BELGIUM’S MOVE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23016, 20 October 1936, Page 9

BELGIUM’S MOVE

BASIS OF FOREIGN POLICY STILL TRUE TO OBLIGATIONS (United Press Association) i (By Electric Telegraph-j Copyright) BRUSSELS, Oct. 18. ((Received Oct. 19, at 11 p.m.) M. Spaak, in a speech here, repeated that Belgium was true to her obligations and had only indicated the lines on which a new western pact to replace Locarno must be based. Belgium remained , true to the principles of collective security and mutual assistance, but it was impossible to accept these ideas as exclusive bases for her foreign policy. “ Remember Abyssinia, which was led to believe that by basing her defence upon the policy of collective security she would be saved. Do you want that to happen to us? ” __ j . POSITION ELUCIDATED (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, October 18. Communications and reports reaching London from Brussels and Paris have made it clear that the earliest interpretations of King Leopold’s speech failed to do justice to the intention of the Belgian Government to stand by its existing obligations, including those arising from the Four-Power Agreement of March 19. Both in official quarters and in unofficial comment it is possible to discern the relief and satisfaction with which that elucidation has been received. The Daily Telegraph thinks that Belgium has done more than introduce a fresh element of uncertainty into European calculations. Her attitude, however, is natural in that the geographical and political situation in which she is placed sensibly diminishes the prospect of a new Locarno Treaty that would give a promise of security to Western Europe.” It draws the moral from the general retreat into isolation that the Government’s programme > of rearmament must be pressed forward.

Mr Winston Churchill, in a speech, referred to the King of the Belgians’ declaration which he described as “another melancholy and disconcerting event in Europe.” He expressed the hope that the declaration might be taken as a demand for clarification of the situation in the West and an expression of the deep and natural anxieties of the Belgian people in the presence of the immense and ever-growing armaments of Germany -rather than as a decision of policy.