ONCE MORE "THE ENTENTE"

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1932, Page 10

ONCE MORE "THE ENTENTE"

The Old Year ended with a flash oi Entente sentiment in the Paris i'ress. It is long since this was thus, and whether it will be a flash in the pan remains to be seen. Hitherto, all post-war history shows that he who has' France's aid must pay b ranee s price. France's price at and since Versailles was what France calls security." France held at Versailles that "security" meant a guarantee of the integrity of France against aggression, by means of an iUiglo-American undertaking to that effect. Failure of Congress to ratify the undertaking killed it stone dead, whereupon France considered herself sold by America and Britain, and French diplomacy has ever since striven to exact "security" in other ways. It made a big move in that direction, prior to the London Naval Conference, by negotiating a draft naval agreement with Sir Austen Chamberlain and the then Conservative Government; but this "British surrender to French militarism" was so fiercely assailed in the United States that the Franco-British na^al agreement was stillborn and the Chamberlain mana suffered. Followed a luke-warm London Naval Conference, a Labour Government in Britain, Mr. Snowden's duel with the French over inter-Governmental debts, Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald's implied'rebukes of French armaments and the French spirit. Under the Labour Government Britain tried to induce the ultimate creditor, the United States, to cut the financial knot; result—the Hoover moratorium, but with it a Congress fiat against cancellation of debts. Now, it seems, Paris considers that the blindness of the American ally has been sufficiently demonstrated to Britain, wherefore the time should be ripe to bring Britain, after years of wandering, back to the Entente fold. Glancing back to various post-war conferences—financial, naval, etc. —"Le Temps" pointedly remarks:

The solution has been easy whenever a great international discussion has been approached after a preliminary Anglo-Prench agreement, but, where

this has been lacking, the difficulties have been insuperable, and halfinoasures have resulted.

In other words, Britain and France' together can secure constructive results from a European/ conference, but first of all Britain must pay France's price for co-operation, and seal the bond by a pre-conference agreement that satisfies French diplomacy. But what, this time, is France's price? "Security," of course, but in what form? Opinion in Italy, Germany, and the United States will almost certainly declare that the French price, whatever it is, iS too high for Britain to pay. Paris will reply that Britain cannot buy the goods (financial ease, disarmament) anywhere else—and needs them badly. This is " the problem threatening 'to present itself to a mainly Conservative Government, headed by a Ramsay Mac Donald and including a Philip Snowden. ■: