"THIS ELUSIVE SHADOW"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 30, 4 August 1939, Page 9

"THIS ELUSIVE SHADOW"

DIFFICULT POINT

DEFINITION OF "INDIRECT AGGRESSION"

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received August 4, noon.)

RUGBY, August 3,

Discussing the Russian negotiations in the House. ...of Lords, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, said that tb.B effort to negotiate an agreement with Russia was the continuation of an endeavour to organise a combination in resistance to aggression. The Government was blamed for delay, but he suggested that not sufficient allowaas? was made for the difficulties of preparing an instrument that would cover every possible contingency. That task was very complicated in any case, and it was further complicated by the necessity for meeting the new technique of aggression—that was to say, of providing for what was called "indirect aggression." Lord Halifax made it clear that the chief delay was in finally reaching agreement on the question of the precise form to be given to the definition of "indirect aggression"—"this elusive shadow," as he called it. The object was to find a formula to cover indirect aggression without encroaching on the independence and neutrality of other States. It was no secret that the proposals Britain and France had made appeared to the Soviet to be insufficiently comprehensive, whilst the formula favoured by Russia appeared to Britain and France to go too far in th« other direction.