WORLD AFFAIRS.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19466, 13 November 1928, Page 11

WORLD AFFAIRS.

MR BALDWIN'S REVIEW. " NEW SPIRIT OF GOODWILL." (BRITISH OPKCIAL WIRELESS.) RUGBY, November 11. The Prime Minister, speaking at the Lord Mayor's banquet last night, made a wide review of the international relations in which he described the improved position of the countries of Europe and of China. He gave a fine appreciation of the influence of the League of Nations, expressed his belief m the value of wireless as an agent of peace, and examined the implications arising from the signing of the Kellogg Pact. Reterring to the fact that the present British Government had been in office for four years, he said: "The history of those four years in Europe has been the history of stabilisation and reconstruction, a policy based upon and rendered possible by two outstanding events, the London Agreement, to which great credit was due to my predecessor, which placed the reparations problem on a workable economic basis and removed it out of the cockpit ; ">f political controversy and animosities, and, secondly, the Treaty of Locarno, which terminated once and for all the war period and re-introduced Germany into the comity of nations. It is true that since then there have been no sensational or spectacular achievements as those were, but the contrast between now and four years ago is a very real one. The enmities in Europe have disappeared or are disappearing. The war wounds have healed or are healing. Currencies have been stabilised, and though there are grave economic problems still to be solved, their solution is being approached in a new spirit of goodwill. International Kelations. "Therb is more and more throughout Europe, and throughout the world today, a feeling of the necessity of nations getting closer and closer together With France we have sought the closest co-operation, and a progressive improvement has taken place during the last five or six years in our relations, which had been marked by certain vicissitudes after the war; but now all that is far behind, for we understand each other perhaps better than we have ever done before. The fact that this improvement that has come with the years in our relations has been followed by a striking change in the internal conditions of Germany, as well as in her relations with France, is the best proof, if proof were needed, that close co-operation between London and Paris does not and cannot react, and shall not react to the detriment either of Germany or of any other Power. On the contrary the expansion of that cooperation into the. widei co-operation of Locarno still forms the keystone of the European arch, and it still constitutes the policy of his Majesty's Government. Peace means not less collaboration, but more, and the fact that his Majesty'B Government so often begin by seeking collaboration with their nearest neighbours does not mean that they are in the slightest degree less eager to co-operate with others." Reviewing the reconstruction efforts, and the measures of success attending them, of the nations which suffered by the war, the Prime Minister spoke notably of the progress made by France, Belgium, and Germany. Referring to Germany, he said:— "Four years ago she had but just emerged from the abyss of financial, political, and economic collapse. She has more than re-established her position as a great industrial country. She is on the high road to recovering all that wealth and prosperity which four years ago she seemed irretrievably to have lost. She has re-entered the councils of Europe. The Military Comnjission of Control has been withdrawn from Germany, and the commercial treaties have been concluded between Germany and this country, and Germany and France. Her relations with her former enemies are, in fact, restored to a position of mutual frankness and understanding. She stands to-day as a great country among equals, and she owes that largely to the genius of Dr. Stresemann, to whom everyone in this hall will wish a speedy recovery to health." Instruments of Peace. In his appreciation of the League of Nations, Mr Baldwin said:—"The League is helping, in ways not always obvious, to that peace which we all desire. Peace has to be made in effect by statesmen, and statesmen are fallible instruments, but nothing but good comes from this constant meeting of statesmen in the League of Nations. They learn there exactly what regard has to be paid to the peculiarities of individual personalities "and they oan realise there what all people want to realise, that is, to have vision, and to comprehend the effect of environment and tradition upon a man who comes from a country that is not your own. Mentioning how, at home, he went round Europe on his wireless set, the Prime Minister said:—"When the mass of the people realise that in whatever country in Europe there lives a human beins like himself, with his family and family Hfc, with a wireless- set like himself, with his services on Sunday, his dancing in the eveniner, anoVb.s lectures, war presents a .very different aspect. I believe that wireless is going to be one of the greatest bonds between the common people of the whole world, and it is the common people who in the long run will decide whether there will be war or not. .

GERMAN SUSPICION. NOT THAWED BY MR BALDWIN. (Bcceived November 12th, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, November 11. The "Morning Post's" Berlin correspondent states that Mr Baldwin's Guildhall speech has not thawed German suspicion. All circles of the Bight and Left are demanding deeds, not words. The headlines, "Siren Strains from England," and "Complacent Baldwin," are "Borsen-Zeitung" concludes that the old Entente spirit persists m Mr Baldwin's head, and says that reparations negotiations will test his declaration that henceforth there will be neither victors nor vanquished. _ "The fear nevertheless exists tnat there will be a deep cleft between practice and theory," the paper conclude!*. The "Allgemeine Zeitung," always in close touch with the Foreign Office, says that the general impression of Mr Churchill's and Mr Baldwin s speeches is that England is still closly tethered to French policy, which is in no wise friendly to Germany.-Australian Press Association.