BELGIAN NEUTRALITY.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 19, 15 October 1937, Page 4

BELGIAN NEUTRALITY.

The treaty with Belgium into which Germany is to-day reported as having entered aceords strictly with Herr Hitler's declared policy to avoid all agreements of "collective security" and to seek only to establish bilateral understandings with her neighbours. Under the Locarno Treaty Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium had entered into mutual obligations to come to the assistance of any one of them that might have been made the victim of unprovoked armed aggression on the part of any of the others. From that- treaty Germany virtually broke away when she resumed military oc» cupation of the Rhine zone that had been speciftcally demilitarised under the Versailles Treaty— in this respect confirmed by the Locarno Treaty itself— and since then the latter treaty has been to her a dead letter. Several attempts have been made to revive it in some modified form, but always, without any success. Then, early in this year, the Belgian Government approached those of Great Britain and France with a request to be relieved from its obligations under the Locarno Treaty and to have sL position. of . strict neutrality assured and guaranteed to her. To this representation Great Britain and France lent a ready ear, while still maintaining some remnant of hope that a western pact of non-aggression and mutual assistance might eventually be brought about. The immediate outqome was that in April last, Great Britain and France delivered a joint declaration under which, so far as they were concerne'd, Belgium would thenceforth be regarded as having been released from all obligations to them under both the Locarno Treaty and a subsidiary agreement entered into early in 193^* At the same time, however, the obligations of Great Britain andJFrance towards Belgium under both those documents were preserved. Thus Great Britain and hrance assumed the role of voluntary guarantors of Belgian neutrality, the only undertaking on Belgium' s part being that she would organise for her own defence in an efftcient manner and, with all her forces, resist aggression and invasion and prevent her territory from being used by any other Power for purposes of aggression against another State or as a passage or base of operations by land, by sea or in the air. There was also a definite understanding that Belgium would continue her fidelity to the Covenant of the League of Nations. It will be seen that the treaty now announced between Germany and Belgium follows in the main very much the same lines, though as yet we have no word as to there being embodied in it any;specific reaffirmation of Belgium's allegiance to the League. As concerns Italy, at the time of negotiations between Great Britain, France and Belgium, Anglo-French relations with her over the Abyssinian question were so strained that there was no possible chance of securing her concurrence in the new agreement, and all that was done was to communicate its terms to her as they had also been to Germany. It will be noted that it is now stated, though without official confirmation, that Italy proposes also to give Belgium an independent guarantee to support her position of neutrality and this no doubt will be couched in much the same terms as that of Germany, with whom Signor Mussolini is maintainng such cJose contact. In the result we may recognise that, for the time being at any rate, ahy hope of a revival of the principle of "collective security" among the four West European Great Powers must be abandoned, so that Italo-German diplomacy may be said to have scored at leastra temporary victory over Anglo-French. Germany would appear to have secured all she wanted in the way of establishing a huffer between herself and France ' except with respect to a relatively narrow stretch of frontier, thus leaving her more free to pursue her designs on her eastern borders. Italy, on h^r part, will have pretty well-cut adrift from the possibility of any early association with Great Britain and France, while no doubt being prepared formally to renounce her adherence to the League, which, of course, she has already set at defiance. All this, too, is more than likely to have its bearing in the wayof increasing difficulties in arriviug at any satisfactory understanding with regard to the Spanish imbroglio.