The Times THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1937. Diplomatic Tail – Economic Dog

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 41, 18 February 1937, Page 6

The Times THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1937. Diplomatic Tail - Economic Dog

It lias become customary to say that international problems are not essentially political, but economic. Given adequate commercial and industrial adjustment, the strains and stress are expected to be replaced by orderly relations between nations. To a great degree this is true. It is the basis ou which the present foreign policy of the United States is being developed. It provides the background for the peace efforts of the inter-American conference at Buenos Aires. And it explains the significance of the currency stabilisation agreement between the United States, Great Britain, and France which, it is hoped, will be the basis for further extension of international monetary sanity.

It would be fortunate if this viewpoint could be applied to the negotiations which in recent months have readjusted much of the commerce of the European continent. Certainly southeastern Europe presents a classic example of an area where the central difficulties are, indeed, economic. But the solutions of the moment are being pursued in the effort to make economic forces solve political ends. Here neither France, Germany nor Italy intends to be found guilty of that “feebleness” which Treitschke called the cardinal sin of politics.

In the resulting struggle for strengthening alliances, France appears to be recouping some of the losses that resulted from the Reich’s vigorous economic diplomacy to the southeast. As one example, Roumania, which was being assiduously wooed by Germany, has executed a little-heralded air defence pact with France. And, stimulated by the French, Bucharest also has renewed ils military alliance with Poland now that the Poles, with loans of 2,600,000,000 French francs, again have “oriented” their policy away from Germany toward the Quai d’Orsay.

Meanwhile, behind the recent Italo-German agreement “co-ordinating” the commerce of the Danubian area, there appears again to be more concern with spheres of influence than with fundamental solutions of economic problems. An exclusive field for Germany in Austria and Czechoslovakia, in return for Italian hegemony in Hungary and Jugoslavia, neither restores the necessary freedom of commerce nor alters fundamental Italo-German rivalry in these regions. And while these adjustments contribute to the temporary easing of a difficult situation, that gain is rather a by-produet than a primary purpose.

The need remains to discern between those economic moves w..ich are designed to create an improved world order and those which merely re-balance existing inequalities. It remains axiomatic that the day’s political problems can best be approached through the avenue of trade and commerce. But the result is not the same when governments devise economic solutions merely as a means of serving political ends. When the diplomatic tail wags him, our good economic dog goes astray.