As the Manchester Guardian points out, it is impossible to
imagine an old-fashioned defensive alliance in which one or more of the potential enemy States is- embraced, and if the arrangement is to be of the new and untried post-War kind, the object of which is general international pacification, then its machinery will in all probability have to follow the carefully .elaborated plans of the League. For our part, we should be delighted to see some arrangement of this kind. It is obvious that the Protocol, 'whatever its - intrinsic merits, has turned out to be a premature step at this stage of disarmament. On the other hand, it is impossible to believe that we shall go back to the old method of pre-War defensive alliances which can have only one end. Hence, we are delighted to see that the_ Government is seeking a middle course, something between the universal Protocol and _ an old-fashioned defensive affiance.
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