Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 1939. MR CHAMBERLAIN’S DIPLOMACY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 1939. MR CHAMBERLAIN’S DIPLOMACY.

VERY shortly now it will be known whether the visit Mr Chamberlain and Lord Halifax are about to make to Hal) lias served any good and useful purpose. In this matter and in others, the British Prime Minister is an optimist. Terminating, the other day, a brief holiday visit to Yorkshire, he ventured the prediction that 1939 would be a. more tranquil year than its predecessor. It must be hoped that he is right., "but not everyone is of the same opinion.

Reasons have been freely and frankly stated for doubting whether the impending visit to Rome can produce results 01. a desirable kind and for fearing that it may lead to results wholly undesirable. These reasons are, in brief, that Britain has nothing to ask of Italy but. that .she should conduct, hersell. decently as a member of the family of nations, whereas Italy, in. an obviously acquisitive spirit, is alleging grievances and uttering complaints.

The opinion is said to prevail in France that there is nothing to confer about in Rome, and that such a visit as Mr Chamberlain and his colleague are about to make will merely give Italy’an opportunity of urging and pressing such claims as she has worked, up in the meantime. There is much to be said for the view that even a policy of masterly inactivity would have been vastly preferable Io opening .up discussions in whichonly Italy is likely to exercise any real initiative.

On both sides of the English Channel apprehensions are entertained that Mr Chamberlain may be tricked oi beguiled into making concessions of some sort to Italy. The claims that have been advanced to Tunisia, Corsica’, Nice and Savoy are commonly regarded as more or less in the nature of a divotsion, but' it is feared that by making a merit of not pressing these claims, Italy may contrive, .for example, to induce Mr Chamberlain to take a complaisant view of the aggression of the totalitarian States in Spain, d.t can only be hoped meantime that these fears are groundless, for if Italy and Germany are able to work their will in Spain it cannot, be doubted that they will then be much more strongly placed than they are now to pursue aggressive designs against France and Britain.

At the stage that has been reached it may be asked whether Mr Chamberlain, besides wasting his time in talking appeasement to dictatorships to whom appeasement is a byword, is not neglecting much greater and more valuable opportunities of helping to safeguard world peace. In the Message to Congress which was reported yesterday, for example, President Roosevelt more than hinted at a united use by democratic, nations of both moral, and economic force against lawless and aggressive dictatorships.

The democracies (the President said in part) cannot for ever let pass without effective protest acts of aggression against) sister nations—acts which automatically undermine all of us. ... There are many methods short of war, but stronger and more effective than mere words, of bringing home to aggressor Governments the aggregate sentiment of our own people. Our neutrality laws may actually give aid to an aggressor and deny it to a victim of aggression. Opr instinct for self-preservation should warn us that we ought not to let that happen any more.

This can hardly die read as anything else than a direct suggestion that the United States should combine with Britain and other democracies in imposing economic embargoes on nations whose governments are guilty of aggression.

Before the President’s words are dismissed as idle and without force, it may be well to remember that Britain is freely accused in the United States of having twice turned down offers by the United States of economic co-operation against aggressors —in the first instance when Japan seized .Manchuria and later when it was proposed to make sanctions against Italy effective (on the occasion of her invasion of Abyssinia) by withholding oil supplies. France appears to have been the country primarily responsible for defeating the oil sanctions proposal, but it is at all events claimed that the United States was prepared to co-operate on that occasion in making sanctions effective and that she was earlier prepared to co-operate in similar action against Japan.

On the ground. amongst others, that co-operation, once undertaken, is often capable of being extended, the possibility of co-operation with the United States on the lines indicated bv President Roosevelt in his message to Congress seems well worth examining. In seeking that co-operation, the British Empire undoubtedly would be giving expression to its best and most enlightened opinion. It would be trifling with words and with facts to suggest that as much is to be said of the impending visit to Rome, or of the policy in which it has a place.