NOTES AND COMMENTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21561, 4 August 1933, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS

PROBLEM OF DISARMAMENT Referring to the problems of the Disarmament* Conference in a recent speech, Mr. A. Eden, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said that if agreement could bo reached between France and Germany on the basis of the British Draft Convention, the other difficulties would no doubt adjust themselves around the nucleus of this common accord. But without such an agreement no real progress could bo made. It was the task of British statesmanship to do all in its power to make such an agreement possible. A pacified Europe was their objective. It was in the interests of European peace that Britain voluntarily undertook the very serious obligation that resulted from the Locarno Treaty. It was no doubt the same motive that prompted Signor Mussolini to make his proposal for a Four-Power Pact —an act of statesmanship for which Europe had every reason to bo grateful. For if they could reenter a period of European co-opera-tion, if they could recapture the Locarno spirit, then they could make progress in all those problems of international relations which baffled statesmanship to-day. It was sometimes fashionable to blame the League of Nations for their troubles. Such blame was not just. The League in itself, after all, only represented the collective wisdom of its component parts, and if the will to coftimon effort be lacking, the League could not create it alone. "Let us then attempt to gfet back to Locarno, to the spirit of co-operation which then existed in its essence, as well as in name, and we shall then help instead of hindering that economic recovery which, in spite of all difficulties, is taking place to-day."

THROUGH FRENCH EYES M. Andre Maurois, in an essay on the English character, attempts once more to give a picture of the Englishman as the Frenchman sees him. While disclaiming any idea of analysing the national psychology —which he is convinced does not exist —he attempts to extract what elements have persisted of the picture which the Frenchman has formed of the Englishman for 100 years past. The characteristic which M. Maurois places at the head of his list is the respect for force, which finds expression in the Englishman's quality of tenacity. "This conception of invincible tenacity, the well-worn but classic image of the bulldog, who cannot be persuaded to let go, that is the first prop in an-image of England a3 it forms in the mind of the ordinary Frenchman." The second trait is that the English are a people who are difficult to understand. The Frenchman loves to construct an exact picture of the future. The Englishman is profoundly suspicious of any such thing. M. Maurois places next the virtue of national unity, to which the ordinary Frenchman aseribes the strength and permanence of England. It is the easier to obtain because party differences in England go far less deep than they do in Franco, and this quality affords in French eyes the power of collective recovery in times of difficulty. Next comes the capacity of the English people for happiness. The ordinary Frenchman, when he sees the Englishman's easy leisure, his dislike for too much work, the large place given to sport in his education, obtains the impression of a people always on holiday. M. Maurois admits that there may be a mask of humour, a refusal to reveal feelings that may even be called acute, but there is also the natural optimism of a people that has never been beaten. The average Frenchman is apt to think that England after the war is a changed country. M. Maurois does not believe it, and cites all the permanent elements of the country, the puritanism of its literature, the toughness of its schoolboys, the solidity of the Monarchy, the revival of Liberalism, the power of Methodism, even free trade, which can still excite controversy almost passionately religious.