WHAT LOCARNO MEANS

Locarno is a name with golden memories to Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden. It is a pretty Swiss town on Lake Maggiore where in the fall of 1925, on the initiative of British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain (half brother of Neville), the Western European Allies of World War I (Britain, Italy, France, Belgium) met with their old enemy, Germany. There Germany, then a republic, joined in collective guarantees of its Versailles Treaty borders with France and Belgium. Britain undertook to fight Germany if Germany attacked either France or Belgium, and to fight France or Belgium if either attacked Germany--thus putting its friends on a level with their former foe.

Locarno was universally hailed; Britain's Chamberlain, France's Briand and Germany's Stresemann all got Nobel Peace Prizes. For a decade, statesmen spoke glowingly of the "spirit of Locarno." Germans were delighted: "Germany, which two years ago was isolated, spurned beneath the victors' heels, and seemed the poorest ragamuffin in Europe, today . . . becomes a factor of might once more," crowed the Berliner Tageblatt. Reassured by German pledges of good behavior, 1) Britain and France withdrew all occupation forces from the Rhineland, which Germany promised solemnly to leave demilitarized; 2) the League of Nations admitted Germany to membership. Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill in 1929 called it "the greatest measure of self-preservation yet taken by Europeans." He still thinks well of it.

The world's swift and calamitous change--the Depression, the rise of Hitler --passed Locarno by. In 1936 Hitler broke the pact by sending German troops into the Rhineland. Neither France nor Britain moved a muscle. Anthony Eden, then as now Britain's Foreign Secretary, while admitting that his confidence in Germany's word had been "profoundly shaken," told the House of Commons: "There is, I am thankful to say, no reason to suppose that the present German action implies a threat of hostilities. The German government speak ... of their 'unchangeable longing for a real pacification of Europe,' and express their willingness to conclude a non-aggression pact with France and Belgium." The real difference between a Locarno pact then and now is that Locarno was a compact between men of good will--a pact with the democratic Weimar Republic of Germany, not with the Germany of Hitler. A Locarno pact now--with Malenkov and Mao--would be like a pact with Hitler. A promise to defend a wolf if he is attacked by the sheep means little to the wolf. And it just confuses the sheep about the real nature of the wolf.

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