END OF PROTOCOL

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 101, 30 March 1925, Page 5

END OF PROTOCOL

MUSSOLINI’S OPINION.

PREVIOUS DEFINITION RECALLED.

(By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received March 30, 9.35 a.m. ROME, March 29.

“The protocol lias had a first-class burial; let us forget it,” declared Signor Mussolini in a speech in the Italian Parliament. He recalled tho previous definition of the protocol, that it was an admirable machine specially devised to create new wars on the pretext of averting them.—Times. CONDEMNATION OF PACT. LONDON, March 28. Lord Beaverbrook, in a prominent article in the Sunduy Express condemning the security pact, says: “All such schemes are dangerous from the viewpoint of Britain, while from the Imperial standpoint they constitute a menace greater than any risk they propose to remove. Once Britain contracts into a system of European diplomacy and war, the Dominions will contract out. It is utterly impossible for Downing Street to treat the Dominions as a kind of appanage whoso citizens’ lives cun be signed away to defend the Rhine or battle on the Vistula. Intervention in Europe wall be a oause for more wars than it is likely to prevent.”—A. and N.Z. cable.

BUILDING OF BATTLESHIPS. FEW FOR GREAT BRITAIN. LONDON, March 28. Mr J. C. C. Davidson. Under-Secretary of the Admiralty, when speaking at Hemel Hempstead, said lie did not want to strike a noto of alarm but it was a significant fact, neglected by critics who alleged that every country favoured and practised disarmament but Great Britain, that out of 41 cruisers laid down by five great naval powers since tho armistice, presumably embodying tbe lessons of the war, only five bad been laid down by the British Empire. Out of 197 torpedo boat destroyers, only four were laid down by tho Empire. Out of 107 submarines, only two were laid down by tho Empire.—A. and N.Z. cable.