Evening star., 1935-12-22
FUTILITY OF SANCTIONS
AS PEACE WEAPON SEEN
Compromise With Italy Bitter, But
Necessary Pill for British When
ii Duce Prepared to Fight.

sion Of sanctions must push Europe
into general conflict. In an odd fash
ion the prestige of the League Of Ma
tions and that of Fascist Italy had
become equally involved. One or the
other had to be sacrificed, but to sacri-
fee Fascist italy meant certain war
and neither Laval nor Hoare was
willing TO assume responsibility for
such catastrophe. On the other |
hand none of the friends Of the |
League would concede war as posi-
bility, because under such circum-
stances their whole case fell to the |
ground.
If the result Of the Intervention of |
Geneva to stop colonial war in At
rica, which it had failed to prevent, |
was to be the precipitation of gem
eral war in Europe, then the Leagues |
prestige would be shattered forever.
What the advocates of Geneva had to
do at all times, therefore. was to in
sist that sanctions would bring Italy
to her knees and not drive her into |
running amok The truth was, however,
a truth proclaimed by all informed
observers in Italy, American and Brit
ish as we'll as French, that MuSsolini
was resolved to finish fighting and
not weakly yielding and that his coun-
try would follow him into battle.
The plain, if unpalatable, truth which
emerges from the whole episode is
that for all practical purposes League
decisions can only be enforced by war,
when they are challenged by a great
power ready to fight rather than yield.
Under such circumstances. moreover,
the burden of making war to enforce
League decisions must fall upon Great
Britain and France and neither will
ever go to war to uphold the prin-
ciples of Geneva, except when these
happen to coincide with vital national
interests of their own. In the present
instance, too, it had long been motor
ious that Laval did not think French
interests would be served by smashing
Italy.
Question of Limits.
Actually, as I have pointed out in
this correspondence very often, the
real problem posed by the Ethiopian
crisis was just how far Britain was
ready to go. If Baldwin had decided
to use Geneva as an instrument OF
policy to dispose of a rival imperial
ism then League authority was GER
tain to be upheld because it would
be backed by British force. If, how
ever, the Tory Cabinet was not ready
to go to extremes, then at certain
moment they we're bound to agree
that II Duce should have his irreduc-
ible minimum of glory and Geneva
and the King Of Kings would have to
pay the costs. But there never was
any middle ground between a fight
and a fiasco, because Mussolini, merely
for self preservation, was condemned
either to fight back once sanctions be-
came a real threat to his campaign
or to sneak of the world stage as
self-exposed coward
1t is singularly unjust in American
champions of Geneva to criticize the
ultimate decision Of Baldwin and
Hoare in view of the fact that no
American public man would ever dare
to advocate war to defend the princi-
Piles of the Kellogg Pact or the law Of
the Washington Treaties. If Great
Britain went to war with Italy to up
hold the covenant of the League Of
Nations, the United States would has
ten to proclaim its neutrality and the
small states which have urged eco
nomic embargoes most furiously would
be out of range of Italian aircraft or
submarines.
If Japan took advantage of British
troubles with Italy to push further
south in China, if Germany seized
upon French concern for her own Sc
curity in Tunis and on the Alps to
move into Memel, neither Great Brt-
tain nor France could expect effec-
tive help from America or Europe, and |
the statesmen who had permitted their
countries to drift into war would have
been called upon to pay the penalty OF
their folly.
Whatever happens now, moreover,
resort to sanctions to uphold League
decisions will hardly occur again. And
it will not occur again because the |
present experiment will have demon
strated once and for all that sane
tions are not a substitute for war, but |
merely a preliminary to it.
Copyright. 1880