A.—6d

1925. NEW ZEALAND

PROPOSALS FOR A PACT OF SECURITY (PAPERS RESPECTING THE) MADE BY THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT ON THE 9th FEBRUARY, 1925. Note. —Translations of the German and French Versions are printed.

Laid on the Table of the House of Representatives by Leave.

Papers respecting the Proposals for a Pact of Security made by the German Government on the £th February, 1925. No. 1. Memorandum communicated on February 9, 1925, by the German Ambassador in Paris to M. Herriot, President of the Council and Minister for Foreign Affairs. (Strictly confidential.) In considering the various forms which a pact of security might at present take, one could proceed from an idea cognate to that from which the proposal made in December, 1922, by Dr. Cuno sprang. Germany could, for example, declare her acceptance of a pact by virtue of which the Powers interested in the Rhine —above all, England, France, Italy, and Germany—entered into a solemn obligation for a lengthy period (to be eventually defined more specifically) vis-a-vis the Government of the United States of America as trustee not to wage war against a contracting State. A comprehensive arbitration treaty, such as has been concluded in recent years between different European countries, could be amalgamated with such a pact. Germany is also prepared to conclude analogous arbitration treaties providing for the peaceful settlement of juridicial and political conflicts with all other States as well. Furthermore, a pact expressly guaranteeing the present territorial status (" gegenwartiger Besitzstand ") on the Rhine would also be acceptable to Germany. The purport of such a pact could be, for instance, that the interested States bound themselves reciprocally to observe the inviolability of the present territorial status on the Rhine ; that they furthermore, both jointly and individually (" conjointement et, separement ") guaranteed the fulfilment of this obligation ; and, finally, that they would regard any action running counter to the said obligation as affecting them jointly and individually. In the same sense, the treaty States could guarantee in this pact the fulfilment of the obligation to demilitarise the Rhineland which Germany has undertaken in articles 42 and 43 of the Treaty of Versailles. Again, arbitration agreements of the kind defined above between Germany and all those States which were ready on their side to accept such agreements could be combined with such a pact. To the examples set out above still other possibilities of solution could be linked. Furthermore, the ideas on which these examples are based could be combined in different ways. Again, it would be worth considering whether it would not be advisable to so draft the security pact that it would prepare the way for a world convention to include all States along the lines of the " Protocole pour le Reglement pacifique de Differends internationaux " drawn up by the League of Nations, and that, in case such a world convention was achieved, it could be absorbed by it or worked into it.

No. 2. Memorandum handed by the President of the Council and Minister for Foreign Affairs to Ilerr von Hoesch, German Ambassador in Paris, on February 20, 1925. The memorandum communicated to the French Government on the 9th February by His Excellency the German Ambassador has been examined by them with interest and with a determination not to

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