A REMINDER OF ABYSSINIA

Southland Times, Issue 23025, 20 October 1936, Page 7

A REMINDER OF ABYSSINIA

Belgium’s Case For Neutrality “DO YOU WANT THAT TO HAPPEN TO US?” ADHERENCE TO TREATY OBLIGATIONS (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) (Rec. 7.35 p.m.) London, October 18. “Remember Abyssinia, which was led to believe that by basing her defence upon a policy of collective security she would be saved; do you want that to happen to us?” asked the Belgian Foreign Minister (M. Paul Spaak.) in a speech at Brussels. • M. Spaak repeated that Belgium was true to her obligations and had only indicated the lines on which a new Western European pact to replace the Treaty of Locarno must be based. Belgium remained true to the principles of collective security and mutual assistance, said M. Spaak, but it was impossible to accept those ideas as the exclusive bases of her foreign policy. Communications and reports reaching London from Brussels and Paris have made it clear that the earliest interpretations of King Leopold’s speech, urging a policy of neutrality for Belgium, have 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 natural in 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 for rearmament must be pressed forward. Mr Winston Churchill in a speech referred to the declaration of the King of the Belgians, which he described as “another melancholy and disconcerting event in Europe.” He expressed the hope that the declaration might be taken rather as a demand for the clarification of the situation in the West and as an expression of the deep and natural anxieties of the Belgian people in the presence of the immense and ever-growing armaments of Germany than as a decision of policy.