunkirk town hall, the civic building of the signing city, not the plenipotentiaries' table. Wikimedia Commons, free licence.

Sources consulted: Treaty of Dunkirk; Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance between the United Kingdom and France.