GENEVA PROTOCOL

Southland Times, Issue 19458, 23 January 1925, Page 5

GENEVA PROTOCOL

COMMONWEALTH AGAINST RATIFICATION. NOT IN COUNTRY’S INTERESTS. (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright). (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) MELBOURNE, January 22. The Federal Government has decided that it would not be in the interests of the Commonwealth to recommend Parliament to accept the Geneva Peace Protocol. Ministers will therefore recommend that it be rejected. It is learned that Cabinet has received information from the British Ministry to the effect that it could pot see its way clear to recommend the British Parliament to ratify the Protocol, and that certain of the dominion Cabinets held similar views. The diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, commenting on the Cabinet discussion of the Protocol says: “The Ministers, who are particularly anxious for an early settlement of European security by a system of guarantees, keenly regret the delay, but realise that far-reaching amendments which alone will overcome the repugnant of the Empire, cannot be framed except by an imperial Conference. The Overseas Dominions will insist upon at least three amendments. (1) Non-interference by Geneva or The Hague Court in matters of domestic legislation. (2) Elimination of any automatic sanctions which would creat a state of war, and (3) Abandonment of any claim by a majority of the League Council to compel dissentient States to go to war on behalf of the League. It is hoped in some official quarters that if cable consultation with the Overseas Dominions shows the Protocol is doomed, the Dominion Governments will put forward an alternative scheme of guarantees with special reference to Belgium and France, if not Germany also, in the shape of a regional and mutual pact between the four Western Powers. Other official circles are less sanguine. They believe that only a direct attack upon Britain by a European Power will secure the participation of the dominions in a European conflict as their centre of danger is in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.