The Press Thursday, June 11, 1925. The Franco-German Frontier.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18405, 11 June 1925, Page 8

The Press Thursday, June 11, 1925. The Franco-German Frontier.

It will "bo very unpleasant if the Foreign Office is negotiating its Khineland Pact without consulting the Dominions. Though it is best to assume in the meantime that this is not being done, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that consultation, if.it has taken place already, has been formal, if not peri functory, and that the officials of the i Foreign Office aro still reluctant to • grant the Dominions the place in practice that they have long since won in theory. It is certainly announced today that the negotiations are not nearly so far advanced as the world was led to believe yesterday, and it is possible that we shall be told something tomorrow which will discredit yesterday's cables still further. But the natural inference from the messages already published is that Mr Baldwin is only now consulting the Dominions, though it mußt be plain to the Foreign Office that "defining" Britain's responsibilities is as niuch an Empire question as ' 'increas"ing" them, and is in fact the same thing as increasing them if the Pact is ■ directly or indirectly a guarantee of any foreign frontier. In the case of an emergency—a sudden crisis, for example, involving the threat of warf—the Dominions must leave the conduct of affairs to the Imperial Government; but there is no crisis or emergency or throat to anybody or anything in the negotiation, of a Security Pact with Germany and France, and it must not forgotten that any Note which may now have been prepared is a reply to a Note forwarded many weeks ago from Berlin. On one point, however, tho cables have been extremely unsatisfactory. Most readers will naturally conclude" that a Khineland Security* Pact must include provisions for compulsory arbitration, for the determination of the aggressor nation, and for tho application of sanctions against that-nation: in short, for military measures by Britain and France against Germany—if not quite for,, military measures by Britain and Germany | against France—in the event of any now acts of aggression. In some degree it certainly must involve these l things. But tho cabled comments today of tho "Daily Telegraph," and a little less definitely of other leading; suggest., "that the Pact is far less drastic than this, and has nothing at all to do with aggression or sanctions. If these critics aro right the. Pact deals with causes of dispute rather than with methods of •settling thcro. It is ay solemn declaration by Britain, France and Germany, and no doubt also by Belgium, that the frontier line now agreed on is just and permanent, and that whoever violates it in future is the enemy of EurojJte and of tho whole Western world. In particular, it is a declaration- that Ahsace-Lorraine belongs to France and that Franco is merely a temporary occupant of the Saar Valley; that tho agelong dispute about tho Bhine is settled; and that whoever raises any of these questions again is an international outlaw. But if it means that and that only it will not convince France that she is any safer, or at least much safer, than she findu herself without it, and if Britain is not prepared to prove that it means moro than {hat —should the occasion arise for proof—there is really no need for Secrecy or excitement, and the problem of security is whero it was six years ago.