BETTER PROGRESS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 6, 9 January 1928, Page 9

BETTER PROGRESS

EUROPE REVIVING THREE YEARS' RESULTS BALDWIN CHEERFUL (British Official Wireless.) KUGBY, Bth January. Speaking at Worcester yesterday the Prime Minister expressed the view that more progress had been uiade throughout Europe in the last three years than in any equal period since tlie war. It was in October, 1925, he said, that the greatest stop was taken in the Conference at Locarno which brought together France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain as general guarantors of the existing Western frontier between Germany and Franco and created for the first time since the war a feeling of security without which it was naturally impossible for us to cooperate, as we should all desire, in the necessary work of reconstituting and pacifying Europe. Then, on the rthcr hand, it brought Germany into the League of Nations and marked a definite end of the post-war period. It enabled the Inter-Allied Military Commission in Germany to bo withdrawn twelve months ago. "Germany, on her part, has shown good faith in carrying, out the terms of the Versailles Treaty, and we now have the eo-opcration of Germany, and while our relations, essential to the progress of Europe, have so greatly improved with Germany, it has been possible also to increase cooperation with France and Italy. Now the great progressive nations of the West are united in their endeavour to create a peaceful and „ prosperous Kurope." to China, Mr. Baldwin said that the British Government was still prepared to revise its Treaty with China, providing China was in a position to make a bargain. As to the Shanghai Defence Force it was admitted by the whole world that it had probably saved the lives of thousands of white people. He hoped that in time it might be possible to withdraw this force and that they might see a united government in China. But that force would net be withdrawn so long as its j withdrawal might imperil the lives of British people. The Prime Minister said that he did not think there was any country which had shown more practically how deeply and earnestly it felt in the matter of disarmament than had Britain. Ho declared that the British proposals at the Geneva Naval Conference would have precluded armament competition. He did iiot know what would bo the next practical attempt to be made, but there was nothing in the course pursued by the British Government since the war which could lead people to think that when there was anything practical to be done Great Britain would not be in the van of progress.