The Four Powers and Europe
THE centre of interest in Europe has moved in the past ten days with the movements of the British Prime 31inister. It moved to Geneva a week ago when Mr. MacDonald laid before the Disarmament Conference a new plan of general disarmament. It was shifted on Sunday to Rome by the MacDonald-Mussolini talks, on Tuesday to Paris by the MacDonald-Daladier talks and on Thursday (too late for comment in these columns) back to the House of Commons. The results of these strenuous efforts to snatch success from apparent failure and avert the dangers which a new resurgence of national- ism in Germany threatens are still obscure. The , disarmament proposals are before the world in black and 'white, and they have met so far with quite as favourable a reception as their authors could have hoped. But the Rome and Paris talks were private. No one knows what their real tenor was. They may have been as nebulous as the amintuniques issued at their conclusion would suggest. On the other hand the contacts made between the Prime Ministers, notably that between Mr. MacDonald and Signor Mussolini, should have served, and may well have served, to clear away misunderstandings and show that there was more in common than was generally realized between the attitudes of the three governments. Mr. MacDonald's decision to go to Rome was fully justified. It has come to be an accepted fact that for reasons which seem to him sufficient Signor Mussolini does not leave Italian soil, and it would have been deplorable if any petty considerations of amour propre had checked the Prime Minister's wise resolve to go to Rome and see the Duce, since the Duce would not come to see him at Geneva. What is to be avoided at all costs at this moment is a division of the Great Powers of Europe into two camps, Great Britain and France in one, and Italy and Germany in the other. Mr. MacDonald's journey to Rome has certainly done much, perhaps everything, to avert that danger. If so his labours will have had ample reward.
But that in any ease is only a first step. It means that the ground is left clear for more active measures, both political and economic, to be taken by all Europe —not merely by the foil!. Great Powers—in concert. Here the Rome conversations have quite intelligibly provoked some misgivings. Mr. MacDonald has more than once shown a distinct preference for discussion and decision by four Powers rather than by the twenty- five or so that make up the continent of Europe. He Might have learnt something from the failure of the Four-Power Danubian talks in London last year and from the protests lodged by Poland and other States against more recent Great Power talks at Geneva. On that point the Paris communique affirming the desire of the French Ministers for loyal co-operation between the four Powers "within the framework and in the spirit of the League of Nations" is• much more satis- factory than the Rome communique, which did not so much as mention the League. There may still be a ease for the formation within the League of some sort of European Council on the lines suggested by M. Briand, and in such a Council, as in the League itself, the four Great Powers must necessarily play a leading part, but there are reasons too numerous and too obvious to specify why any idea that the four are concerting plans which the rest will be asked simply to endorse should be dispelled at the outset. As yet there is in fact no co-operation a quatre. Germany is still outside the framework of the picture. Berlin reactions to the British disarmament proposals have on the whole been favourable, and Herr Hitler will certainly not reject a priori the invitation to his country to assume her place, and her responsibilities, among the Great Powers Of Europe. But neither the German Chancellor nor his Foreign Minister has been drawn into the conversations yet, and divergence of aims may be more apparent in a conference of four than in a conference of three.
. The real question is whether the conversations so far amount to more than words. Signor Mussolini is said to have laid a plan before Mr. MacDonald, but no author- ized version of it has been made available as these lines are being written. If it includes support for the British disarmament plan (which goes by no means as far as previous Italian plans) that is so much clear gain. If it drives the revision of treaties to the forefront, as is rumoured, it raises almost insoluble problems which, it is true, cannot permanently be evaded, but which need to be approached in a spirit very different from that in which Europe finds itself at this moment. Italy's own views in this matter should be of interest. Nowhere can a stronger case for revision be made than in regard to the Southern Tyrol, which, with its German-speaking population, Italy acquired from Austria in 1920. If Signor Mussolini means to set an example of broad- mindedness here he will go far towards creating the spirit that will make revision elsewhere practicable.
, Meanwhile the disarmament problem remains. The British proposals have been well received. They do not fulfil the Conference's early hopes. There is to be no naval reduction ; the retention of tanks, except the half-dozen or so in existence over 16 tons, is left an open question ; and the hope of the immediate abolition of military aviation is abandoned, though a commission is to be set up at once to work out plans for the control of civil aviation that would make the complete abolition of military machines possible. The proposal to put all Continental armies on an 8-months' service basis, and limit them to the numbers specified in the British schedule, would be a great advance if generally accepted, though very definite provision must be made against the develop- ment of trained and armed irregulars. The reduction of the calibre of heavy artillery is some gain, but the scheme suffers from the absence of any mention of budgetary limitation, limitation of material or the aboli- tion or control of private manufacture. But the plan after all is a compromise. It is drafted with the idea of getting something out of a conference which looked dangerously like yielding nothing, and the something, if ,by that is meant an agreement broadly resembling the British proposals, will be well worth getting. It is certainly sufficiently worth getting to make it extremely desirable to strike while the iron is still hot and extremely undesirable to adopt the singular alternative of promptly adjourning the Disarmament Conference for a month. The grounds for that surprising proposal have not been indicated, apart from the suggestion that the Conference must wait while developments based on the Four-Power negotiations materialize. That should be wholly un- necessary. If the Four Powers mean business at all the first place to demonstrate it is in the Disarmament Conference itself. If Mr. MacDonald and M. Daladier, Signor Mussolini and Herr Hitler, are ready to throw their combined efforts into making the existing machinery —the League of Nations as a whole and the Disarmament Conference in particular—work as it might work they will do far better service to humanity than they ever could by any separate and sectional action.
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