Treaty With Soviet Should be Abandoned

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 40, 17 February 1937, Page 7

Treaty With Soviet Should be Abandoned

OPINION OF LONDON TIMES. LONDON, Jan. 31. The Times publishes a leading article advocating that the Franco-Soviet and Czecho-Soviet pacts should be abandoned. These pacts have been Herr Hitler’s pet grievance. He professes to see in them an active threat against Germany, though the parties to them argue that they are nothing more than defensive understandings against possible aggression. The leading article, which pleads for the abandonment of tho pacts as an indispensable condition for a European settlement, is regarded by many as most significant. British Government quarters have never been enamoured of these pacts, and would probably welcome the termination of them, though any official “inspiration 77 of tho article in the Times is disclaimed. The Times says:—‘‘Agreement between Britain, France and Germany is indispensable for a new Concert of Europe. No Englishman in German shoes would accept a new treaty while tho Franco-Soviet and Czecho-Soviet pacts continue in force. “The agreements are incompatible with a free political settlement. Any European settlement must supersede them. “Doctrinal fervour has given special force and bitterness to present RussoGerman antipathy, but even if Russia were otherwise governed, the pacts would still sound the same alarm in the German mind. “These pacts cannot be broken by denunciation, by pressure or by force, but by the exchange of new guarantees, leaving the pacts no ground for survival. 7 7