WHILE TALK GOES ON

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 141, 16 June 1936, Page 10

WHILE TALK GOES ON

SWORDS ARE SHARPENED

POST-WAR STRUCTURE SWAYS MACHINERY OF PEACE Europe is preparing for war today while her diplomats talk peace, writes John Evans in the "San Francisca Chronicle." Statesmen propose one plan after another to avoid a "conflagration," but Defence Ministers spend more money than ever for larger land, air, and sea forces. Little Austria once was called the danger spot of Europe. Now there are so many clashes of interest that leaders in thirteen countries with five million soldiers openly profess anxiety. Officials everywhere ' consider the complicated peace scheme based on the Treaty of Versailles has tumbled down. Some seek to repair the structure. Others advocate new systems. All agree something must be done or thereis danger, if not certainty, of another war.

Mussolini, waging war in East Africa but with 1,000,000 men in Europe ready to fight, sounded the alarm on March 23. From his high balcony on the Palazzo Venezia, the Black Shirt Dictator shouted to his legionaires massed below a warning that went around the world.

"War is coming," he declared, but. "How and when, nobody can say."

Intermittent war scares that passed without war have tended to calm fears. Breakdown of .the Locarno Treaty caused statesmen to reveal new dangers. The Locarno Treaty, signed by France, Belgium, and Germany in 1925, was guaranteed by Great Britain and Italy, who pledged themselves to aid any of the three against unprovoked aggression. When Hitler, on March 7, denounced the Treaty and sent his troops marching into the Rhineland, France manned her monster eastern frontier fortifications with more than one million men.

CALL FOR AID. Pierre-Etienne Flandin, French Foieign Minister, called on England and Italy for their promised "aid," but war, if seriously contemplated, was averted. Flandin, however, made veiled threats of "action." Officials interpreted his threats as a possibility that the French army might attempt to drive the German troops out of the demilitarised zone, the broad strip along the Rhine. Weeks of political argument and diplomatic squabbling have revealed these sores: — 1. France charged England with "abandoning" her by failing to join in the French demand for quick "punishment" of Germany for moving troops closer to the French frontier. 2. English officials, privately, replied that France failed in her bargain to enforce wholeheartely sanctions against Italy for invading Ethiopia. The English contended France weakened the war penalties by telling Mussolini publicly France still was Italy's friend. 3. Efforts by the League of Nations Conciliation Committee to bring peace between Italy and Ethiopia collapsed, just as efforts by the Lojcarno signatories to adjudicate the Rhineland controversy concluded unsuccessfully in Hkler's flat- rejection of the British-spon-sored security proposals. 4. Anthony Eden, young British ioieien Minister, assumed the task of attempting to formulate a new European basis for peace and preparation of a questionnaire through which Germany could tell France just what she means to s d °Hitlcr, in tearing up the Locarno Treaty, sought justification for lus action in the Franco-Soviet Pact, by which the two Powers promised to aid each other if another nation attacked either. Hitler construed the military treaty as directed against Germany. At the same time, he tossed another match at the powder barrel by reminding the World War Allies that Germany later would raise the question of return of her former colonies.

AUSTRIA AND TURKEY. 0. Austria, alarmed by the failure of the Locarno Powers to prevent German armed occupation o£ the Rhineland, invoked a compulstory military and public works conscription • law, abrogating the St. Germain P® ace Treaty clause prohibiting military mobilisation.. 7. Turkey, bound not to refortify the Dardanelles by the Lausanne Treaty, dispatched a request for reconsideration of the prohibition and sent armed forces into the straits. * 8. Mussolini, angry at the League of Nations "economic and financial siege, reminded France, Belgium, and England that lie felt reluctant to help those countries, which voted sanctions against his own nation, to fight I their diplomatic battles against Germany, a non-member of the League, and, consequently, a non-participant in the sanctions. 9. The Little Ententne —Czecoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and. Rumaniaasked by Flandin what it would do if Hitler invaded Austria, retorted: "What will you do?" French officials said the three smaller nations reminded France she might be unable to aid Austria against Germany if the Germans were allowed to fortify along the Rhine. Just as France considers her Eastern frontiers impregnable, so military authorities of many countries consider that a small German force m a similar network of underground forts could hold off a French army that might try to relieve Austria by invading Germany. 10. Poland, theoretically Frances military ally, found herself a buffer State between Russia and Germany. Should the Franco-Soviet Pact operate—if Germany attacks either of the signatories—the Red Dictator Joseph Stalin's forces might pass through Poland.

CARVED FROM RUSSIA. Polish Foreign Minister Joseph Bcck, openly cool to France at the recent London Locarno Conference, remembers that Poland was partly carved out of old Russia by the Peace Treaty negotiators, and that Soviet troops later invaded Poland, beaten back only when close to Warsaw. 11. The Soviets, with Japanese-Man-chukuoan power menacing their Asiatic borders, fear a German desire for the Ukraine, a great granary. 12. Hungary, smarting under loss of land and power through results of the World War, announced she also might ask the right to re-arm. Hitler's peace pronouncements failed and still fail to halt the European sword-sharpening. Regardless of his words, his critics say, German rearmament constitutes a possible threat to Europe. Political and military leaders who foresee war, disagree on where, when, and how it may start. Some think Hitler will- reach for the fertile Ukraine. Others believe he will seek control of Austria, Hungary, or the border strip of Czechoslovakia, where there arc many Germans. The Reichs Fuhrer recently promised Poland he had no designs on the Polish Corridor, but few statesmen expect Germany to endure for lons separation from East Prussia. Since Ihe war the Peace Treaties hove disintrcrpted. France calls it a German "nibbling"' process, by which

many of the peace terms have become obsolete. Those Frenchmen who think Germany will "expand" into the front or back yards of other nations, reason (hat (he Reich is likely to do things a little at a time, avoiding if possible acts of sufficient violence to stir clher countries to war.