EUROPE’S DANGER SPOTS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 August 1938, Page 4

EUROPE’S DANGER SPOTS.

JN a speech in the House of Lords reported on Saturday, the British Foreign Secretary (Viscount Halifax) spoke with a certain amount of optimism about the outlook in Czechoslovakia and incidentally said he was m a position to say that the Sudeten leaders had received favourably the idea of Lord Runciman’s mission to that country. A message from Prague published simultaneously stated, however, that the Sudeten official Newsletter has abandoned its previous attitude of friendly reserve toward Lord Runciman and now says that: — Britain is trying to prevent the impending battle of ideologies by advocating a compromise which cannot produce a fundamental decision. It would .be unfair to create-personal difficulties for Lord Runciman, who has nobly undertaken the task, but it is clear that, the gap between the Sudeten "Germans’ and the Czech Government’s conceptions has become so wide that it is no longer humanly possible to bridge it. This is thoroughly typical of a. state of affairs in which it becomes increasingly difficult to find any justification whatever for encouragement where the relationships of the European dictatorships and the countries unfortunate enough to lie in the path of their ambitions are concerned. It has long been declared by well-informed observers that there is no possibility that the Czechs can satisfy the Sudeten Germans without destroying the unity of the Czechoslovak State and also that Nazi Germany will refrain from using force against Czechoslovakia only if she feais that this will lead to her being opposed by a stronger military alliance than she cares to meet, or, alternatively, if Hitler and his advisers think control over Czechoslovakia can be gained by such “peaceful” means as have made the Nazis unquestioned masters of the so-called Free City of Danzig. It seems only too probable that these are the realities of the situation, which must be faced sooner or later. Lord Halifax was not more convincing in his expressed belief that “there need be no great delay in making real progress” in the policy of non-intervention in Spain. Italy and Germany are so far advanced towards the conquest of Spain that the final phase of the policy of non-interven-tion no doubt is in sight, but the prospect thus opened is not one to bring comfort to those who desire to see peace established securely in Europe.