FROM DAWES TO LOCARNO Being a Critical Record of an Important Achievement in European Diplomacy 1924-1925 By GEORGE GLASGOW WITH A FOREWORD BY ‘THE RIGHT HONOURABLE J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, P.C., M.P. SOMETDIE PRIME MINISTER AND FOREIGN MINISTER OF , (OREAT BRITAIN HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON 1926 GoogleFeces itvihe FOREWORD In its last act of foreign policy, the negotiation of the Locarno Pact, the British Government has done some- thing which deserves a welcome. At Geneva, it is true, they did about as Tal 92-aty Tnportant Government could do; and the-efféct of Geneva upon Europe was only too apparent. But after Geneva came Locarno. I know what can be said against Locarno, and what can be said against it must be said. It is important that we should understand it. Locarno does not face any of the problems that could be, in the widest stretch of i imagination, an immediate cause of a European war.’ have never met anybody yet-and I think I know most of them-who sits in a European Foreign Office and who believes that in our lifetime, or in anybody’s lifetime, there is going to be a war between France and Germany directly and specifi- cally caused over the Rhine frontier. That is not how the war will come in Europe. If anybody thinks that by_ getting agreement on the Rhine frontier we have made European war impossible, he should think again. If there should be another European war, it is perfectly true that the Rhine frontier will be an element in it, but it will be raised only after war has broken out. Therefore it is true from one point of view that the Locarno Treaty, by settling the Rhine frontier, has dealt with something that never could become a prime cause of a European war. Moreover, if war breaks out, and if the conditions have been prepared for Germany to have her revenge on France, as France had her revenge on Germany between 1872 and 1914~-if that should be the evil fate of the next generation or of the generation that is to follow, then the Locarno Treaty will not prevent ix GoogleFOREWORD Germany from fighting France over other people’s quarrels, and, when that has begun, from fighting it over its own. It is perfectly true that Locarno has not stopped up all the gaps and the back doors through which war may come ; that there are loopholes in the Locarno Treaty ; that Locarno has gone back to the old mistake of making machinery for peace in Europe by individual agreements between little groups of nations ; that the moment we come to the Danubian problem we find it impossible to draft pacts on the same principle as Locarno and ask this country to guarantee them ; that Locarno methods are not altogether a strengthening of the moral authority of the League of Nations. It is equally true that nine-tenths of the objections that Mr. Chamberlain took to the Protocol appear also in the Pact. There are, however, three things about the Locarno Pact to which I should like to draw attention. The first thing it has done is to get Germany into the League of Nations. I do not care which party has got Germany into the League ; I say to them ‘Thank you and bless you for having done it.” The second point is that arbitration is enshrined there, though imperfectly ; and the third that Locarno, apart from its substance, and apart from its merits, has given Europe new hope. It has been the most magnificent examplé oF mass Couéism that I have ever known. From the day when the Locarno treaties were intialled, the nations of Europe, after their morning prayers—-I hope they indulged in them ; there was much need of them— got up and said ‘I am good ; I am getting better day by day.’ Locarno may not be great as an accomplished x : Google