Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1935. GERMANY AND HER NEIGHBOURS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 300, 2 October 1935, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1935. GERMANY AND HER NEIGHBOURS

The activities of the Premier of Hungary, on his visit to Berlin have been interpreted as indicating overtures that will vitally affect the international relationships of Europe. The Berlin correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” says that Germany has been carefully looking round, after the agreements concluded or pending between Russia and Roumania. and Russia and Czechoslovakia. It is stated that the conversations last week between Germany and Poland suggest that Germany is exploring the possibility of military co-operation with Poland and Hungary. Since the breakaway from the League of Nations Herr Hitler has gone far toward retrieving the dangers of German His non-aggression pact with Poland, which was announced at the end of 1933, was undoubtedly a brilliant feat of diplomacy. The pact has not induced Poland to reduce her heavy military preparations, but, for the present and possibly for the whole of the prescribed ten years, Danzig and the Corridor, which ever since the Peace Treaty had been two of the worst danger-spots in Europe, and perhaps the worst of all, have ceased to give serious trouble, and the fierce tariff war between Poland and Germany has also been brought to an end. This restoration of Germany’s eastern frontier to a security unknown since the war left her free to prosecute her designs elsewhere. Now the scheme has been enlarged to embrace military cooperation with Hungary as well as Poland. When the settlement of the non-aggression pact with the Poles was announced, while Britain welcomed it as another extension of the machinery of peace France was naturally perturbed by an arrangement on which she had not been consulted, between the most dangerous of her rivals and an intimate friend and ally. The present position is also viewed with uneasiness, for it is considered that if Germany, Poland and Hungary form a bloc, there will be little chance for the independence of Austria which, willynilly, will be dragged into the combination, while Jugoslavia is in danger of taking the same direction. In July Italy and France issued draft proposals for a pact to ensure the independence of Austria, so that any menace by such a bloc as is feared by the Paris press will have far-reaching effect.