Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1935-03-03
ITALY SEEN EMBARKED
ON IMPERIALIST POLICY
Program Can Only Succeed as Force Is
Able to Crush Ethiopian Resist
ance and independence.
BY FRANK H. SIMONDS.

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- despite obvious doubts and unre-
/ solved prejudices frankly eager
L to know the facts about the
League of Nations, there could
not possibly be any episode more re-
vealing than the Italian adventure in
Ethiopia. For many weeks now we
have been reading in the press re-
ports of the mobilizing and passing
Of armed forces from Italy to Africa.
And these forces are patiently to be
employed to destroy the independence
of a state which continues to be a
member of the League of Nations and
has formally sought League protection
from impending aggression.
Here is disclosed not merely the
danger of war, but the prospect of a
new conquest identical with those
other adventures in Imperialism which
were so familiar in the years which
preceded the World War. Nneverthe-
less the League has been quiescent-
the war drums have sounded in
Africa, but beside the waters of the
Lake of Geneva there has been 81
lence as profound as pulling. How
First of all Geneva Is sadly aware
of the fact of failure in the Manchu-
rian affair. After nearly four years
not only has its intervention come to
nothing. but Japan is still advancing.
Today no new resource is resident in
League hands to clothe its action with
new authority or fresh power. To act
again must therefore be to fail again.
Beyond that moreover, lies the not
less disturbing truth that to inter-
vene means to insure that with ut
most promptitude Italy will join
Japan and Germany in quitting
Geneva. And since the United States
IS absent, four of the seven great
powers will thus be missing.
Problem More Complex.
The present problem is far more
complex than the Manchurian. when
Geneva risked all and lost all because
none Of the great powers represented
in the League felt called upon openly
and frankly to prevent League action.
For the moment, at least, Japan was
isolated. If, as Mr. StimSon soon
discovered. no European power was
ready to contribute force to insure
the enforcement of the law, none was
prepared to prevent moral condemna-
ton of japanese action such as
eventually found expression in the
Lytton report.
But In the case Of Italy, France
has just made an entente with her
southeastern neighbor, dictated by a
common fear of the rising threat Of
German policy in Central Europe.
And one Of the tacit if not formal
details of that Rome agreement of
recent date was French recognition of
Italy's right to deal as she chose
with Ethiopia. Thirty years ago
when France and Great Britain made
a similar agreement, also dictated by
common fear of Germany, one of the
considerations for France was free
hand in Morocco and for Britain a
similarly free hand in Egypt.
Consequent upon that Anglo
French bargain was another by which
France and Britain recognized the
Italian right to wrest Tripoli from
Turkey and make it her own, a step
which led in no long time to the
Turko-Italian War of 1912. And
while the British relation to the new
Ethiopian hunting license of Italy is
obscure, it is clear that at a moment
when the English are trying to get
Germany back into the League for
purposes connected with their own
interests and security, they have an
obvious reason for not supporting any
action which might lead to Italian
withdrawal.
Imperialist Program Begun.
There is the situation, then. Italy
Is embarking upon new program of
imperialism which, like the Japanese
adventure in Manchuria, can only be
successful as Italian force succeeds in
crushing Ethiopian resistance and ex-
tinguishing Ethiopian independence.
The operation may take years, it may
be pursued as France pursued her
so-called qualification" of Morocco
by eating up outlying provinces one
by one, as an artichoke is eaten. But
what we are seeing is a fresh dis
closure of a familiar phenomenon, a
new example of fashioned i'm
perialism.
Now it Is essential to examine this
Italian performance at close range
for moment because otherwise its
significance will be mistaken. Italy
is going to Ethiopia as Japan went to
Manchuria-to seek some solution for
its double problem of oVerpopulation
and insufficient material resources.
Like Japan. Italy is a country which
finds its present difficult and its fu-
ture imperiled because it lacks the
means to insure a decent standard
OF living for its great population.
Mussolinis phrase was Italy must
expand or explode" and it applies to
Japan as well.
The attempt of the League to arrest
Japanese aggression failed because the
Japanese saw their Manchurian ex-
pansion as matter of life and death
and were prepared to fight rather
than abandon it. Any attempt to
halt Italian aggression would precipi-
tate a similar crisis. Since. however,
no country thought Manchuria worth
the price of armed intervention as no
nation now regards the fate of
Ethiopia as worth the bones of a
single national soldier, nothing was
and nothing will be done in either
case Italy will. in her own time and
in her own way, get away with it,
rs Japan did.
But 1t Is essential to recognize that
there is a third great power whose
physical circumstances and political
purposes parallel those Of Japan and
Italy. Germany, in her turn, finds
herself unable to provide employment
and prosperity for her workers or her
industries. She. too, lacks those re-
sources in raw materials and reserves
in minerals essential to carry on her
material existence. And she also
lacks the means to acquire these
abroad because she cannot sell her
own goods. The National Socialist
dictatorship which now dominates the
Reich has, therefore, undertaken to
organize the nation for future war to
insure an extension of national
frontiers and the acquisition of the
essential IN a.