BRITAIN’S FOREIGN POLICY

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 64, 9 December 1936, Page 9

BRITAIN’S FOREIGN POLICY

Is It Too Submissive? EFFECT ON EUROPEAN PEACE Fair play is the quality upou which Britons most pride themselves. It might therefore be expected to have some part in. our conduct toward other nations, our foreign policy. But does it? asks J. A. Hobson in a letter to the “Manchester Guardian.” Have we practised fair play in our dealings with Abyssinia and Spain? In both cases a sham neutrality, supported by a carefully blinded eye and a conscious policy of delays, has enabled aggressors and treaty-breakers to use their force successfully. Why? We caiiuot assume that our Foreign Office' wanted to present Abyssinia to Italy and Spain to thq rebels, though they must have been aware that their “neutrality” would have this result. No. It is better to assume that they preferred to incur the charges of foul play and hypocrisy rather than land their country in a war. Had we applied the oil sanction to Italy, that country would have attacked us iu the Mediterranean! Had we countered German and Italian aid to the Spanish rebels by early and sufficient aid to the Spanish Government, the ships carrying such aid, or the planes,, tanks and machine-guns we dispatched, would have come into direct conflict with'German or Italian ships and Fascist arms! Before such threats we consented to hold our hand. This servile inactivity is probably approved by the majority, of citizens in this “fair-pldy” nation. Why? Because it has avoided an immediate danger—at the price of a bigger danger later on. Little, if any, consideration was given to the question of the reality of the immediate danger. Would Italy have dared to attack us for a refusal to sell her oil? Would Germany and Italy have fallen upon us for doing what they were doing in Spain?' Possibly. But there was the other possibility that a bolder policy on our part, in fulfilment of our express obligations, would have stopped their aggressive action. For it is inherently unlikely that either Germany or Italy felt herself ready for a European war. But the long-range effects of our submission, coupled with the now known i,enforcement of our “neutral” policy on France, deserve clea\' recognition. Though Mussolini talks of a new Boman Empire iu terms which may suggest an aggressive policy iu Europe, there is no reason to believe that either alone or in alliance with Germany he would or could (with his new African burdens) play any active part in disturbing the peace of Europe.-' . The future menace lies in the declared war policy of Germany. If seems possible that the claims of Hitler to bring under the German flag the Teutonic populations in Austria, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere might be satisfied without the use of force. This, however, is not true of her demands for “new soil” in Russia and her subject border States. There are those who would discount the frenzied utterances of Nuremberg as mere propagandist froth for internal consumption. But the announcement of her intention to ’ march east and to “exterminate” Bolshevism cannot be so lightly dismissed when read in the light of the immense sacrifices the German people is called upon to undergo for increased armaments and the efforts made to deta.ch France from her Soviet engagement. ’ “Peace in the West at the price of a free hand in the East” is the express offer made by Germany to us aud to France. And evidently she expects us to bring full pressure on France to renounce her Soviet pact. If we bring this pressure successfully it can only be by what will amount to a military alliance with France. This, it will be said, will secure peace iu the West. But will it, and for how long? How far can East and West be treated as war-tight compartments? The FrancoSoviet Pact .has not unnaturally been regarded by Germany as belonging to an encirclement policy. But is present policy of Germany, with its Spanish appanage aud the Belgian detachment, directed to the encirclement of France? Though Germany’s immediate concern is an Eastern conquest she actively meddles in the West. For her fanatical gospel of force aims at a domination that is European iu the fullest sense.

It is idle to pretend that Hitler and his colleagues do not really mean what they say; For their arms policy proves that they are able to back their words by deeds and that they intend to do so. Nothing is likely to stop them but a confrontation of manifestly superior force. This is not a final path of peace, but it is the only way of preventing an early war not likely to be confined to its starting-place. Superior force is the only argument recognised by Nazism, and in the interests of world peace we should do our share in presenting it. If such a policy be dubbed “encirclement,” be it so, Against a threatened outbreak of criminal violence it is the only safeguard.