ITALO-GERMAN CONCORD

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22722, 7 May 1937, Page 10

ITALO-GERMAN CONCORD

Interest in the possible outcome of the conversations in Rome between Baron von Neurath and eminent Italians i's deepened by the issue of a joint communique announcing agreement. The measure of authority possessed by this

document can be judged from the fact that the visiting German

Foreign Minister is associated in its announcement with Signor Mussolini and the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano. It is scarcely possible to regard it too seriously. On one aspect, that of a definite military accord, the opinion of French diplomatic circles is that such an understanding has been evolved; but French nervousness is prone to think " every bush an officer," and comments in Rome discount the reports of a military accord. However, although no alliance of a strictly military sort may have been created, the terms of the communique suggest that more than a collaboration in promoting European peace has been, arranged. "A concordant policy in all major questions" necessarily includes a common stand on questions now vital —a shared attitude toward the war in Spain, the project of a new western pact, the immediate future of Austi'ia, the efforts to salvage collective security, and the divergent views on access to raw materials and rights to colonies. On the first and most urgent of these, the stand taken by Herr von Ribbentrop at the Non-intervention Committee is far from reassuring. He has refused, as German delegate, to agree to an appeal being made, to both sides, to stop bombing open towns, and turned a deaf ear to the argument of the chairman, the Earl of Plymouth, that the only object of the appeal is to lessen the inhumanity of the war. From Berlin comes word of an equally unpleasant ItaloGerman discussion of measures to counter alleged British support for "blockade breaking" at Bilbao, and from Rome a report that Signor Mussolini and Baron von Neurath have reaffirmed support to the Spanish insurgents. The "concordant policy," if it is to be of any real international worth, will have to be more precisely pacific in phraseology and be accompanied by practical proof of sincerity.