The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1935. IMPOSSIBLE "PEACE" PLAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 297, 16 December 1935, Page 6

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1935. IMPOSSIBLE "PEACE" PLAN.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs yesi-tta&c«, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

From the point of view of most people outside Italy the "peace" plan, now published, is quite as bad as had been feared. The Italians are reported as thinking the plan "partially disappointing," but this is ungrateful of them. If there had been no League of Nations, and no sanctions, and the simple "colonial expedition" had been allowed to proceed unchecked, the Italians could not reasonably have expected to conquer in such a short time such largo areas of Abyssinian territory as the British and French Governments "agree to recommend" should be handed over to them. If Signor Mussolini rejects the proposals and continues the campaign, we are informed, his decision will be "received cheerfully" in Italy. This is no doubt a strictly accurate summary of the Italians' state of mind, for they may consider that if the fairly slight advance their armies have made is to be so generously rewarded the continuance of the campaign cannot fail to be proportionately profitable.

It is an astonishing and almost unbelievable situation, and fortunately for the honour of Britain the British people are unlikely to accept it. The "peace" proposals are already regarded as dead, and no doubt they will be hastily interred this week at Geneva. But what ivill come next? None can doubt that the British Cabinet, in agreeing that the proposals should be submitted to the parties, expected criticism, though not the fury of the storm which has broken. What has not been revealed is the factor or factors which persuaded Cabinet that the slight hope of securing the adoption of such proposals was to be preferred to the alternative. If, as has been hinted, Cabinet had good reason to believe that the imposition of the oil sanction would inevitably lead to an attack on the British Fleet* and French assistance would not or could not be given in time, then Cabinet had excellent reason to hesitate before taking any step which might provoke such a result. But it would surely have been better to allow the League's sanctions campaign to collapse through weakness than to agree to a plan which virtually amounts to surrender.

But' whatever the factors which Cabinet had to consider, they exist still, and the moral indignation of the Cabinet's critics will not remove them. The House of Commons, after hearing explanations on Thursday, will probably denounce the "peace" plan, but if Mr. Baldwin and his Ministers are able to show that their fundamental purpose has been to keep (the nation out of a war (of which neither the extent nor the duration could be calculated), who will there be to say that, on balance, they have been wrong? And who will shoulder the responsibility of declaring for the alternative?