Evening Post.

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 93, 22 April 1925, Page 4

Evening Post.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 1925.

WHERE DO WE STAND?

The March number of the "Round Table" is one of exceptional interest, variety, and value, and the special articles devoted to "China in Evolution" and the United States suggest that "A Quarterly Review of the Politics of the British Commonwealth" is no longer a sufficiently comprehensive title. The "Rouud Table" may be said to have taken world politics for its proviuce and to have made itself indispensable for the student of international affairs even if the domestic aspects of the Imperial problem, make no appeal to him. The place of honour in the latest number is given to au article on "Europe, the Covenant and ' the Protocol"—a subject in which world politics and Empire politics are inextricably intertangled. The "Round Table" is consistent in the attitude, which-'it adopts towards both phases of the problem. Its ideal for the Empire is a Commonwealth of free nations, bound for the purposes of foreign policy in some more, businesslike fashion than the haphazard arrangements of to-day, but still essentially free ; and it is not prepared to advocate that the freedom which all the States of the Empire • jealously guard in their relations with one another should be sacrificed either collectively or individually to some external tribunal. , There are pacifists like Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald and Lord Parmoor who do not shrink from the military obligations which the Protocol would have imposed upon the Empire, from the naval obligations of which it would have given a virtual monopoly to Great Britain, or from the liability in which it might have involved the Empire of going to war at the command of the Council of the League of Nations and of remaining there till the command was recalled. The obligation which these pacifists favour to fight and to continue .fighting at the will of a foreign tribunal is strenuously resisted by the "Round Table" as equally opposed to its ideals of freedom and of peace. The two striking articles in the December number which supported this contention were among the earliest and most uncompromising utterances of British opinion in opposition to the Geneva Protocol and focussed the opposition that had been steadily developing. The new article carries the discussion still further back. The' object of the Protocol was to define and to limit the vague and sweeping obligations of the Covenant of the League, and at the same time to provide the machinery that would make them practicable. But in making them practicable it also made them more drastic, and there was .extension as well as limitation. In one sense the very comprehensiveness of the provisions of the Covenant exercised a limiting eflcct. it was obviously impossible that such far-reaching obligations could be literally observed, and by common consent, revealed both at meetings of the Assembly and in official and unofficial utterances outside of it, their purport was informally and indefinitely whittled down. But the result is still so uncertain as to be highly unsatisfactory, and the rejection of the Protocol does not "dispose of the necessity to face the position frankly and to deal both with the amendment of the Covenant tmd *ifch the problem of French security whipi

formed the dual basis of the Protocol. Regarding the Protocol as having for the present been sufficiently covered by the December articles, and postponing the Rhineland question for future treatment, the "Round Table" accordingly, in the article under / review, discusses what it describes as "a more fundamental question still, affecting the Covenant of the League of Nations and the very basis of the external policy of the Commonwealth." Ought we, the writer asks, to enter into any obligations whatever which will give to some outside authority, the -League of Nations, the World Court, an arbitral body, an ally, the right of deciding what our action, in war or in peace, should be? Or should we, while co-operating as actively and as vigorously as possible in international affairs, make it a condition of such co-operation that every Cabinet and Parliament must retain the clear right, in every case, to decide on the action it should take and the policy it should pursue? An examination follows of the position in which all members of the League are placed by the terms of the Covenant. The crux of the problem is Article X., which binds the signatories to "respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League." How many of the signatories realised the extent of this obligation before the Peace Treaty was signed ? How many of the Dominions have realised it since? Canada, whichobjects to obligations of any kind, fully understands the position and is anxious to escape. The other Dominions, enjoying the privileges of membership but expecting to pass any unpleasant responsibilities on to Britain, are not worrying. Other small States which have no Mother State to protect them see in Article X. a sort of charter of their rights, and object to any alteration which would not provide an equally good guarantee. What should be the attitude of the British Empire to the problem? There are, as the "Round Table" points out, certain obvious ! danger spots in Europe to-day. There is "the Dantzig corridor," which cuts off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. There is the Polish-Russian frontier, which includes in Poland large areas inhabited by Russians. There is that part of the Tyrol which the Peace Treaty gave to Italy. There are the frontiers of Hungary and Bulgaria "which their inhabitants have sworn never to accept." Do the nations of this Commonwealth really intend, automatically and perpetually, asks the "Round Table" writer to guarantee the existing Polish-Russian frontier, or all the other contentious frontiers in Europe, against attempts '■by Russia, Germany, Hungary, or Bulgaria; to secure some rectification? Supposing these Powers cannot obtain any satisfaction by voluntary agreement, and prepare to make their demands good by force, do wo intend to march troops to Eastern Europe, automatically and irrespective of our views about the merits, to defend them? If so, well and good. If not, the sooner we make it clear that we do not intend to accept such an obligation the better. It is neither honest nor conducive to world peace that European stability should rest upon the belief that we or other nations will fulfil obligations which we shall not live up to when the call comes. What is true of Europe applies, with still greater force, as the article says, to the rest of the world. If we do not intend to fight for preserving the frontiers of China and Persia, of Guatemala and Panama, we had better say so honestly before the demand arises, and the time to do it is now.