BLUNDERBUSS DIPLOMACY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19227, 20 January 1937, Page 14

BLUNDERBUSS DIPLOMACY

RECTIFYING GRIEVANCES HITLER’S TACTICS Is violence the only means of rectifying grievances and inequalities among me nations? asks .Leslie K. Aldqus in a league ot Nations bulletin. Tins question has been raised once more by the action of Germany m uniiateraby denouncing those articles ot tile Treaty of Versailles which (leal with the internationalisation of certain German waterways. Lompared with other European problems, tne control ot these waterways cannot be considered a matter ot lirst-cia»s importance. Ail the commotion lias been caused by the tactics adopted by Herr Hitler to get rid ot irksome .restrictions, ret another blow, lias been struck at the sanctity of treaty obligations, which is not piny a fundamental principle of the Covenant of the League of Nations, but, which must be the oasis of any system of international law.

Germany’s answer would be that the treaty obligations which she is casting aside are unfair and place her in a position of inferiority.. She was ready in the past to press her claims to equality of status in a reasonable and open manner. All her pleas were ignored. Therefore the only road open to her, to secure justice, was to wash her hands of the Disarmament Conference, break away from the League of Nations, denounce her disarmament clauses of the Peace Treaty, re-occupy the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland, and m general take all that she wanted by force. “AN AWKWARD CUSTOMER” Few would deny that there is, in fact, a substratum of truth in these arguments, since many things have been done since the Great War to try Germany’s patience. Nevertheless, Germany has also proved, on occasions, an awkward custurner in negotiations and has sometimes broken off dicussions at the very moment when they seemed likely to bear iruit. In the case of the waterways, Mr. Anthony Eden has pointed out that negotiations for a change in the- regime were actually proceeding and had already met with a large measure of success. Whatever the German people may be taught to believe, the outside world will find it hard to accept the view that peaceful procedure had been exhausted. During the past war, abundant evidence has been provided that “peaceful change” can be achieved by friendly negotiation. Turkey behaved in a perfectly correct way in urging the revision of the Straits Convention, with the result that a satisfactory agreement was reached at Montreux. Great Britain and Egypt were able to settle their longstanding differences by similar methods. Blunderbuss diplomacy is not the only way to settle international discontents. It is, in fact, the least satisfactory way, since it inevitably stirs up friction, suspicion and hostility.