Evening star., 1935-04-14

Northern European capitals has re-
vealed a situation that leaves the
public mind perplexed beyond all
precedent.
Nothing illustrates the fluid condi-
ton of European politics more than
the sudden rapprochement to Russia
The relations between England and
Russia ever since the Bolshevist re-
gime was established have been stiff
and aloof. now formally civil, now
openly uncivil, but always essentially
hostile. The feeling had been a lit
tie modified since Russia's anxieties
about the Far East led her to throw
in her lot with the League of Nations,
but the gulf that divided Communist
Russia and Capitalist England re-
mained as wide and apparently as
impossible as ever.
But Herr Hitler has achieved the
miracle of throwing a political bridge
across that gulf. The rebuff he ad-
ministered to Sir John Simon at Ber-
lin-for behind the polite and diplo-
matte phrases that is what occurred
prepared the public for anything, and
like a suitor whose addresses have
been rejected in one quarter, Britain
has fallen, almost with rapture, into
the arms of a more complacent
mistress.
The spectacle of the union Jack
and the red flag fiuttering together
in the hreeze ovor tta Hra-,I;,, ;s ,,o%
without a certain humor, and the
changed tone of the London press in
regard to Russia is a phenomenon
that must AL the cynic with delight.
Papers like the London News -Chroni-
Gle which have steadily advocated
more sympathetic relations with Rus
sia in the past are even a trifie sus-
picious lest this new spirit of brother
illness should foreshadow something
the old RuSso-Franco- British alliance
Of the war.
It is that possibility in the shadow
OF which the League Council will meet
next week. That the prospect of the
building up of ''totalitarian" world
or even "totalitarian" Europe under
the tabernacle of Geneva has become
seriously darkened is obvious. Japan
has left the tabernacle, not merely
finally but in a mood of undisguised
defiance and even scorn. Germany
seems disposed to follow the same
path, with, it must be admitted, much
more justification, for It Is idle to
deny that there Is any basis for her
case against the League-that it has
been in the past too much like a COM
bination of the Allies against Ger
many. The irony of the situation is
that Germany, which for years was
a suitor knocking at the door of
Geneva for admission, is now behind
its own closed door with the League
as the suitor on the other side.
4 X + +
The task for the Council next week
is to find a way which will bring
Germany once more within the orbit
Of the League. This will not be done
by merely lecturing her on the
iniquity Of her unilateral rejection of
the armaments clauses Of the treaty
of Versailles. 1t can only be done
If 1t can be done at abby convinc-
ing her that her interests are in q
consolidated Europe committed to the
collective peace system" and that at
Geneva all her grievances will be
justly considered and all her legiti-
mate claims subjected to a square
deal. But the outlook is not hopeful.
Germany is aflame with militarism,
obscessed with the Japanese example
and "heady" with the success of her
truculent defiance of the League.
If Hitler has spoken his last word,
then the sun of Geneva will slope to
its setting and the fears of those who
see in the present tendency Of Euro
pean events the reconstruction Of the
old alliances and the mobilizing Of
the Continent into two armed camps
will be fulfilled. It Is these consider
ations that give significance to the
coming meeting of the League Coun-
Gil. Europe is at the parting of the
ways and the next few weeks will show
on which road 1t has embarked.
.1copSTisht. 1saAl