CONDEMNATION IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21732, 14 March 1936, Page 17

CONDEMNATION IN BRITAIN

—*— COMPARISON WITH PREWAR GERMANY

SIR AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN'S ATTACK

(BRITISH OrfICUL WOttLBSS.) (Received March 13, 7.5 p.m.) HVGBY, March 12. Sir Austen Chamberlain, who negotiated the Locarno pact, said at Cambridge: "With my memory quivering at this moment with the events which led up to the Great War, I am impressed by the similarity of Germany's policy to-day to the policy which rendered the Great War inevitable. "If Germany,had desired to challenge all Europe; if she had desired to raise once and for all the question of whether there is any international morality or law, she could not have raised that question more completely than by her action in the demilitarised zone. "Herr Hitler had described Germany's signing the Locarno pact as Germany's contribution to the appeasement of Europe. That contribution has now .been withdrawn, without consultation or negotiation, by an act of brutal forehand by tearing up treaties. We had to ask ourselves whether any treaty made with Germany could be more than 'a scrap of paper.' "Locarno was not a dictated peace. It was a treaty, the proposals for which came from Germany. Particular, provisions for the guarantee of the status quo in the west and for the observance of conditions in the demilitarised zone were the original German offer. It had not even been suggested by us." ■•','•■■ The only public Ministerial speech in which the European crisis was mentioned was made by Lord Eustace Percy, Minister without portfolio, speaking at Birmingham. He emphasised that the demilitarised zone was freely accepted by the German Government in the Locarno Treaty and had been reaffirmed by Herr Hitler himself. "There still exists," he said, "an element of national pride and ambition—belief in the destiny of a nation over-riding any treaty—that constitutes or goes to make up the law of nations. That is the spirit that has made the wars of the past, and which, if we cannot suppress it, will make the wars of the future." .■