THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1936 THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22612, 28 December 1936, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS MONDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1936 THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR

If a glance, however rapid, at the domestic politics of the nations in this year of critical trends cannot fail to impress a realisation of the importance of these trends, a similar survey of the international field as a connected whole creates the same impression. At the end of the year there is found nothing complete or determinate —only a swing of movements working toward a climax that they do little to define. A confusion of currents clearly observable, rather than one vast tide of tendency, is in the retrospect. Among the clearest currents, although even they do not necessarily foretell any ultimate tidal set, have been some of arresting interest and tremendous potency. One of these forces is the eddying swirl that has swept "collective security" out of reach, almost out of sight. Germany's sending of armed troops into the Rhineland, and by that token indicating a fixed resolve to defy all foreign surveillance for evermore, was one eddy. The failure of the League to make good its defence of the Covenant, and incidentally of Abyssinia, was another. Japan's deliberate break with naval treaties went a further decisive step at the London Conference; and on the Asian continent, even in the equatorial Pacific, she pursued her severely nationalist bent. Around Spain's internecine conflict other Powers gathered more in quarrelsome anger than in pleading sorrow. A contemptuous Nazi swashbuckler from Danzig flung unmannerly insult in the face of the League Council, his reputed court of appeal. Belgium declared for a permanent isolation from European duty, after the manner of Holland and Switzerland. Efforts to spread the spirit of Locarno were brusquely countered. The United States, trying to unite the Western Hemisphere in an expedient harmony, moved further away from universal obligations —and revived the obstructive war-debts claim. In general, an opposing current clashed powerfully with that of co-operation.

The year will go into history as that of forgotten pledges of friendship and of peace. Bonds ceased to be more than pretty words. The Briand-Kellogg Pact, which a year ago was to be written into the League Covenant as a vital clause, lost all attraction. The international atmosphere was full of scraps of paper. Promises were treated as pie-crust made to be broken. When the Montreux agreement was reached it was inordinately praised as entailing no open breach of existing treaties—a sadly sufficient comment on the bad fashion of the times. Another and associated sinister symptom was the negotiation of certain compacts such as that between France and Russia —innocuous in text and capable of embodiment within the League system, but too easily made the subject of others' grievance and disruptive scheming. By way of Austria's need, Mussolini and Hitler built a causeway from the Mediterranean to the Baltic that was more a shared rampart against others than a path of happy intercourse. Inroads of intrigue broke into the Little Entente and the Balkan Pact. The Anglo-German naval agreement bore the sharptasted fruit of Hitler's legion of submarines. Re-armament policies everywhere made a mock of congress speeches, and the most prized part of the Naval Treaty of 1930 proved to be the escalator clause allowing construction beyond specified limits. Most disconcerting and instructive fact of all—a fact not yet entering the thought of many —is the central emergence of a German problem that rests no longer upon any allegation of unjust peace treaties, for Germany herself has seen to their obliteration; and along with this is the merely plausible demand for colonial territory as the only means of access to raw materials for needy industries. A legacy of despised troth has been made more noxious by recourse to specious arguments of claims. What might have been a year of frank colloquy has been one of much crafty manoeuvre; the vaunted virtues of "open diplomacy," with the goods in the window, have given place to dangerously astute window-dressing. Yet —a marvellous fact when all this lack of unity and honesty is perforce noted—there has been no reckless flying at one another's throats. The year might have seen a general war. True, no nation really and deeply cherished a wish for that, in spite of Italy's determination on the seizure of Abyssinia and Japan's maintained designs on China and the feud of hatred between Germany and Russia. Insufficient means were not the only cause of self-restraint, since war on a large scale has had a- trick of beginning without full preparedness. In this welter of broken undertakings solemnly set down, of loud-mouthed threats and hurtling defiances, of all-too-convenient occasions of onslaught, why has there been so marked a reluctance to fire the train? For much less than has been borne in recent months, nations have hitherto sprung into a melee with clamorous and insane fury. Why not in 19361 The explanation is complex, yet one thing is clear: events have not been in the saddle —persons have counted, and the mind of peoples, even those under dictators, has had more enlightened influence. So the cause of peace has not been abandoned, in spite of the lurid spots on the map of the year, in what was Ilaile Selassie's land, in Spain, in Palestine, in the Orient. The League went down but not out. A beginning of economic agreement, about currency, was made by three leading nations. Twenty-one peoples in the Americas set again about digging for themselves a cave of quiet. "Collective security" became a phrase empty of practical meaning, but to make sense of it lingered on as an ideal.