BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY

Taranaki Daily News, 29 November 1926, Page 9

BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY

EFFECT OF CONFERENCE IMPORTANT ALTERATIONS FRENCH CRITIC’S VIEWS By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright Paris, Nov. 26. Tho unobtrusive manner iu which changes in the relatione of the Dominions and Britain was announced made Continental commentators slow to realise the importance of the alterations in Britain's foreign policy. M. Jules Sauervvein, writing in Le Matin, says: “Suppose under the pressure of population it becomes necessary to examine the question of what territories are available for Germany, Italy, and by other countries with expanding populations, euch a question can no longer bo referred to Britain, but must be referred to the Dominions also. Colonials throughout the world are difficult people to persuade; they make a great fuss over a slice of territory at the Antipodes, yet some day it will be necessary to share up the territories of the globe on a fairer basis, as the only way of preventing sanguinary conflicts. Britain might be ready to make concessions, but the South African, Australian and New Zealand Parliaments would rise as one man.” M. Sauerwein adds: “While all Asia is in a ferment the Imperial Conference makes a decision which is humiliating for India; whereas New Zealand ean conclude treaties, India continues in a state of impotence and vassalage. Certain British Dominions already treat India offensively, yet this is a land where the microbe of Bolshevism will readily grow.” “Pertinax,” writing in the Echo de Paris, applies the description “Fascisti” to the British Empire, using the term in its original sense of a composite bundle, the need of common defence binding the Empire in a fasees (the fasces was * bundle or birch or elm rods, from which an axehead projected, carried before Roman magistrates by the lictora). “The Imperial Conference,"’ he said, “showed that the British League is, in some respects, keeping aloof, from the Geneva League, and is determined to maintain its integrity.”