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So keen and piercing grew the Dutch attacks that at length they penetrated even the complacency of Sir Austen Chamberlain, lank, frigid, be-monocled Foreign Secretary of His Britannic Majesty George V. Sir Austen has been in British hot water for a good many months because he was supposed to have concluded a "Secret Anglo-French Naval Pact" (TIME, Aug. 13, et seq.) ; an last week he was palpably in terror lest the British Public become convinced that he was also mixed up in a "Secret Anglo-Franco-Belgian Military Pact." Just now John Bull distrusts "entangling alliances." Therefore all knowledge of any such agreement as that described by Dagblad of Utrecht was denied in London, last week, not only by the Foreign Office but in behalf of the War Office, the General Staff, the Admiralty, the Air Ministry and the office of the Prime Minister. Ordinarily it might have seemed that the Empire "doth protest too much," but poor Sir Austen has been so hounded of late that last week even his enemies believed that he was nervously telling the truth.
Of course the most heaven-piercing roars of indignation went up, last week, from Germany. The whole conservative and monarchist press took the line that the Fatherland's former enemies have been caught redhanded, plotting against her in violation of the Locarno Pact (TIME, Oct. 26, 1925),'wherein Britain pledged her impartial assistance to Germany no less than to France in preserving the peace of the Rhineland. Last week the German People's Party's news bureau, Controlled by Foreign Minister Dr. Gustav Stresemann, and unquestionably voicing his opinion said:
"It would profoundly disturb our confidence in the loyalty of our partners in the West if it should prove true that 20 months after Locarno and during the negotiations between France and America over the Kellogg pact France and Belgium reconfirmed the agreement which stands in such sharp contradiction to Locarno and the Kellogg agreements."
By the expression "reconfirmed" Dr. Stresemann's organ indicated his belief that the alleged Franco-Belgian agreement of July 7, 1927, is in the form of a reconfirmation and extension of the Secret Franco-Belgian Treaty of 1920. The League of Nations was supplied in 1920 with notice that this secret treaty exists, but it has never been published, as it should have been in accordance with the requirements of the Covenant of the League. Correspondents who dropped in at the German Foreign Office, last week, for tea, coffee, caviar sandwiches and little cakes, were presented with the following adroit proposition:
"If the French and Belgians expect us to believe that the Dutch charges are false, they must reveal the true text of their treaty of 1920, which, for all we know, may be even more dangerous to Peace than the alleged agreement of 1927."
About all that could be said in rebuttal to this was the semi-official comment of Le Journal des Debats at Paris:
"It is curious how the Germans always find it scandalous that states which have been the victims of their preceding aggressions should take precautions for the future."