NEW LOCARNO

Evening Star, Issue 22559, 29 January 1937, Page 11

NEW LOCARNO

IS IT POSSIBLE ? ENGLISH NOW SCEPTICAL The “ new agreement to take the place of Locarno,” of which Mr Anthony Eden spoke in the House of Commons on November 5, is puzzling people in England. .They want to know what a “ new Locarno ” would mean. They look back and wonder (writes Wickham Steed in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’). On September 11, 1935, the British Foreign Secretary (Sir Samuel Hoare) pledged Great Britain to support collective resistance by the League of Nations to Italian aggression upon Ethiopia, provided that the resistance was really collective. His leadership was followed, far more collectively than he expected. At last, the world thought. Great Britain had “ played up,” collective security was at hand, and the League would ‘‘ make good.” Nowhere was approval'stronger than among the British nations, at homo or overseas. At home, public confidence gave Mr Stanley Baldwin’s National Government a resounding victory in the General Election of November 14, 1935. True. France seemed half-hearted—she who had always clamoured for collective _ security—and there were stories of an iniquitous bargain between her Foreign Secretary (M. Pierre Laval) and Signor Benito Mussolini at Rome in the previous January. But, France or no France, the British people wanted to do ahead. Then, in December, came the revelation that Sir Samuel Hoare had all along been running with the French hare while hunting with the League hounds. The famous, or infamous, Hoare-Laval proposals—to buy off Signor Mussolini with more than half his victims’ territory—shattered confidence, and all but overthrew the victorious Baldwin Government. British feeling grew cold towards France. Seeing this, Herr Adolf Hitler tore up, on March 7 lastj the Locarno Treaty or western security pact of 1925, marched troops into the demilitarised Rhineland, and presented France with the bill for a first instalment of the price of M. Laval’s policy. Some Britons exclaimed; ‘‘Well done! Hitler.” NO ANSWER FROM HITLER. Herr Hitler next* made a “ peace offer ” to Western Europe. On certain conditions he proposed a new “ Locarno ” for 25 years. But his Note on March 31, which contained this offer, was so curiously worded that the British Government inquired what its exact meaning might be. He has never answered. _ , Meanwhile, England, France, and Belgium—three of the other parties to the Locarno Treaty (Italy being then in disgrace for bad behaviour) —put their heads together. The three Governments ana their general staffs agreed that, pending the negotiation of a new Locarno, ’ the old treaty must stand as an . Anglo-Franco-Bel-gium defensive alliance. Then the British Government set itself to bring about a conference of the five Locarno Powers —Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, and Great Britain—and made haste to drop League “ sanctions ” against naughty Italy. This dropping of sanctions was looked upon as the end of collective security under the League; and the talk of a “ New Locarno ” was taken to herald a British return to the idea of limited

or “ regional ” security which had in* spired the old Locarno treaty. But Germany and Italy were- in no hurry to come into a “ New Locarno.” Germany, in particular, wanted France first to discard the FrancoSoviet non-aggression pact so that arrangements for security in Western' Europe might not be tied up with the “ Bolshevist menace.” This snag has not yet been got around or over. And even British statesmen feel some doubt whether peace is really _ divisible, and whether a New Locarno in the west, on German terms, might not mean a frea hand for Germany to make war upon' Russia in the east. This doubt has been increased by the new foreign policy of Belgium. Of- it the best that can be said is that nobody knows what it is. Belgium says she will be faithful to all her engagements—although her- King has re--commended a policy incompatible with' the maintenance of those engagements.IS SECURITY COLLECTIVE? But diplomacy would not be diplomacy if it were dismayed by such trifles. In the House of Commons on November 5, Mr Eden spoke of the task awaiting the Five-Power “ Locarno ’* conference—if and when it can be got together. He added that the views of all the five Powers are not known, and that though they diverge “ formidably ” in certain important respects these divergencies 11 are not necessarily insuperable.” So we await,, with mitigated faith and uncertain hope, the outcome o? this new attempt to prove that indivisible peace is divisible, that collective security is not necessarily collective, and that neiitrality is compatibla with non-neutrality. In the meantime, as Mr Baldwin said in his Guild* hall ’speech on November 9, the whol* of Europe is arming “ with inconceiy.; able folly,” and Great Britain is “ quite right ” to rearm, too. The folly is not only conceivable; it is a fact. 'Sometimes I wonder whether the “ New Locarno ” negotiations are much more than a device to gain time until the weight of British armaments can be fully felt. But, of course, such wonder savours of heresy. My heresy is that I hate war—and systems which inevitably make for war. _ If Mr Baldwin and his colleagues had always stood out against these systems, the world to-day might not be so far- from tbs verge of sanity.