TOTALITARIAN PEACEMAKING.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1938, Page 6

TOTALITARIAN PEACEMAKING.

AN odd turn is given to the troubled European situation by ■the news that, with the Reich Foreign Minister (Herr von Ribbentrop) visiting Paris, France and Germany have concluded a No-War Pact, reciprocally recognising their existing .frontiers and declaring mutually their desire to maintain good relations in future. The cabled version of the pact states that “there are no more questions of a territorial kind” between the two countries, but according to one of today’s messages “The Times” correspondent, in Paris points out that the declaration is not to be interpreted as an abandonment of German colonial claims and another correspondent quotes an official spokesman as stating that the declaration does not concern the French colonies. Even with this reservation, the pact is to be welcomed, and it might be welcomed still more heartily it it did not follow so closely and so strangely on an incident like the Italian demonstration against France, now suddenly stilled, and on the German Press backing of thal demonstration. Apart from the condemnation Germany has earned by her barbarous maltreatment and spoliation of her Jewish citizens, it is extremely difficult, to repose any faith in the peaceful professions of the totalitarian States, but such overtures as Herr von Ribbentrop has made on behalf of his country in Paris no doubt must be’tested out. These advances, and the abandonment, for the time at. least, of the anti-Freneh demonstration in Italy, have done something to create an atmosphere in which Mr Chamberlain and his colleague, Lord Halifax, may reasonably pay their visit to Rome. It would be pleasant to believe that the present rulers of Germany and Italy are beoinniim to perceive the necessity of making some contribution to "the establishment of peace in Europe, but doubts as to the honesty of purpose of the dictatorships persist and will not easilv be dispelled.