Mr. Chamberlain On Need For Restraint

Northern Advocate, 28 July 1938, Page 7

Mr. Chamberlain On Need For Restraint

(Received 10 a.m.) RUGBY, July 26. Dealing with the dispute in Czechoslovakia, in respect of Anglo-German relations, in his speech in the House of Commons, Mr Chamberlain said Britain had impressed on both Germany and Czechoslovakia the desirability of restraint. They had noted with satisfaction the efforts of the Government in Prague, and they had also been happy to receive from Berlin assurances, recently renewed, of a desire for a peaceful solution. In his recent interview with Dr. von Derksen, the German Ambassador, said Mr Chamberlain, he himself had not gone beyond what the House already knew. The dual policy of urging Czechoslovakia to do all it possibly could consistent with what it felt to be essential to the integrity and independence of its own State’, to come to an agreement with Herr Henlein’s party, and of urging on the other side the need for patience. Way to General Appeasement. “If we can find some peaceful solution of the Sudeten question, I should myself think the way open again for a further effort for general appeasement —appeasement which cannot be attained until we can be satisfied that no major cause for dispute or difference remains unsettled,” the Prime Minister continued. “We have already demonstrated the possibilities of a complete agreement between democratic and prolatarian States, and I do not see why the experiment cannot be repeated. “When Herr Henlein made the offer of a naval treaty, in which Germany was to be restricted to an agreed level, bearing a fixed ratiq to the British fleet, he made a notable gesture of the most practical kind in the direction of peace. The value of that gesture it seems to me, has not been fully appreciated as tending towards general appeasement. But there the treaty stands as a demonstration that it is possible for Germany and ourselves to agree >rpon matters which are vital to both of us. We ought not to find it impossible to continue our efforts towards an understanding which would do so much to bring back confidence in Europe.”