A Note

The French note on the terms of the proposed security pact for several days lay in the hands ot M. de Margerie, French Ambassador to Berlin. Finally he delivered it to Herr Stresseman, German Foreign Minister. Why the delay had taken place was uncertain. M. Briand had secured Great Britain's Belgium's, Italy assent to it (TIME, Aug. 24).

It was understood at the time the note was delivered that the French requested its contents be kept secret for four days more, that the Germans insisted 48 hours was enough.

Apparently forthcoming developments are expected to be of delicacy equal to their importance. It is not unlikeliy that the negotiations for a security pact may be entering into their final stages.

Last spring a protocol to the League of Nations for the purpose of guaranteeing European frontiers and punishing any aggressor nation, having been laboriously arrived at, was knocked on the head by the refusal of Great Britain to sign.

So Germany came forward proposing a security treaty. pointed out that, with her army limited to 100,000 men, she was as badly in need of a guarantee of safety as any other nation in Europe. She proposed to guarantee the Rhine frontier and to provide in a joint treaty with France, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, that any nation which violated that frontier should ipso facto have declared war on the others.