MENACE TO NEUTRALS

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9596, 28 February 1917, Page 5

MENACE TO NEUTRALS

GERMANY’S NEIGHBOURS IK DANGER. (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, January 4. Lord French, in one of those interviews with an American journalist, with which we seek to inform opinion in the United States on the objects we are pursuing in the war, has been making some significant remarks on the dangers which may soon confront small neutral countries adjacent to Germany, Lord French does not disguise his fears that in the months that lie before us small neutral bordering on Germany may be overrun by the Teutonic armies, and, in their turn, treated as Belgium and others have been treated. Holland in particular has always beeu keenly alive to this menace. To the Dutch Government the suggestions that have at various times been put forward that the British should attempt a landing on the Belgian coast with the object of turning the flank of the enemy’s armies operating in Northern France has always been a matter of very lively concern. Holland’s fear has always beeu that in that case the hard-pressed German troops might be driven over ber frontier and pay soint regards to her rights as a neutral nation. Her danger is, of course, greater than that of Norway and Sweden, or than the danger of Denmark, though even the Scandinavian Powers might conceivably be drawn into the vortex of the war if Germany’s submarine warfare is carried to the extreme lengths that the hotheads in Berlin are demanding. That the struggles of the wild animal will become more violent as we draw nearer to the end has al-

ways been expected. But the general outlook in these, tho opening days of the New Year, is full of promise from the point of view of the Allies.