Evening star., 1935-11-20
FOREIGN COMMITMENTS
FORCE FRANCE TO WALL
Sympathy for Italy May Prove Too
Strong for Laval in Deciding
Future European Allies.

pean Allies.
What form that demand may take Is
relatively unimportant, but the knowl-
edge that the demand will be made is
the dominating factor in the foreign
policy Of France.
Five Allies Against Hitler.
Against Germany, France has five
potential allies-Brtain, U. s. s. r.,
Italy, the Little Entente and Poland.
Consider these potential allies through
the eyes Of M. Laval, who, as / said,
is-for the moment-the director Of
Frances foreign policy. England, he
thinks. double-crossed him with the
Anglo German naval agreement last
Summer. Poland, he sees, has made
deal with Germany, which the newly
signed German-Polish commercial
treaty only serves to reinforce and en-
phasize The Little Entente, since the
murder of Alexander of Yugoslavia, is
a bruised and doubtful reed. The U.
s. S. r. might stiffen that reed to be-
come an iron bar, but Mr.. Laval,
rightly or wrongly. has little conf
dence in the U. S. S. r. and is even
inclined to view with alarm" its
growing rapprochement with Rumania
of its making deal with Yugoslavia.
1t Is freely said in Paris that M. Laval
would like to block the ratification Of
the Franco-Soviet agreement. Whether
he can do it or not is another matter,
but he would like to. There remains
Italy and finally the League Of Ma
tions.
The precise nature Of the bond be-
tween M. Laval and Mussolini is a
matter of mystery and conjecture in
Paris He made the agreement Of
January as foreign minister Of the
Flandin government. and. it is said
here. did 1t so thoroughly ION his own"
that neither M. Fandin nor the Am
bassador of France in Rome at the
time was aware of the exact terms.
Hence the boulevard stories about M.
Laval's personal commitment.
Italian Pact No Giveaway.
1t is more reasonable to suppose
that Laval, who is no less shrewd than
cautious, did not give himself away
to MuSSolini, but that he feels he is
the man who healed the longtime
breach between the Latin sisters. or,
in other words, that the Franco-Italian
rapprochement is his work, of which
he is proud. This, too, comes back to
something personal. Laval, one might
say, stands for Franco-Italian rap
prochement and is thus committed
more by his own action and attitude
than by any secret clauses or possible
strings to the January agreement.
No dispaSsionate observer of Eu-
ropean affairs can doubt for a mo-
ment that, from a French angle, the
League has never been anything but
an instrument to maintain the treaty
of Versailles; that is to say, the
French hegemony over Continental
Europe. For this purpose, Stresemann
was lured into the League, and, when
Hitler left it. it was not so much the
League as France which suffered a
heavy blow, whose effects were in
creased by Hitler's subsequent def
ance OF the League and the Versailles
treaty together. But the League is
opposed to war-is perhaps the most
valid obstacle to war In Europe nova
days, save German unreadiness. The
British don't want war, nor do the
Russians. Therefore, under their Joint
1mpulsion the League has imposed
sanctions against Italy as a war
maker
Laval was forced to acquiesce, not
because he liked sanctions or wished
to punish" Italy. but because he
knew there was always Germany in
the background and that the very
mechanism Of sanctions and collective
action which England and the U. S.
s. r. have put in motion against
Italy might perhaps later, and even
more effectively, be applied to Ger
many. All Of which makes Laval's
tight-rope yet more tenuous and diff
ficult.
Game Has Been Overplayed.
The greatest weakness of French
foreign policy is that it is predicated
upon a series Of combinations. pacts,
agreements and alliances which are
so diversified and various as to have
become, in certain cases. self-negating
and mutually contradictory. For in
stance, the small case Of Poland and
Czechoslovakia, Frances allies, which
are splitting at each other like q pair
OF angry cats; or q larger case-Eng-
land and Italy. France clearly has
overplayed the enlargement game,
which has reached a stage of insolu-
BILE confusion.
The simplest answer of all would
be Franco German agreement, with
which. 1t Is whispered here, Laval Is
now coquetting, as many of his prede-
cessors have done before him. This
Is the most Utopian Of all the Utopian
schemes and ideas In present Europe.
BRAND nearly put it over-at Locarno
with the blessing and support of
Sir Austen Chamberlain, but Hitler
and Nazi Germany are very different
from Stresemann and his social demo-
cratic regime. There can be no last
ing or genuine deal between France
and Gerraanv that Uo,,1d MT ipvolvo