INTERNATIONAL SCENE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 124, 21 November 1935, Page 10

INTERNATIONAL SCENE

I ITALY AND SANCTIONS | MR. F. M. B. FISHER'S I OPINIONS (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, This Day. Yesterday Mr. F. M. B. Fisher, a former New Zealand Cabinet Minister, who is paying a holiday visit to the Dominion, spoke of affairs in Great Britain with particular reference to the international situation and New Zealand interests.

The recent General Election, he said, had been a triumph for Mr. Stanley Baldwin personally and also in more general sense for the steadier influences in British political life. In some quarters apparently there had been some surprise at the extent of the Government's majority, but when it was considered that the pacifists supported the Government because it supported sanctions, and those who favoured re-armament supported the Government because sanctions involved a measure of rearmament, the results were not really surprising. "The position at present is that practically the whole of the British Fleet is in the Mediterranean," Mr. Fisher continued, "and it seems that the application of sanctions must succeed. Italy cannot hold out either financially or in any other way. Soon her troops will find themselves marooned for months, contending with the worst climate in the world, and the general impression is that Italy will be ready to come to terms comparatively quickly. "Nothing public is being said about *.t, of course, but sanctions against Italy are possibly being used in order to test whether they could be applied against a much stronger Power—Germany—should the occasion arise. However, one of the most surprising features is that Germany herself has cooperated in sanctions against Italy."