The Evening Star MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1928. HEALTH OF EUROPE.

Evening Star, Issue 20051, 17 December 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1928. HEALTH OF EUROPE.

“ Crai'S of thunder” have been rare at the decorous meetings of the League of Nations, but they occur at times. There was one at the sitting of tho League’s Council on Saturday, when complaint was made of the Polish authorities’ treatment of German minorities in Silesia, and Dr Stresemann was provoked into delivering a warning that if minorities were not better protected certain nations, including his own, would have to consider the question of withdrawing from the League. All Germany was provoked, during the last Assembly, by some remarks of M. Briand questioning its disarmament. The most seasoned internationalists are still nationalists under their skins. Europe has built up a great system for the prevention of future wars, but it remains to bo seen what its value would amount to in the event of a strain being placed on it. A few days ago it was hinted that the august League would not dare to interfere in the trouble between Bolivia and Paraguay, because to do that might bo to conflict with the United States’ ideas which are embodied in the Monroe Doctrine, The reassuring circumstance is that these explosions and doubts have never produced the worst effects which have been threatened by them. Germany soon forgot M. Briand’s remarks. A report on the latest clap was that “ the sun reappeared, and everybody is now calmer and more composed.” The settlement by the League of tho Silesian boundary problem, half a dozen years ago, was almost inevitably so much of a compromise that it is a wonder there have not been continuous troubles from it. But they do not seem to have happened. Tho League has not been afraid to recognise its responsibility towards the American States and to remind them of theirs to it, though it may be bettor if their quarrel is finally adjusted by their own conference on conciliation and arbitration, and not by its means.

A couple of articles in one of the best-known American reviews deal with tho world progress which has been made towards peace and security in tho ten years that have elapsed since tho armistice, and it is definitely a hopeful picture which they paint. Mr James T. Shotwell, one of the directors of the Caruegio Endowment for International Peace, whose ideas tor the outlawry of war had their part in the inspiration oi Mr Kellogg’s Peace Pact, has no doubt that internationalism, in its best sense, is increasing in America, The old parochial outlook becomes less and less,, notwithstanding official endorsement which it has received in the refusal to join the World Couit and the League of Nations. He finds support for his claim in the fact that there are now in America something like 1,200 organisations for the study of jiroblems in international politics, as compared with perhaps one-tenth as many before the war. In addition to those can be reckoned many older institutions, such as Rotary, which l formerly,had but little interest in international affairs, but tend now to give them a prominent place. There was more than a momentary significance, he believes, in the nationwide popular demand for a cancellation, or at least a radical reduction, of tho navy-building programme of last year, and in the support given in America to tho Kellogg Pact. America has been always notable for its spirit of adventure, and it is rot going to be out of the adventure of promoting a peaceful world. Mr H. Wickham Steed, former editor of the London ‘ Times,’ dealing entirely with Europe, is the other contributor on the subject, and there, are few authorities who could speak on it with more experience or knowledge. Hi sums up the territorial changes which have been made in Europe as the result of the Peace Treaties, and he believes that its present political configuration is less unnatural than that of “ Bismarck’s Europe,” which lasted for less than fifty years, though, before the war, it was regarded as natural and permanent. “Are there to-day,” he asks, “ in Europe any conditions or factors working as logically to an inexorable end as those which brought on the world war of 1914?” And he replies: “There may be. I think there are. But I cannot prebend to be as certain of them as I was in 1909 and 1912. Thsy aro more complex, and some of them are new. Moreover, tho end towards which they are working may be not war, but peace.” Among the political results of the war he assigns the foremost places to three: (1) The republicanisation of tho greater part of Europe; (2) the conviction that another war would totally destroy European civilisation, and that, therefore, disputes must be settled by peaceful means; (3) the severance of Russia from Europe in consequence of the establishment of ; Bolshevism. Fascism he regards as a passing phase of reaction, too barren to;' » last-

ing impress upon the world. In comparison with these three results he regards all the local troubles and disaffections which might be a danger to peace as matters of minor importance. None of them seems likely to bring about a general war, because the professional war-makers are no longer in the, ascendant, Europe wants no more war, and it wants no more Bolshevism. Germany will not go back on the League of Nations, because she knows that that would be contrary to all her real interests. The conclusion is reached that, “as a result of the war, Europe is now healthier than she has been for centuries.’’ The Kellogg Pact itself, thanks to one aspect of it which is distinctive, may have a value beyond any that has been generally foreseen. “ The League Covenant and the Locarno treaties arc mainly directed against the peril of war, and they threaten aggressors with punitive sanctions. To this extent they appear to look upon war as the major probability. The Peace Pact tends to reverse this' habit of thought and to cause peace to be looked upon as the, major probability.” A revolution may be wrought in European methods and systems if that outlook is able to grow.