Evening Post. THURSDAY, JULY 30, 1931. DIPLOMACY-OLD AND NEW

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 26, 30 July 1931, Page 12

Evening Post. THURSDAY, JULY 30, 1931. DIPLOMACY-OLD AND NEW

. The two members of the British Government whose successes in foreign policy have gone far towards redeeming its abject failure in almost every other respect are evidently scoring another success in Berlin. The return of the visit which Dr. Bruening and his Foreign Minister paid to Chequers early last month had originally been fixed for an earlier date, but the imminent peril of Germany and President Hoover's proposals for relief rendered a postponement necessary till the London Conference had dealt with the position. The genuine success achieved by the Conference, and its very narrow limits, have now supplied equally good reasons against postponing the visit any longer and have increased the need for it and the chances of good results. As Mr. MaeDonald said at the dinner given to himself and his colleague by the German Government.

ho and Mr. Henderson had conic to Berlin not merely to return tho Chequers visit, but to show tho world that despito the present difficulties their confidence in Germany was undiminisliecl. If Germany continued to help herself, he was convinced that othor countries would help her, Friendship with Germany was indispensable for civilised socioty.

Nearly thirteen years after the Armistice the idea that Germany can be kept permanently in a state of subjection and disability as a pariah nation can no longer be entertained. It is in the interests of the nations which are expecting to get reparations from her to revive their industries, and to reduce the number of their unemployed, just as much as it is in the interests of Germany herself that tin's idea should he abandoned. . ' "

There must,.as Mr. MaeDonald himself says, be "a general change of atmosphere," a change in the psychological conditions, which are being recognised in a steadily increasing degree as equally potent factors in the troubles of Germany and of-the world with the financial,and economic causes. One striking testimony to the psychological value of Mr. MaeDonald and Mr. Henderson's Berlin mission is the warmth of the popular welcome.

They navo received, we are told, an extremely cordial recoption wherever they have gone in Berlin, and many German newspapers express gratitude for Britain's friendly understanding of Germany's difficulties.'

The only danger of this fraternising of British arid German Ministers and the plaudits of the German Press is the possibility that it may be misunderstood in Paris. The one weakness of the diplomacy by which Mr. MaeDonald removed the suspicions of Washington and established an Anglo-American understanding in anticipation of the Naval Conference was that the exclusive attention paid to the United States gave France some ground for feeling that she was being left out in the cold. It is indeed highly probable, not to say certain, that the best diplomacy in the world could not have enlarged the ThreePower Treaty which was all that the Conference achieved into the FivePower Treaty at which it had aimed. But France would have had much les3 cause for bitterness, and would have been much less disposed to take everything that Britain has since done in bad part if a little more attention had been paid to her before the Naval Conference. If the Chequers conversations may have strengthened ■ this tendency, Mr. Mac Donald's earnest plea in Berlin for Franco-German conversations and for the participation of other countries should provide an antidote. Attention is called to international psychology of a very different kind by the reminder which is supplied by the, German Press that

Mr. MaeDonald. is the iirst _ British Prime Minister to pay an. official visit to Berlin since Lord Beaconsfield attended tho 1878 Congress there.

The Berlin Congress met on the 13th June, 1878, for the purpose of the terms of peace between Russia and Turkey and for removing the causes which had nearly brought Britain into their war on the side of Turkey. With his eyes on the Bulgarian atrocities, Gladstone had declared for turning the Turks "bag and baggage" out of Europe—an admirable solution which would have saved the world a deal of trouble if the other European Powers could have agreed to carry it out. But the eyes of Beaconsfield were on Constantinople, the Suez Canal, and the northern | gales of India, and he was prepared to prop up even the most disreputable of European Powers as the only possible means of checking the designs of Russia which threatened to' shatter the British Empire. It was an issue worthy of these great antagonists, and no important issue of foreign policy has since divided the action as sharply and as evenly as it was on that occasion. But the Berlin Congress marked the final triumph of Beaconsfield's diplomacy, and had British pacifism been at that time strong enough to prevent it, the result would not have been in the interests of peace or of the Empire. Several times during the eighteen months preceding the issue of Lord Salisbury's invitations to ihe Berlin Congress .Russia and Britain had been on tho verge o,f war. At a MKmienl Lord Bcacpusficld

himself had abandoned his normal discretion to sound a menacing note.

In a righteous cause, ho said at the Guildhall dinner on the Oth November, 1876, England will commence a fight that will not end till right is done.

The Tsar replied with equal spirit by mobilising a large force, raising

a large loan, and declaring that "he was firmly determined to act independently." His independence was shown a few months later by his declaration of war against Turkey (241h April, 1877). Early in the following year, when the Russian armies were perilously near to Constantinople, the British Cabinet decided to protect it, and Admiral Hornby's fleet was ordered up from Besika Bay to hold the Dardanelles under the thin pretence of a desire "to protect British lives and property in Constantinople." The policy of tho Cabinet was supported by the House of Commons with a vole of 295 to 96, and a music-hall ditty which has added a now familiar word to the language faithfully reflected the temper of the people— , Wo don't want to fight, But by Jingo, if wo do, We've got the ships, wove got tho men, „ We've got the money, too!

On the 15th February, 1878, the desire of the Government to protect British lives and property in Constantinople took a more definite shape in the instructions telegraphed by W. H. Smith, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to Admiral Hornby:

AH ships but one arc to go from Besika Bay to Gulf of Xeros, with orders to watch Russian troops, and if they obsorvo preparations for embarkation with a view to landing on tho peninsula of Gallipoli, they arc to warn Russian commander they have orders to prevent such landing, and they arc to oppose it by force if peiv severed in. ■ . ■' "W.H.S. ■

After some weeks of intense excitement, during which Turkey was forced to sign at San Stefano on the 3rd March a peace treaty entirely unacceptable to Britain, the Russian orders to seize Gallipoli were countermanded and the British fleet was simultaneously withdrawn from Constantinople, The aim of the Beacons-field-Salisbury policy at this time is described by Mr. Buckle in the "Life of Disraeli" as follows:—

To preserve for '.Turkey a_ compact and considerable territory, with a, defensible frontier, both in Europo and in Asia; to prevent Eussia from socuring such a territorial rearrangement as would place Turkey permanently at her mercy, and as, in particular, would give her control of Constantinople, the Straits, the Blade Sea, and the routo through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf. In other words, Russia must abandon tho plan of a big Bulgaria, a Russianised province extending from tho Black Sea to the Aegean and almost to the very gates of Constantinople .... and either Batoum and the Armenian conquests of Russia in Asia must bo relinquished, or the effect of their loss must, bo neutralised in some other fashion.

These results were substantially attained at the Berlin Congress, the gains of Russia feeing balanced by Turkey's cession of Cyprus to Britain. It was a great victory, for British diplomacy, and though the* Beaconsfield-Salisbury methods which triumphed at Berlin in 1878 are less in favour to-day than the MacDonald-Hendersou methods which are now being tested there, it is impossible to dispute the soundness of Mr. Buckle's'judgment that in 1878

it was tie readiness of Great Britain for war that had brought Kussia to reason.