A CRUCIAL TEST FOR THE LEAGUE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 255, 25 July 1935, Page 8

A CRUCIAL TEST FOR THE LEAGUE

On a date to be fixed within the period from to-day to Friday, August 2, the Council of the League of Nations will meet to consider the Italo-Abyssinian crisis, and presumably to come to a decision concerning what course it intends to pursue in vindication of the principles of the Covenant of which it is the guardian. Strictly speaking, there is only one course that can be pursued if action is to be effective, and that is to force Italy to bring her dispute with Abyssinia to the League, but it would be impossible to obtain unanimity for such a step. Sir Austen Chamberlain’s advice to the _ British Government is about as far as Britain is likely to go in that direction, and it is doubtful whether she will go as far. ‘‘ln the last resort, declared the former Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, “we. will have to make our decision at the council table at Geneva, and there take the risk of saying: ‘We are prepared to fulfil our obligations under the Covenant if others will do the same.’ We ought to say that openly to the Council, even at the risk that others may refuse If the British Government adopts that attitude it will have gone as far as its obligations tinder the Covenant demand of any single nation. It will then be for the others to agree or disagree. In the extremely unlikely event of an agreement an entirely new situation will arise, involving a trial of strength between the League and a recalcitrant nation. If, as seems more probable, there is failure to agree, there will be war in Abyssinia. The statement that Britain and France have agreed upon a common course of action at the League meeting points to an effort being made to sidetrack the belligerents for long enough for them to cool down and listen to reason: in other words, to strike a bargain for the sake of peace. The preferable course would be for Britain to act upon Sir Austen Chamberlain’s advice, and clear herself of all responsibility for what might happen if the other nations dissented. That, of course, might mean the end of the League system; but if the system fails to work now can it ever give its members any guarantee of security or justice? Abyssinia has appealed to the League for protection and justice. Italy has flouted it. If the League cannot prevail upon Signor Mussolini to honour his country’s obligations to the Covenant, then Britain and every other self-respecting nation would be perfectly justified in declaring that they could no longer retain their membership with honour and credit. This impending crucial test of the League system coincides with the fateful week in July-August, 1914, which witnessed the collapse of diplomacy under the pressure of military aggressiveness. Is diplomacy to fail the world once again? It is to be hoped that a turn of events may take place at Geneva to bring an end to what the British Prime Minister describes in a speech reported to-day as “a period of very disturbed international relations.” The League, he declares, remains “the sheet-anchor of British policy.” But will the anchor hold in such shifting- sands?