PROTOCOL OR FACT.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 308, 29 December 1924, Page 3

PROTOCOL OR FACT.

A CONTINENTAL BLOC. REACTIONS TO NEW TORY RULE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON", November 21. Tlicre are strange reactions abroad, not altogether due to, but at least following the coming into power of the new Government. Mr. Baldwin and M. Herriot have greeted each other with quite friendly warmth—and the Herriot Government seems quite firmly established —but the atmosphere surrounding the question of the protocol becomes increasingly diflieult to pierce. The Dominions and America alike are generally unfriendly to the protocol, and we have the announcement to-day tli.it the British Government, while officially declaring that it is not throwing over the protocol, is omitting from the agenda for next month's meeting of the League Council at Rome, discussion of the security and disarmament protocol. This is being done because the Dominions must he fully consulted before the Government ratifies the protocol. On this point a •'Times'' leader to-day says:-- "Tile League is not a parly matter, but the position of the Conservative party is that now, in a matter which should lie in no way a party issue, it finds the country half committed to a policy in the formation of which no Conservative had any lot or part. Yet Hie British delegation was naturally taken a* representing the "United Kingdom by the foreign missions. The French delegation in particular it=elf broadly representative and incbidinir men who sit so widely apart in the ( liambcr as M. Loueheur'and M. Pusal-Boncour was delighted at the unusual identity of view which was established or appeared to be established between itself and its British colleagues. It might easily be discovered, should the protocol ever be put into practice, that there is a sharp divergence of interpretation, but the fact remains that in the concentrated negotiation of those five weeks. French diplomacy appeared to gain what it had sought in vnin for five years previously. Great Britain came into a system of alliances against any possible aggressor. Xot only was lier help assured on the north-eastern frontier of France, but should any net of aggression be perpetrated against any of her friends or allies in Central Europe, Great firitain would also become involved and would be bound "loyally and effectively" to support the victim." The Dominions certainly are being more freely consulted, for there have been pourparlers in Downing Street between the High Commissioners and the Government. But for the moment, vis a vis the protocol, it is the attitude abroad that matters. There is the setback through the U.S.A. presidential j election. Again, in spite of the genuine feeling which Mr. Macdonald and M. Herriot evoked for the League of Nations, there are still to be reckoned with the currents in Germany and in France, which have been, too, setting in a more reactionary dircrtion of late. It is said the Baldwin Government was inclined to go some way towards considering sympathetically the lapse of the guarantee I Treaty signed in 1919, whereby Great ' Britain and America were to come to I the aid of France in the event of aggresi sive attack on her territory. At the | moment, the Baldwin Government, ' having made no special haßte towards getting into action, gives some ground for the question whether they are envisaging it as one of pact rather than protocol. Mr. Chamberlain has indeed assured M. Herriot that if the processes devised to the protocol are unacceptable to the Dominions, the interest of France will be secured "iv some other way." At the same time it should be added that Mr. Austen Chamberlain, whose appointment as delegate to Borne, has been announced, does not, as some would have it, mean that the present Government is inimical to tho-League. The main object of Mr. Chambevlain'a visit to the Rome session of the League Council next month will be to demonstrate the Government's sincerity in making the League a prominent faci tor in its foreign policy and to enable j Mr. Chamberlain to establish direct personal contact with the other members of the Council. It will be Mr. Chamberlain's first adventure in League affairs, and it is known that he is as keen as was Mr. Macdonald in strengthening the League nmi turning it into a completed and effective instrument for preventing war. The passage in the Conservative election manifesto which declared that "the support and strengthening of the League of Nations on practical lines should, in our opinion, continue to be a cardinal I principle of British foreign policy," was one of the most deliberately framed sentences in the manifesto, says the I "Times." On the Continent there are not wanting indications, however, of a tendency towards a Franco-German understanding. There are people who believe that the traditional policy of England has been to prevent Germany and Prance from coining together, that though the English do not wish them to be enemies, they prefer thet. not to be friends. What, the Labo' - Government did was to substitute a real feeling for internationalism and now that the MacDonald Government has fallen, both in France and Germany, it is being asked whether the return of the Conservatives means a return to that other policy, the Balance of Power. Should this happen, impetus will lie given to the idea of a Continental Bloc as a means of preventing Great Britain from being the arbiter of the Continent, and this tendency will develop into a marked 1 movement should Mr. Baldwin lead his j cabinet into over-stressing Imperialism. ! An idea, which has received support in Germany and has also the Bupport of j those who believe in the Continental i Bloc, is to organise the world by continents, instead of on the basis of j a World League of Nations, and that in Europe for a beginning would pro- [ bably mean understandings between | France and Germany and Russia. The German inventor of this organisation by i continents acknowledges that the British Empire, being spread as it is through all continents, would present a difficulty, but he proposes that all should form a League in itself.

It is not asserted that these things are all fully fledged movements. They represent some only of the reactions in polities with which one has to reckon. Much depends on the way in which our new Government addresses itself to the problems which confront it.