IN EUROPE—PEACE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9654, 19 November 1909, Page 4

IN EUROPE—PEACE.

The Guildhall banquet, the function where by established custom the Imperial Prime Minister annually announces his audit of the British outlook across the world, has passed once more in peace. In the Balkans, that traditional "cockpit of Europe," there is still a doubt as to what may happen, Mr Asquith hinted. aDd this can be understood when the Austrian annexations and all that they mean to the slowly concentrating Serbs are recalled. The best assurance against any eruption'there is contained in the British 'ententes' which Mr Asquith justifiably described as having been tested and confirmed. The newest addition to these—gained, strangely enough, through Russia emerges from realisation that Italy's interest lies with the Dual rather than the Triple Alliance, and therefore with Great Britain more than with the great German military Powers which stand astride Europe and aspire to also play Colossus in the world. Austrian aspiration would go further in the Balkans, no doubt; and the position there is more or less complicated by the rronarchial ambitions of Bulgaria. What assurance against anything dire in that troubled region, /however, is the chain of international understandings by which modern British diplomacy so powerfully helps to preserve the world's peace and national equilibriums. Largely because of them, Mr Asquith is able to announce to the Empire, which necessarily is deeply interested in the subject, that there is nothing in sight which should not yield to time and tact.