THE ESSENTIALS OF THE PROTOCOL.
That was due largely to the difference in outlook and attitude between Great Britain and the Continental Powers, most of whom were still demanding security before all things. Even in spite of Locarno neither France nor any other European State is willing to reduce its armaments unless it can be made more certain than it is to-day that if it is attacked its fellow" members of the League will rally to its support. That was the reason for the resolution introduced by the Dutch Foreign Minister on the second day of the Assembly, calling for a re- examination of the essential principles of the Geneva Protocol. The average European State wants the Protocol, not so much because it increases the area, so to speak, of security pledges— there has been a good deal of misapprehension in this country about the increased commitments alleged to be involved in an acceptance of the Protocol--as because it makes the pledges given in general terms by every signatory of the Covenant more specific and binding.
But if the current of speech and thought in the Assembly ran strongly in favour of the Protocol, the attitude of the British Delegation remained as firmly hostile as ever. Sir Austen Chamberlain's much-discussed speech consisted in the main of a demonstration of the difficulty, for Great Britain, of engaging in comprehensive arbitration treaties,. and the impossibility of giving further security pledges—a step which would, according to the Foreign Secretary, involve nothing less than the disruption of the British Empire.
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