Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1937. THE GERMAN CLAIMS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 40, 26 November 1937, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1937. THE GERMAN CLAIMS.

“The Manchester Guardian” is not given to publishing statements for the mere sake of creating a sensation and the summary by its diplomatic correspondent of the German proposals to Britain may be accepted as having some justification in fact. Unless this view is a greatly mistaken one the success of Viscount Halifax’s recent visit to Berlin lies not in removing differences of viewpoint between Germany and Britain as in bringing those divergences into a clear-cut issue. As the English journal says, Britain is invited, in return for a nebulous amelioration of international affairs, to barter her interests and duty in Central Europe. Put in another way, causes of unrest and international friction in certain areas are to be removed at the expense of increasing the tension elsewhere. Acceptance of the reported proposals would mean, further, a serious crisis in the relations between Britain and France, for the latter has intense dislike for her Teutonic neighbour’s policy in regard to Czechoslovakia and Austria. That policy is the more dangerous because there is not within the Little Entente the solidarity there might be, though its members are unanimous in the desire to keep the Balkan Peninsula for its own people. In the case of Rumania and Jugoslavia a German drive, both political and economic, has been attended with a good deal of success. The Czechs have, however, been a thwarting influence, and they have had their own plans for stiffening in a similar way the attitude of the neighbour States. While Jugoslavia and Rumania have fear of Soviet Russia, Czechoslovakia has a treaty with that Power. Against a re-armed Germany, bent apparently on fostering all possible difficulties in the government of a democratic State, Czechoslovakia was bound to take steps to protect herself. Herr Hitler has denounced Bolshevism as the irreconcilable enemy, and, according to German propaganda, the Czechs are a herd of Bolshevists” and the Czecho-Slovak-Russian pact was formed for aggression against Germany. Yet it i& asserted that there is perhaps hardly a people in Europe in whopi Communistic influences have taken less root than in the Czechs and Slovaks. Some months ago French observers accused Germany of plotting to engineer a revolt in Czechoslovakia, hoping thus to reshape that country without open invasion. Herr Hitler asserted the other day that Germany had lost the inferiority complex and this, the first fruits of that change, does not give promise that it will be attended by abandonment of a policy of aggrandisement, which includes hopes of eventually controlling the whole valley of the Danube and all the natural resources of the Balkan Peninsula.