* * * * M. Delbos' Balance-sheet The French Press
is engaged in casting a balance-sheet of the results of M. Delbos' tour in Eastern and South Eastern Europe, and the German Press in assuring its readers that the tour achieved no results of consequence. That it achieved no spectacular results is pretty clearly true, but, as has been observed here more than once, spectacular results are not what is wanted in European diplomacy today. M. Delbos admittedly did not secure all he would have liked. Poland, for example, did not speak the same language as he did about the League of Nations, nor show any sign of going half-way to end her dispute with Czechoslovakia, and in both Rumania and Jugoslavia the currents of internal politics to some extent conflicted with the purposes of his visit. Only in Czecho- slovakia, therefore, was the understanding between host and guest complete. But no one expected it would be every- where complete, particularly since Rumania was on the eve of a general election, and the Prime Minister of Jugoslavia had only returned to his capital from Rome a few days before the French Foreign Minister reached it. But if M. Delbos did not draw the countries he visited into elaborate demonstra- tions of friendship with France, he undoubtedly checked any tendency on their part to swing, away from France. That in itself is important, and there is little doubt that the tour effected more than that. The fissiparous movements in Europe are in abeyance and M. Delbos has certainly helped to check them.
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