The Press Tuesday, September 15, 1925. Europe and the Empire.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18487, 15 September 1925, Page 8

The Press Tuesday, September 15, 1925. Europe and the Empire.

It is increasingly difficult with each Assembly of the League of Nations to read the discussions on security with either interest or hope. While we must try to believe that good will come of so many " impassioned ap- " peals " and expressions of " unwaver"ing faith," it is useless to pretend that belief is easy. And it is almost impossible not to wish that the Assembly would go into recess for two or three .years when we read such nonsense as that a single speech is likely to " start an avalanche for the " resurrection of the Protocol." The Protocol, so far as Britain is concerned, is dead, and it is merely beating the air to " challenge anyone to ''find anything in it that was not con- " tained in the Covenant.'' Tf the Protocol is merely a more explicit Covenant that does not mean that it will be accepted, but rather that t)ie Covenant will be scanned a little more closely for evidences of confusion and danger; and it. is very difficult to believe that France does not know this. It is also very difficult to believe that Mr Chamberlain is a quite safe spokesman for the Empire at a gathering of Briands and Boncours and Ishiis. His references to the " illogical basis " of the Empire " may have been no more than M. Boncour professed to see in them —a half confused and half apologetic attempt to explain why • Britain was suspicious of European commitments. But it is at least.possible that the President's "graceful " comment" was the measure of his satisfaction with Mr Chamberlain's diplomatic simplicity, and there is some support for this view in the reply which Mr Chamberlain is reported to have made lo an interviewer who asked him before he left Geneva what the effect would be if Britain signed an agreement without the Dominions. Instead of saying that such an agreement, i£ it involved Avhat Europe intends it to involve, would be null and void, Mr Chamberlain is reported to have replied: "We have no right to " decide for any self-governing country. "They will take their own action " freely, and we will not make any "pretension to bind them." But if an agreement of that kind did not bind the/ Empire there is no Empire, and it sounds like clumsy nonsense to say immediately afterwards that "the "British Empire is a most "form of the League of Nations on "a small scale, always acting in com"plete harmony and perfect peace." The League of British Nations is a real league, the members of which do not desire or contemplate separate action in issues involving peace and war. They desire, and even demand, that they ; shall not be committed —unless in a sudden and grave emergency —without being consulted; but they do not ask to be consulted in order that they may, ifSthey think fit, hold aloof and refuse to support a majority decision. The attitude of the Dominions is that the Empire, in an international crisis, is one; and since an Anglo-European Pact which did not imply possible crises would be meaningless, it is foolish fo talk of a pledge by the' United Kingdom alone. The new status of the Dominions means no more, and the Dominions themselves do not want it to mean any more, than .that they have been added to the Empire directorate.