Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 6, 1935. LESSONS OF HISTORY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1935, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JULY 6, 1935. LESSONS OF HISTORY

In pursuit of "expansionist requirements" (to quote the candid phrase of the "Italian Press Ministry") Rome is sending soldiers, by way of the Mediterranean and the Red Seas, against Abyssinia. When the word' expansion is used in Italy, it recalls scenes of historic grandeur, and times when the Roman sway covered practically the whole of the known world. In the first century of the Christian era Britain was a vassal of Rome, and the Roman Empire stretched from. Britain in the west to Arabia in the east, and-from Germany to the African deserts. Those were days when no League of Nations had to be appeased before the Roman legions inarched out of Italy, or embarked on the sea-tracks, to spread the glory of the eagle. If there was a League of Nations, it was Rome herself; and Rome could find reasons for doing what Rome did. When the Christian e,ra dawned Rome's struggle with Africa was already centuries old, and included the classic.conflict with Carthage, waged off and on for more than a hundred years, during which Africa, through Hannibal, conquered Spain and shook Rome to its foundations. Though there was no League of Nations to put on the brake, public opinion in Rome needed nerving up to the final Carthaginian struggle, and that task fell upon a great publicist, Marcus Porcius Cato, whose oftrepeated injunction that Carthage must be destroyed (ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam) has lived in history for over two thousand years'. In due course Carthage was indeed destroyed. Today, according to the reference books, "some cisterns, broken arches of an aqueduct, and the Roman Catholic monastery mark the. site of the former, rival of Rome."

Abyssinia, too, has an antiquity comparable Avith the old countries of the Mediterranean; she claims to have been the country of the Queen of Sheba, and to have been Christianised (as Ethiopia) about 330 A.D. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Portuguese visited Abyssinia searching for the kingdom of Prester John. The modern history of Abyssinia includes Lord Napier's expedition to Magdala in 1867 to secure release of British prisoners (an expedition that "followed to some extent in the footsteps of the soldiers of Ptolemy") and the sanguinary defeat of an Italian force of about 13,000 men in 1896 at Adowa, From cabled statements it would appear now that Italy is sending the largest modern army that ever entered Africa, with the exception of the British Army sent to the Boer War. During the nineteenth, century numerous treaties were entered into by Abyssinia with Italy, anid with other foreign Powers, but these seem to have only a relative place in the chronicle of today, for the Italian affirmation of expansionist motives reduces the whole issue to simplicity. It appears now that the Abyssinian "incident" is an African edition of the Manchurian "incident"; the former is candidly, the latter covertly, an expansionist movement by a crowded and strong-ly-armed country against a weaker one. The expansion of a congested country can easily be based on "the necessity that knows no law"; but if such procedure is to be the accepted order of things, the finding of a definition for the treaty phrase "unprovoked aggression" (to which Japan once subscribed, and which Herr Hitler was lately interested in) will require exceptional ingenuity. Equally difficult is the problem of how Italy can serve both expansion and the League of Nations. This is a time to wish all power to the League, but the world has to face the fact that the Lytton Report has not taken Japan out of Manchuria, and if Italy goes into Abyssinia there is no guarantee that she will be taken out therefrom by a second Lytton Report.' If expansionist need is to set aside all laws and all Leagues, those countries that are not already expanded up to their limit must take warning from deeds (more powerful than words) and must base their defence on the principle that right is might. After much more than two thousand years of Italian-African history the world again hears from Rome about Italian action along the lines of "the old and simple plan," by virLue of which he will keep who can, and he who cannot will submit. There is no necessity here to discuss the ethics of "expansionist requirements"; their implications are quite sufficient for "expansible" countries. A point that seems to be of the greatest importance to these non-European half-empty countries' is that while the Hiller lightning so far is mainly for Europe, the Mussolini lightning ranges the outer world. Both these men have been responsible in 1935 for fiats of dazzling realism. Hitler's pronouncements (conscription, aircraft, submarines) bombed the Versailles Treaty. They kindled anew the fear in Europe of air attacks and chemical warfare. In that continent, where people live in great masses on either side of national boundaries, the revival of armaments outweighs other perils; indeed, an Ttalian diversion into Africa might

appear to the crowded peoples of Europe as almost a relief, or even as a remedy for their own congestion and animosity. But to oversea sparsely-settled lands the danger signals read in the opposite direction. Every time the League of Nations is bombed by the Mikado in Asia or by the Duce in Africa the echoes are world-wide. They reach Australia and New Zealand. The Monroe Doctrine has protected South America.

Because they are more primitive, expansionist demands go even deeper than revisionist demands. Most of Europe's present concern is over revisionism; and seeing that the defects of the Versailles map of Europe are admitted, revision is not beyond the compass of compromise. The Versailles boundaries and stipulations are of recent origin and not beyond amendment., But when a stronger Power enters Abyssinia or Manchuria that consideration vanishes. China's title to Manchuria, and Abyssinia's title to Abyssinia, are of olden time. Their boundaries are not Versailles boundaries, and in neither case are they a legacy of the Great War. The Versailles Treaty, so well abused, is, for once,- not to blame; and the • action of Italy and Japan comes down to the stark issue of redividing the earth according to population needs. It is this appeal —past treaties and past titles—to the primitive that distinguishes expansionist warfare. Notwithstanding diplomatic dialectics, that kind of warfare has not differed in principle since Caesar went to Britain or since Alfred laid the foundations of the British Navy. The writing now is plain upon the wall, and if we do not read, or do not heed, on our own shoulders will rest the consequences.