FATE OF PROTOCOL

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 91, 20 April 1925, Page 9

FATE OF PROTOCOL

BRITISH APPROVAL FRANCE'S CONTINUED SUPPORT THE ALTERNATIVE. (KlOJi OCR OTfN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, 14th March. "When Mr. Anston Chamberlain had finished his brilliant speech on the Protocol at the Council of the League o£ Stations, the interpreter set about his task, but the buzz of comment was so great that he desisted, and the sitting "was adjourned. Although so far as the British Empire Is concerned the Protocol is dead, France still adheres to it, and when the Council met in the afternoon M. Briand made this quite clear. He said that before coming to the Council he had no knowledge of Mr. Chamberlain's declaration. He therefore claimed the indulgence of the Council for not being in a position to give a detailed reply to all the points raised. SI. Bi'iand's speech was a. masterly piece of oratory, full of strikine phrases and clever epigram. "Listening to the British representative's speech," he said, "I felt like a man going through a tunnel. AH is darkness, but suddenly a speck of light appears. And that speck oi light, T hope, will lead us to the ha.veu which wo are all seeking." Ho did not agree that tho Protocol was incapable o! performing what was claimed for it. Ho declared that Franco held absolutely to tho Protocol. He himself •wa3 an author of it, and he would continue to bo its advocate. It was a lightning conductor for war. Tho League must go boldly forward, and the United States would "come in some day. The Protocol made war a crime and tho aggresor a criminal. And the Leaguo ;could not possibly let war criminals go free. The dread penalties which the Protocol proposed were a definite deterrent. There must be no gesture of despair, and he could not believe that the British refusal was definite. He took hope from Mr. Chamberlain's reference to the project of 1923. M. Briand ended by reading a formal declaration in favour of the Protocol on behalf of the French Government. M. Briand's speech is said' to have been a bid to put, France at the head of' the definite desire to find something at any rate of the same nature as the. Protocol, a desire which exists in most ■ of the countries of Europe, especially in the small States. FEELING IX FRANCE. Mr. Chamberlain's pronouncement at Geneva is naturally received in Paris with a certain degree of bitterness. The past twelve months have brought about many changes in the international atmosphere. A year ago French opinion scoffed at the idea of tho admission of Germany to the League of Nations. Now the chief reproach which the Herriot Government makes to Germany is that she is only willing to become a member of the League upon privileged conditions.

" The Temps" says: "Can a mutual Guivantee Pact, including Germany, which, by the exclusion of any pledge of serin itv for the frontiers of Poland and Chechoslovakia, would pave (he w;iv to a .revision-of the.Treaty of Verfiuille*. be regarded'its'anything but an expedient or a protest? We find it diffirult tn believe that our English friends ■do iv>t perceive that in the general system of s-I'i.-urity the abandonment of the Geneva Pvot'.-icol creates a void which it will be difficult to fill by any such means. BRITISH NAVY. , " Mr. Chamberlain," says the " Morning Post," " duly and respectfully buried ill Geneva tho Protocol in a funeral oration which did not betray any excessive emotion at the early departure of this ] iecel)le offspring of the League of Natiosis. litief as was its portion of life in this.vale of tears,, we doubt if any infant has caused more perplexity to its parents and its host of godfathers and (.odmothers. For, whatever virtues the Protocol may have possessed, simplicity was not one of them. Designed on a. purely Continental model to prevent those aggressive wars which the Covenant of the League had not wnolly extirpated, it would have meant in reality, owing to the prominence which economic sanctions enjoyed in its provisions, the use of the British Navy as the mam instrument of League policy, with the practical certainty that such employment would have at any crit:c;:l ..moment led to strained relations, and perhaps war, between Great Britain and the United States."

Tho ."Morning Post" maintains, however, that 'Britain must have some scheme to put in the place of the Protocol. Hitherto our diplomacy bns consisted'of running away from the schemes which, in capricious moments, it has supported. " The aim of British diplomacy ought to be to support by all the means in its power the Treaty of Versailles, not only because its provisions safeguard the existence and'security of the British Empire, but also because an honest obsei-vanco of that Treaty, East as \vell as West, is the only way by which we can secure peace in our time, and tho best way to secure that Treaty is by strengthening our friendships with the Allies who helped to frame it. If we can bring our former enemies into such an arrangement.. then the peace will be even more firmly maintained. That ought to be our aim, and surely it ought not to be a superhuman task to carry it into effect."

GERMANY'S OFFER. The "Daily Telegraph" remarks that there 13 no note of hesitancy in Mr Chamberlain's statement. "The British Government, having carefully and fairly ■weighed the pros and cons since it entered upon office—at, which time it was careful to insist that it approached the matter with ait open mind — has now given a clear lead to those many Slates, both within and without the League, which havecome to regard the, Protocol with disfavour and even with resentment H is bettor that the field should be cleared of it, am] this wIU tako place, in all likelihood, automatically, since, by the terms of the Protocol itself, its survival depends upon ratification before next May by three out, of the four Great Powers permanently on the Council ofthe League, and the attitude of Italy holds out no suggestion of- her ranging herself in opposition to Great Britain on thi3 question."

It is pointed out that Mr. Chamberlain made no point against the Protocol that is not of general application, and our own special reasons for refusing ratification are not touched upon by him. His argument is thereby the less exposed to unfriendly comment, and the case made out by him needs no such fortification. "The British Government looks for the surest and most vapid approach to the goal of security along the lines of such a, mutual pact as was lately brought into the field of practical politics by the action of the Cerman Government, to whose tentative suggestions Mr. Chamberlain extended so cordial a, welcome, as at least opening a new avenue for exploration, in his speech on theForeign Office vote- last week. That is ■Vie) u?xt_niatt*rc for .exwninatjog_.and dg-

hate, the Protocol once disposed of, as it is now clea-i'ly seen to be."' AN OPPORTUNITY FOB- FRANCE. "It is very satisfactory," says " The Times," " that Mr. Chamberlain's statement on the Protocol is definite and categorical. He might so easily have wandered in a haze of half-measures and non-committal statements. He has expressed decisively, and with a.complete away of logical argument, those objections that were obscurely and instinctively felt by a large body of British .opinion when the Protocol" was rushed through the. League Assembly last September in the absence of any strong representation in the British point of view. "The -whole trouble of Europe, tho unrest, the oppressive fears that give rise to such schemes aa the Protocol, are due to the unending conflict between Franco and Germany. Let France and Germany make an arrangement such as Mr. Chamberlain describes, and Great Britain would gladly become a party. The present occasion is favourable. The German Government has made proposals that amount to a voluntary—as opposed to a, compulsory—acceptance of some of the most important clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. This is an event in the history of Europe. British and French diplomacy should grasp this occasion viith both hands. For British diplomacy, at any late, it is an exceptional opportunity to get out of the nit of perpetual hesitation and negation."