Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1939. AN ASSURANCE TO FRANCE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 February 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1939. AN ASSURANCE TO FRANCE.

AT its face value a statement by the British Prime Minister in the House of Commons on Monday raises at once a sharp issue between the democracies and the dictatorships in Europe. Mr Chamberlain said, as he was reported in one of yesterday s cablegrams, that “any threat to the vital interests ol France, from whatever quarter it came, must invoke the immediate co-operation” of Great Britain.

In view of the momentous issues involved, it must be supposed that Mr Chamberlain was choosing his words with care and that he consciously and deliberately spoke of a “threat 1o the vital interests of France as distinct from an attack ,on those interests. The distinction is of some importance, with the war in Spain obviously nearing its end in a triumph tor General Franco and his totalitarian allies. A threat to the vital interests of France might easily develop in Spain long before there was any question of actual attack from that quarter.

Mr Chamberlain’s statement presumably means that Britain is prepared to co-operate with France in opposing political or military developments in Spain which would menace French security. Exactly how that policy is now to be carried out, however, is by no means clear. It is stated that British diplomacy will be directed to a negotiated peace and that it is believed that France will unhesitatingly recognise the Nationalist Government. According to Mr Vernon Bartlett, Minorca will be an important pawn in the negotiations, “since it could long keep the Italian fleet at bay,” and Mr Bartlett believes “that Britain is seeking to negotiate a surrender to a purely Spanish force before the Italians on Majorca attack Minorca.”

The weakness of this theorising is in the assumption that “a purely Spanish force” will be available to take over Minorca. It is certainly not a purely Spanish force that is winning the war in Spain'. On the contrary, all the evidence suggests that if he had been deprived of the services of Italian troops and naval forces, of Italian and German air forces, and of German technicians, General Franco would have been decisively beaten.

If the democracies now wish to negotiate in Spain, the people with whom they must negotiate presumably are those who appear to be on the point of rounding off the conquest of that country—-in other words, predominantly Italian and German forces. Some assurances are being offered, it is. tine, that no military threat to France will be raised in Spain, and that “no military or political concessions will be made to any foreign Power, either in Spain or in Spanish possessions.” All the world knows, however, what assurances by the totalitarian States and their associates are worth.

A healthy national sentiment undoubtedly exists in Spain which will make a large proportion of its people restive under any foreign usurpation. The history of totalitarian development in Italy," Germany and elsewhere is, however, one of the domination and control of majorities by minorities. It has yet to be seen whether the democratic nations will be able to induce or compel the foreign invaders of Spain to relinquish their open and confessed control over that country. But even if Italy and Germany are driven to that extent to retreat, the possibility will still have to be reckoned with of the establishment of a Fascist regime, ostensibly national, but actually directed and controlled by Italy and Germany.

With events taking that course, all Spain may be nominally in Spanish hands and yet she may be very much at the service of Italy and Germany as a political and strategic base from which to threaten both France and Britain. Unless means can be devised of making an end of either an open or a. concealed control of Spain by Italy and Germany, the value and effect of the assurance Mr Chamberlain has just given so emphatically in the House of Commons evidently will be liable to be reduced very seriously.