“A CLEAR ISSUE."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16809, 11 August 1922, Page 7

“A CLEAR ISSUE."

d REAL TEST TO COME. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Received August 11, 11 a.m.) LONDON, August 10. The “Evening Post ” says: “If the conference breaks up, we refuse to despair. It is quite clear that the Allies are adopting a procedure which is L t bound to end in disaster. Britain is too inclined to approach the problem from a narrow financial standpoint, irom which the experts are probably right in doubting the efficiency of the g_ French proposals, but the issue is not cl financial. It is political. Anglo-French statesmen ought not to be wrangling about the dye industries and Rhineland customs, but should be laying the founlg dation of a great policy of understandir ing whereon Europe can again begin to work.” The “Daily News” says: “All the v logic in the world, and all the ferocity that France can muster, will never turn the German people into a nation of slaves. .M. Poincare is an intellectual laggard. He is behind the times. The reopening of the question of the punishment of Germany is outdated and irrelevant. “ French security depends, not on military pacts -with a defunct and desperate Germany, but on a settled, ordered and peaceful Europe, working without the stimulus of fear and oppression, but with confidence in just stable conditions, and with hope in the future. The first practical expression of Allied sincerity in the cause of peace should be the early and complete withdrawal of the armies of occupation. M. Poincare proposes deeper penetration. It is a. straight test and a clear issue.” 1 The “Daily Herald” says: “If M. 1 Poincare gets his way. and if the Brit--2 ish Cabinet again resigns the control of the affairs of Britain, Europe and - the world into the hands of French Imperialists, the present social and economic ruin will become accentuated, and the future of mankind will he jeopardised. M Poincare is bent on imi- - tat ing Louis XIV. and Napoleon, and on being the first to establish the domi--1 nation of France from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Whatever the governs 'ments may say or do, the peoples of j Europe will not submit to the replace- ( ment of Teardom and Kaiserism by an autocracy or a militarist republic.” The “Westminster Gazette” says: