Evening Post. MONDAY, JANUARY 27, 1936. BEHIND THE SILENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 22, 27 January 1936, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, JANUARY 27, 1936. BEHIND THE SILENCE

While the British Empire is preparing for "a zone of silence round the globe," to be observed while the King's funeral is taking place in the presence of fifty nations, silence has been broken in Italy by a renewed attack on Mr. Eden; Dr. Goebbels is informing the Germans that they will continue to be martyrs for the sake of military power; and Admiral Takahashi forecasts an extension of Japan's, naval cruising radius to cover what has been called the naval "no man's land" of the Pacific "unless America renounces her naval policy, aimed at the expansion of and the protection of her foreign trade." On the credit side is the reported settlement of the Danzig dispute, due (says the "NewsChronicle") to Mr. Eden's facing "firmly and boldly" the Nazi majority in Danzig; but on Mr. Eden's policy generally, particularly his Abyssinian policy, the editors of the "News-Chronicle" and of the "Daily Mail" are diametrically opposed, and no doubt each of these gentlemen is sincere and well informed. The fact is that through the complex of what Italy wants, what Germany wants, and what ! Japan wants, no straight and certain I path, undeviating, is observable to the human eye. There is room for great differences of opinion as beItween the keenest and fairest minds, and Mr. Eden needs the prayers of critics as well as their yea or nay. The most closely reasoned verdict today may be invalidated tomorrow. While the League of Nations does not represent a stabilisation of existing rights and conditions and ownerships to the extent of being a petrification thereof, it is too much of a stabilisation to satisfy Japan (Manchukuo) and Italy (Abyssinia) and Germany (which is concerned in half a dozen places). Japan and Italy have exercised force in breach of the Covenant—ltaly without leaving the League—and Dr. Goebbels's declaration of peaceful intent (the same peaceful intent as every army has) does not remove the impression that Germany as well as Italy and Japan cannot see in the League of Nations a sufficient means of altering the globe to suit them. If the international League does not bend to their national demands, the sword must arbitrate—so say the dictators of these three armed nations of nigh 200 million people. Such an attitude by such huge forces means inevitably an attempt to pull away from the League of Nations towards alliances approximating more and more to the old type—and it is not necessary to say more in order to indicate the dire complex that perplexes a Foreign Minister of the principal League Power and sends conscientious editors into opposite camps. League supporters and "realists" alike recognise the crisis.

No Power of considerable possessions standing behind a stabilisation ! —whether represented by the League lof Nations, or by anti-war pacts, or Iby the old alliances system —shall escape the calumny of selfish interests. Mr. F. H. Simonds seems to have at last concluded that the League of Nations crisis is merely London, v. Rome, and Admiral Takahashi directs his Pacific statement —which is far from being a pacific statement — against America. The Admiral, in forecasting the extension of the Japanese fleet's cruising radius to include parts of the Pacific not now fortified, and to include, inter alia, Dutch Borneo and Australian New Guinea, "did not refer to British interests in the Pacific"; but such reference was conspicuously made by a Japanese industrialist and shipping magnate, M. Isihara, to whom "the [ unnatural exclusion of Japanese" by Australia and New Zealand appears as a wrong to be righted. Does M. Isihara expect to right this through the League of Nations? If so, Japan's | withdrawal therefrom does not commend his judgment; and Japan's 1 successive actions of breaking pieces off China, and withdrawing from the Washington (and other) agreements whereby non-fortification by the three Powers (Japan, America, Britain) and the 5-5-3 ratio created a "no man's land" and maintained distance between the navies, are a very direct intimation that no "rule of law" (such as the League) has yet replaced in China and the Pacific the law of war. To say this is to say no more than the two European dicta-, tors openly affirm. And it is in such a world—a dictatored West and a Rising Sun East —that Mr. Eden must maintain a League policy that shall not be merely a British policy.

The fact that Britain does not escape calumny—even in America, who herself gets in foreign countries her fair share of it—does not help, but at the same time does not prevent, the British Government from following a policy true to the new principles of Geneva and the old tradition of Britain. Nor will calumny deceive any clear-sighted Dominion statesman as to where the Dominions stand. Japan's action a couple of years ago against China, Italy's action last year (and now) in Africa, and Japan's New Year policy of removing restrictions on her naval

aclivity in the Pacific, have plain meanings not only for the League but for the Dominions. Are we to rely very largely on a British Navy confronted with a new Mediterranean situation, or on an American navy which may or may not accept a Japanese Pacific challenge, or to a greater extent than lately on ourselves?