THE PEASE OF EUROPE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3813, 25 September 1936, Page 3

THE PEASE OF EUROPE

THE AUSTRO-GERMAN PACT. “It might appear on the surface that the Austro-German pact is all to the good,” urges tlie Manchester Guardian. “And yet if wd examine Germany’s motives more closely our gratitude becomes clouded even if it i;’. not. altogether obscured. That Germany means to recover Danzig some time is beyond any doubt. She may be deterred for tlie moment. Or it may be that Germany will secure a kind of invisible reunion witli Danzig and then act openly in Memel. The way along the Baltic, the way to Riga and possibly to Reval, is then clear—unless Russia intervenes. But if she did, would she not seem to be an aggressor, or would not Germany and all Russophobes try to make out that she was the aggressor, although in reality she would be acting in sheer self-defence? And would not Germany, with Danzig as a most formid-

able base for her military, naval and aerial forces and with advance positions in the Baltic States, be able to precipitate tlie conflict with Russia, and would the Western Powers, faced with the impregnable German defence in the Rhineland and along the North Sea coast, intervene? These are the questions which Germany must be asking-—and answering in a sense favourable to herself.”