Another Problem for the League

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21363, 4 January 1935, Page 8

Another Problem for the League

According to a special correspondent of the " Daily Telegraph," whose remarks were printed in the cable news yesterday, the situation on the frontier between Italian Somaliland and Abyssinia is overshadowed by " the dark cloud of international in"trigue." The Somaliland affair became general news early in December, when it was reported that Italian troops had prevented the AngloAbyssinian Boundary Commission from completing its demarcation of the hitherto undefined frontier between Abyssinia and- Italian Somaliland. To understand the situation fully it is necessary to make a brief survey of the history of Italian colonisation in East Africa. In the 'nineties of last century Italy, on a temporary wave of imperialism, turned to East Africa as one of the few undeveloped and unattached territories left in the world. In 1890, by dint of trading enterprise and diplomatic management of fellow powers, she founded the colony of Eritrea, which covers an area of 119,000 square kilometres on the south-west coast of the Red Sea. In 1892 she made an agreement with local rulers that gave her effective control of the area now known as Italian Somaliland, which • covers 500,000 square kilometres on the east coast of Africa below British Somaliland, and which is divided from Eritrea by the highlands of self-governing Abyssinia. But the imperialistic wave seemed to break on these efforts. No sooner was Italy firmly established in East Africa than she lost all taste for colonisation; and until Mussolini came and conquered the imaginations of his countrymen, Somaliland and Eritrea were popularly regarded in Italy as white elephants. Since the war, however, an expanding Italy directed by a new Caasar has carefully fostered her overseas possessions. During the last few years Italian Somaliland has been intensively developed. Its towns have been modernised; it has been provided with motor roads; its swamps have been reclaimed; and its agricultural productivity, in such commodities as cotton, cane-sugar, tobacco, kapok, sesamum, maize, dura, beans and bananas, has been greatly increased. Similar energy applied to Eritrea has trebled its total trade since 1921. In fact, Italy's East African colonies have become so valuable to her since the war that it is quite feasible to expect she is now wishing she had more of them—or at least that they were not separated so tantalisingly from each other by the rich lands of undeveloped Abyssinia. The situation that has now developed over the demarcation of the Abys-sinian-Italian Somaliland border must be interpreted in the light of these facts. As Abyssinia has appealed for international arbitration upon the matter, and has declared that it was not the aggressor in the Ualual incident of December 5, when there was a serious encounter between Italian colonial troops and Abyssinian forces near the border, it seems that the League of Nations will have another problem to consider at its next sitting.