France and Russia The new Franco-Russian agreement, which according to
some reports has already been initialled and according. to others not, is probably less important than it. looks. If the Kellogg Pact means anything at all, bilateral agreements pledging their' signatories not to go to -war with each other cannot add much to it. More interesting is the definition given to acts of. aggression (which the signatories undertake not to commit, nor to. support a third party in committing). An aggressor, according_to an annexe to the treaty, is a State which declines to settle a difference in accordance with the Kellogg Pact, or which persists in the occupation of a foreign territory after being called on to evacuate it. That criterion-should be studied with some interest at Tokyo. Neither. .country is to take steps prejudicial to the trade of the ;other, and there is to be no hostile propaganda on either side. All this sounds well, but the edge is rather taken off :the agreement by the fact that France will not ratify it till Poland has made a similar treaty with Russia, and Poland has undertaken to wait for like action by Rumania. All the same, the negotiations draw Soviet Russia a little further into the European circle.
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