The Press Wednesday, November 25, 1925. What was done at Locarno.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18548, 25 November 1925, Page 8

The Press Wednesday, November 25, 1925. What was done at Locarno.

We are to-day able to give our readers the full text of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee initialled last month at Locarno. It will be seen that the Treaty contains ten Articles only, is quite easily understood, binds Germany, Belgium, France, Britain, and Italy, and—the most important point of all—has nothing whatever to do with Germany's Eastern Frontier. France has made a separate treaty with Poland and Czechoslovakia, and this treaty was initialled at Locarno on the same day as the Security Pact (Treaty of Mutual Guarantee), is registered with the League of Nations, and has the same currency and is subject to the same general conditions as the Pact; but Britain is in no way bound by that treaty. We have had some anxiety on this point, as we arc sure all our readers have, but it is quite clear from the text of the Pact that anxiety about the extent of Britain's obligations in Europe itself may now be laid aside. There is no obligation on Britain, ajid far less of course on any Dominion, to go to war to maintain any frontier East of the Rhine. The Pact is a guarantee of the existing frontier between Germany on the ore hand and Belgium and Franco on the oilier, and has nothing to do with any other issue. France and Belgium pledge themselves not to attack Germany. Germany i pledges herself not to attack Belgium j and France. Britain and Italy pledge themselves' to go to the assistance of France or Belgium or Germany, without any discriniination, if there is an attack in violation of those mutual guarantees. The Treaty does not guarantee that there Avill be no more war in Western Europe. It docs not make it certain that there will never again be- a struggle for Alsace-Lorraine or for the Rhino frontier. No treaty could make that certain. What it does make certain is that if such a conflict arises the Power responsible for it will be opposed by all the other signatories to the Pact. In any case it makes it absolutely certain that the Power responsible, whether it is France or whether it is Germany, will be opposed by Britain. That is to say, the Pact seems to be a real thing, a durable and precious thing, because it is concerned with one question and one only, and that a question on which there is something like a general agreement by the civilised Powers. The present frontier between Germany and Belgium and France is as near to a fair frontier as civilisation can devise. There are neither historical nor ethnographical reasons why it should not stand for an indefinite period- If France had succeeded in her attempt to get the Powers at Locarno to include' the present Eastern as well as the present Western frontier of Ger- , many in their mutual guarantee, the | Conference would either have broken up in disagreement, or its guarantee would not have stood the test of time. But there is no reason why the Pact that has now been initialled should not endure until that day arrives which is j provided for in its eighth Article—the day when the Council of the League, by a two-thirds majority, decides that the League of Nations itself for the j future provides sufficient protection to the High Contracting Parties. There is, however, one thing to be said which is not so. satisfactory, j Article Nine provides that " the present u Treaty shall impose no obligation " upon any of the British Dominions, or "upon India, unless the Government " of such Dominion, or of India, signi- " fles its acceptance thereof." It provides therefore for a possible disuniting of the British Empire. Or if it does riot provide for that, it at least allows for.it or conceives of it as a possibility. New Zealand, it seems safe enough to say, will signify its acceptance. Australia may also, and it is not easy to think of a reason why India should not. But will Canada and South Africa? Now that we know,how much and how little the Pact involves, Ave can see that there is not such a risk of European entanglements as there certainly would have been if the Treaty had gone further. But that does not remove the possibility that Canada and South Africa will .bold aloof, and if they do, what will happen to the Empire if the Pact has to be maintained by force?

Hoardings.

It 4s a good deal more than a year since the City Council, as the result of. the publicity given in "The Press" to the hoardings nuisance, commenced to grapple with this perfectly simple little problem. Almost fortnightly for a year the matter has come up at the Council's meetings, and while the hopes of those who clesire a triumph for decent civic principles have gone up and down, the Council has been going to and fro, and round and round, until it does not now know where it is. It has passed resolutions and rescinded them, adopted reports and abandoned them for others, licensed monstrosities here and set its face against them there. Except that it has obeyed the mandate of some firm and resolute objectors in .Sydenham and Woolston and Salisbury street West, and has with some definiteness forbidden the hoarding-merchant to bring his horrors into the purely residential districts, the Council has not revealed that it has been acting firmly on any principle related to civic propriety. At its meeting on Monday night it decided to set up a sub-commit-tee to consider the framing of a hoardi ings policy. The motion was opposed on the ground that the Council already had a policy—the prohibition of hoardings in residential areas and the weighing of objections in individual casesbat it was carried by a majority which included Councillors who are notoriously in love with these ugly smudges on "the City's face. The only sound policy is that which is favoured by the Mayor, who frankly faces the fact that j the real issue is simply hoarding? or j

I ! no hoardings, and who -wishes to see the tilings swept out of existence. It' the City obtained a large revenue from the hoardings, and would find itself in difficulties if they were done away with, considerations of civic decency would have to give way to considerations of material necessity. It would be a case of the City's not being able to afford a clean face. But the revenue actually received is so small that half a dozen chocolate-vending machines would be a better investment. What, then, does restrain the Council from ordering the hoardings oft the streets? Some vague idea, perhaps, that walls and fences and vacant sections are " going to waste," or, in the case of one or two Councillors, some muddle-headed notion that the hoarding-merchants are striking a blow at the " capitalistic "Press." In other countries it has been, or is being, discovered that hoarding advertising is not economically useful, and that business will go on as well, or even better, if the hoarding " sites " remain sites only, without being "used." But the main point is that hoardings are ugly, whether in the country or in the town, whether in Colombo street or in Park terrace, and the abolition of them is a necessary step in the development of ikit public good taste which wholesomely affects public efficiency in all things.

A Triumph for Canterbury College.

Our readers will be delighted to learn this morning that Canterbury College has produced not only one Rhodes Scholar this year, but two. The fact that the Trust found itself able to provide a second scholarship was good news to the whole University, but no one dreamt when the announcement was made that it meant so much to Canterbury. And of course Ave do not now suggest that what it principally means is academic plunder. The value of these two successes is not so much that they enable lavo very deserving students to go to Oxford, pleasing though that is, and not at all that they register a score against the other Colleges. It is rather that they make other students realise how Avell off they are even if they have to stay at home. A Rhodes Scholar may or may not be accepted by everybody as the ideal product of a University: all we have to consider is that he is so accepted by most people, and in any case is so admirable a product that the College which produces him is entitled to be proud of itself. But Canterbury College has now done what no other College has done before: it has produced that ideal type twice in one year, and proved therefore to all its friends and supporters that it is maintaining the highest academic traditions. Perhaps, too, it may be said, without risk or offence, that such an achievement is more creditable to Canterbury, whose special school is not one that would normally produce Rhodes Scholars, than it would have been to Otago, which gets all the Dominion's medical students, or to WTeliington and Auckland, whose Colleges devote their whole strength to studies more likely to carry a man to Oxford than the work of our engineering school. And it may also be added that it will be disappointing if one result of this triumph is not. an increased interest in the College by the general public, and an increased measure of support for it by men and women of means.