SECURITY PACT.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18487, 15 September 1925, Page 9

SECURITY PACT.

* LEAGUE DELEGATES HOPEFUL. I ALLIED MINISTERS' CONFER- ! ENCE. ;' (BY CASLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION— COPT1IOH1.) AUSTRALIAN AND K.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION.) j GENEVA, September 13. Mr Austen Chamberlain's reserve at j the journalists' interview on Thursday | concerning the invitation to Dr. Stresemann, German Foreign Minister, was duo to the absence of Italy's approval of the draft invitation. The reply arrived on Thursday night. Its nature is best indicated by the fact that M. Briand (French Foreign Minister) left for Paris during the morning. He told journalists that he was gratified at the way events were shaping.

M. Briand was sanguine that there soon would be a pact covering the western and eastern frontiers, but lie added tho reservation that everything depended on whether Dr. Stresemann survived the cross-currents of German Party-politics. It is learned that Dr. Stresemann has been invited to a conference during the first fortnight in October.

With Mr Chamberlain's departure tonight the two big men of tho Assembly have gone, and it is 6afo to assume that early next week will find the third settling down to prepare a formula, perhaps innocuous, whereon the Assembly will later debate the predominant issue of security, arbitration, and disarmament as a prelude to the Allied Ministers' conference.

Graceful Comment. M. Boncour's speech included graceful comment on Mr Chamberlain's .illusion to the illogical basis of the British Empire. "Where Mr Chamberlain sees only the illogical," said M. Boncour, "we see only tho sploudid continuity of .English history,* its solution of each problem on its merits forming a regular sequence. When viewed in the light of the real underlying basis of the Htopire's institutions and requirements, it indeed was a story which Kipling could rightly call "The first story of the world." To Replace the Protocol. Delegate after delegate is now arising to pour out words of lament at the Protocol's demise with the pious hope that its spirit and principle will sooa be embodied in a system of regional agreements. This is notably the case in the speeches of the Japanese, Viscount Ishii, and the Belgian, M. Hymans.

Viscount Ishii declared that doubts in connexion with the Protocol's practical application had seized many Governments, each of which viewed it in the light of its own particular circumstances. There was apparently a fear that regional agreements would revive the pre-war instability, but, provided none of the agreements was directed towards any nation, and all included the principle of arbitration, the objections would assuredly disappear, and. the League bo invested with the aureola of the new era.

M. Hymans was emphatic that there must ibe definite physical sanctions, excellent though moral sanctions were. Even, with the Protocol mutual/pacts would have been necessary, in fact its very pillars of security, paving the way to disarmament.