HOPEFUL PROSPECTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19050, 1 July 1924, Page 4

HOPEFUL PROSPECTS

After reviewing European post-war history up to this point in the terms we have quoted above, Mr. Frank H. Simonds, one of the best-known American journalists, argues that if France had been at heart militaristic, as has been so often alleged, she would not have turned away from Poincare at this moment. Ou the surface, he says, it was as wild an experiment as the British choice of MacDonald a few short months before. But in reality both countries being equally democratic at bottom, the same popular sentiment doubtless operated to produce a similar result. Masses of British subjects, weary of tho failures of both parties, turned to a new party, a new man; they wanted Europe settled and they 'felt that tho Tory and the Liberal had failed at the job hopelessly. The new mop who have come to power in Franco are'DOt, in the main, radical in our Bolshevist sense, nor Socialist in the

German senser even, just as the British Labour Party is millions of miles removed from the Russian brand of radicalism. Both parties are essentially nationalistic. Now obviously between a MacDonald Labour Government in London and a Herriot or Herriot-Pain-Icve-Briand Government in France there can be vastly more co-operation than between a Poincare Ministry and a Lloyd George Ministry or a Poincare Ministry and a MacDonald Ministry, for on both sides of the channel there will bo now a clear perception that men of the same general sympathies, beliefs and aspirations, but withdifferent national conditions, are with equal good faith seeking a, solution. This is the great gain which Mr. Simonds sees in the French decision. France, the French democracy, has met the British half way, insofar as the choice of men to govern is concerned. MacDonald can talk with Herriot, with Briand or with Painlove as he never could have talked with Poincare. What then of Germany, which has gone in the opposite direction with a rcr ing bang? In reality, says Mr. ionds, nothing much of importance because whenever Britain and France can agree Germany must accept the terms provided. But there are at least a certain number of Germans as weary of war—of war in peace—as are the majority of Britons and Frenchmen. For them there has been no apparent way out with Poincare in the saddle and France in the Ruhr perhaps immovably. If the Nationalists won a great victory in the recent election they did not gain a majority; moreover, they are themselves divided between extremists and Moderates. As the result of all these political changes we now have in Europe this situation. Britain has a Labour Government, France a Radical-Socialist Government, Germany, despite her recent reaction, can have a government made up of Moderates. The fundamental issues have not changed, the basic policies of the three nations remain the same, but the superficial obstacles have been enormously reduced alike because of the change in British and French official personnel and because of the arrival of the Dawes report- Therefore, as this distinguished journalist views it, the defeat of Poincare marks one more and in a sense the longest step yet taken toward European settlement. It is noteworthy that Mr. Simonds has never shared the British or even the common American view of Poincare. But he recognises that the fact that he was regarded as an obstacle to settlement, that he had become a symbol of war and not of peace made his removal almost obligatory. His successors are. in a far better posture than was he, when he came to power. They are far more likely to modify his manner than abandon his real objectives. General Dawes, himself, has testified that the occupation of the Ruhr was a necesary step to the appointment of his committee. And so, at last, he says, in Britain, in France, all over Western Europe, save only in Germany, the promise of the arrival of real peace is unmistakable. At the very least the present moment is the best since the outbreak of the World War itself, the best in the sense that the chances of real adjustment arc better than over before.