BELGIUM AND LOCARNO.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 127, 30 April 1937, Page 6

BELGIUM AND LOCARNO.

The original Locarno Pact was signed in 1925, but was torn up a year ago by Germany. Britain spent a long time endeavouring to secure a satisfactory substitute, but without success. Now Germany’s intentions are being made clear. She is attempting to draw Belgium away from Prance and Britain, her protectors in the Great War; to divide Prance and Britain from each other; to leave Prance alone without any allies in the East of Europe, and to push the League of Nations, so far as a Western pact is concerned, entirely into the background. Prance and Germany were to sign a mutual non-aggression pact “under all circumstances,” but if a conflict should arise Britain and Italy were to undertake the role of arbiters to decide who had been the aggressor, a clause that seems nicely designed to stack all tbe cards in the hands of the aggressor, and this was promptly rejected. Under the Locarno Pact, action taken under Article Sixteen of tlie League Covenant was legitimate; in the new German view no exceptions are permitted. Prance is not to be allowed to go to the aid of Belgium under the provisions of the Covenant, nor, if Prance were attacked, may Belgium go to her aid. There would be no General Staff conversations unless made openly between all four Powers, which would make them as a military precaution useless.

Britain, Prance, Germany, and Italy were, according to the Reich’s new plan, to guarantee the neutrality of Belgium. The first three Powers were guarantors in 1914, but that did not stop the invasion of Belgium. In any event is it possible to see Signor Mussolini quarrelling with Germany about an attack on Belgium ? The latter has been nervous about Prance’s obligations to Czechoslovakia and Russia if she became involved in a general European war, but to be willing, after what happened in 1914, to accept instead an international guarantee with Germany as one of the guarantors would be surprising. There was one great weakness in the old Locarno Treaty. In certain circumstances Britain was bound to go to the aid of Prance if attacked, and in certain other circumstances bound to go to the aid of Germany, but there was not the same guarantee that any Power would fulfil its bond to come to the aid of Britain if she herself were attacked. Belgium has been released from her obligations under the Locarno Treaty on condition that she maintains adequate forces to resist invasion, while Britain and Prance continue to guarantee her neutrality. Prance apparently foresaw that something of this nature would happen, and therefore secured from the Chamber of Deputies a vote of £178,000,009 mainly to extend the formidable Maginot Line along the Belgian frontier to the sea, and along the Swiss frontier. Switzerland, too, is fortifying her frontiers.