TREATY WITH SOVIET.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 69, 20 February 1937, Page 10

TREATY WITH SOVIET.

abandonment advocated. The London Times published a leadin" article recently advocating that the Franco-Soviet and Czecho-Soviet pacts should be abandoned. These pacts have been Herr hitler s pet grievance, the paper says. He professes to see in them an active threat against Germany, though the parties to them argue that they are nothing more than defensive understandings against possible aggression. The leading article, which pleads for the abandonment of the pacts as an indispensable condition for a European settlement, is regarded by many as most significant. British Government quarters have never been enamoured of these pacts, and would probably welcome the termination of them, though any official “inspiration” of the article in the Times is disclaimed. The Times says: “Agreement between Britain, France, and Germany is indispensable for a new Concert of Europe. No Englishman in German shoes would accept a new treaty w-hile the FrancoSoviet and Czecho-Soviet pacts continue in force. “The agreements are incompatible with a free political settlement. Any European settlement must supersedethem. “Doctrinal fervour has given special force and bitterness to present RussoGerman antipathy, but even if Russia were otherwise governed, the pacts j would still sound the same alarum in the German mind. “These pacts cannot be broken by denunciation, by pressure or by force, but by the exchange of new guarantees, leaving the pacts no ground foi survival.”