Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1933. EUROPEAN RELATIONS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 54, Issue 48, 6 December 1933, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1933. EUROPEAN RELATIONS.

The conversations between Mussolini and Litvinoff raise the question: Will Europe go back to the 1914 grouping of its Powers? In this time of national restlessness anything is possible except a continuance cf things as they are. The question is not to be confused with that of the probability of war. That is related to it, for in the influential circumstances a large place is taken by fear of war and "consequently by precautions against an outbreak. This fear is playing a sinister part —indeed, the most sinister part —in the reshaping of national relationships on the Continent. Nevertheless, something like the 1914 grouping may take place without the materialising of any bellicose threat, real or imaginary. Dread can fashion alliances as swiftly and surely as can any actual conflict, and if history be closely studied there will be met instance on instance of defensive alliances forestalling war. Conditions are ripening for a further period of such alliances, and this is true quite independently of the soundness or unsoundness of any forecast of trouble. The inevitable practical outcome of present conditions must take one of two forms —perhaps, with smaller probability, combine them both. Either a more resolute attempt will be made to perfect widely international means of averting war or attempts of the kind will be abandoned for a renewal .of defensive pacts. The first course is, for the time being, at any rate, not feasible, but it will surely be open again, though not until the causes operating against it are removed. In the meantime, the only recourse available is a return to defensive alliances, and these seem about to repeat the grouping of 1914. Austria's Chancellor Dollfuss, despite his courageous stand against Nazi interference and his profit from financial aid given by Powers once hostile, drops a hint of reconciliation with Germany as an "elder brother." Bulgaria is outside the Little Entente-—Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia, all enjoying status created by the victory of the Allies. Germany, Austria, Bulgaria—these, with Turkey, make up the 1914 grouping on one side, and Turkey nas gone out of Europe. On the other side, there are signs of a revival ot political understanding between h ranee and Russia, Mnd it only needs a little more —a Franco-Italian rapprochement the only difficult step~-to array the nations of Europe much as they were in 1914. The old order, fondly thought to be obsolete, reappears as a vital possibility.