Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1939. ARBITRATE WITH CLEAN SLATE!

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 49, 26 August 1939, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1939. ARBITRATE WITH CLEAN SLATE!

President Roosevelt's plan for negotiation, or conciliation, or arbitration concerning Danzig is more than a plan to postpone war. It is more than a plan to avert war. It contains, in fact, the germ of a European settlement. Among the brakes on the peace movement, none is more powerful than the Versailles spirit and the counter-spirit which it has engendered. Nazi hatred not only of Versailles, hut of Geneva for perpetuating Versailles, is an outstanding fact. Well, so far as Danzig is concerned, why not get away from the memory of Versailles —and, for the moment, from the memory of Geneva—by a brand-neAv arbitration or conciliation? That is the vital element in President Roosevelt's, appeal to Herr Hitler and to Poland. The capacity of the human race to conciliate and arbitrate remains not less than it ever was; but totalitarian hatred of Versailles (with which the totalitarian States bracket Geneva) has blocked the way. It is at this well-chosen moment that President Roosevelt, in order to get clear of the blockage, proposes to blast a new trail to peaceful settlement, free of all past associations and memories.

America is not free of moral responsibility for Versailles,' but is free of all active association with the long post-War Geneva history through which high altruistic ideals came to almost naught. If, as a member of the New Zealand Parliament has affirmed, there was at times some "double-crossing" at Geneva, the United States Government was not in it. President Roosevelt is therefore better placed than is anyone in the world to again appeal to the world's altruism and to again erect an altar—an altar with a clean slate—to international conciliation and arbitration. If Germany and Poland accepted an arbitration tribunal with an undertaking to comply with the award—or even an undertaking to comply, subject to that somewhat vague term, "honourable reservations"—it is certain that the tribunal would not look through Versailles spectacles, but would attack de novo, and without prejudice, the problem of how to mutually accommodate Germany and Poland upon the Baltic. And the same could be said of a conciliator—European or American—if President Roosevelt's third method (a conciliator) were adopted. The nearest modern instance of this is Lord Runciman, who brought a new viewpoint into the Sudetenland quarrel. As an Englishman in the Sudetenland, Lord Runciman met with certain difficulties—certain suggestions of bias-—that might not beset an Argentinian, or a Norwegian, or a Greek, or a Bulgarian, if such a one were entrusted with the task of a new examination of Danzig and "corridor" problems, free from suspicion of tendencies to award spoils to victors. Even in England, Lord Runciman, when in Czecho-Slovakia, was accused of being a liquidator; but the world still possesses both arbitrators and conciliators so circumstanced that their services to Germany and Poland could not be suspected of bias or taint. On that side of the question—the availability of men able to show a just settlement—no doubt whatever exists; but concerning the willingness of Herr Hitler to accept a just settlement many doubts exist —doubts that Herr Hitler's attitude to the President's truce proposals alone can dispel. If Germany is prepared for the spirit of justice in settlements, free of the Versailles taint, President Roosevelt is on the track not only of a truce, not only of a postponement of war, not only of a Danzig compromise—but of a means of restoring peace to all Europe. Not only does the President of the United States offer his good offices for the formulation of a peaceful solution of difficulties. He also asks the King of Italy to offer similar good offices. The President is a real President, and good may result if the King is a real King. Possibly there is, as the cablegrams suggest, some departure from precedent; "usually the suggestion of good offices is sent to some neutral Government, and not to one of the Powers involved in the controversy." In other words, there is said to be an Axis alliance (Germany and Italy) and to ask an ally for such good offices is considered to be one of the things that are "not done." But perhaps President Roosevelt obI served the alliance with his blind

eye pressed to the telescope; in any case, many things formerly "not done" are now done, as Herr Hitler has conspicuously demonstrated. Of course, it still lies with Herr Hitler to choose the conciliation or arbitra-

tion course, or simply to say that America, like Britain, should mind her own business. That was the purport of the ex-Kaiser's marginal notes in 1914 on Sir Edward Grey's dispatches concerning Serbia. The parallel is close enough to be almost perfect. Will Herr Hitler tread in the ex-Kaiser's footsteps?