DEFENCE OF LEAGUE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 99, 23 October 1935, Page 12

DEFENCE OF LEAGUE

COLLECTIVE SECURITY

SIR S. HOARE'S SPEECH

(Brltlib Official Wireless.) (Received October 23. 2.30 p.m.) RUGBY, October 22. Continuing his speech during the debate on the international situation in the House of Commons the Foreign Secretary (Sir Samuel Hoare) dealt with accusations first, that the British Government, and secondly that the League had been too long inactive regarding the Italo-Ethiopian dispute. He spoke of the incessant representations the British Government had made to the Italian Government from the end of. last year and rebutted again the charge of delay in meeting the Italian j request for an exchange of views on the respective interests in Abyssinia. As to the League it was its duty to make an effort to secure a settlement by conciliation. Up to August 9 a peaceful settlement was still possible, which he thought the Italian Government had been unwise to reject. EFFECT OF SANCTIONS. Despite difficulties a collective agreement had been reached, first on the merits of (he dispute, and secondly on measures of economic, pressure. Sir Samuel Hoare denied both that economic measures need be ineffective if collectively applied and that they necessarily led to military measures. He asserted that the pre-condition of enforcement, namely, collective agreement at Geneva, had never existed. Britain had made it clear from the beginning she was prepared to take her part only in collective action. The economic pressure now proposed was intended not to expand but to limit war; not to extend its duration but to shorten it. Before concluding, the Foreign Secretary made an appeal for the use of breathing space before the application of economic sanctions began, in order to search for a settlement of the dispute between Italy and Abyssinia which would be honourable and accepi able to Italy, Ethiopia, and the League. Finally, he said, the crisis confronting them was not of a few days or a few weeks but a symptom of a wider and more protracted movement which could only be controlled by steady -pressure and constant determination to face the facts of a changed and changing world. It was "because their eyes were fixed on the difficult future that they prayed that the principles of collective action would be upheld. >