Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1935. BOMBS AND CHRISTMASTIDE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 139, 9 December 1935, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1935. BOMBS AND CHRISTMASTIDE

Weekend news included Sir Samuel Hoare's penetrating three-points summary of foreign affairs—Abyssinia, the Far East, Egypt—and, as if by way of answer, what appears to be the bloodiest air raid yet made by the Italians against the Abyssinians. , At a time when the oil embargo is in the balance, the raid on Dessie h likely to have but one effect on the psychology of the peoples of the countries that supply oil—the effect of hardening opinion in favour of the embargo, and improving the prospect of ? co-ordination between the League of ! Nations and the United States. Certainly the people of today -have the privilege of living in remarkable times. Here we are within three weeks of Christmas, and the country that made the first recorded world-civil-isation is raining bombs on one of the oldest countries that profess Christianity; and other countries are supplying the fuel for the aeroplanes, and their people will presently give themselves up to Christmas festivities. There was a lime when Christianity conquered Rome and Rome gave back to the world the Pax Romana. Today the world is united not under any Roman Caesarean power, but by the power of inventions and communications; and the result of this conquest of distances and of air travel —or at the moment the most conspicuous result—is bombs for Abyssinia.

The dramatic quality of the reports of the bombardment of Dessie is such as almost to strain belief. It is known that, in the Great War, not all the reported abuses of the Red Cross occurred as reported; but the statements from Abyssinia cannot be brushed aside on that ground. Incidentally—or was it of purpose? —the raid brought the Emperor and the Crown Prince under fire; and an Emperor, it is recorded, fired an anti-aircraft gun in battle for the first time in human history. This is the sort of incident that impresses, the common human imagination, and which will certainly be used to capture the black man's imagination, for the African races as a whole are watching this conflict, and the opportunity of staging Haile Selassie and the Duce's droning airplanes as a new version of David and Goliath must | prove to be rather a tempting one for African propagandists. Thus the fires which have been started in Abyssinia by the Italian bombs are fires which may burn for a long time to come and over a far greater area of the earth than the comparatively impoverished spot on which all this energy of engineer, chemist, soldier, and oil-supplier is being expended. Out of the smoke, heat, and bloodshed of this paradoxical conflict, ordained, curiously enough, as the first step in a Roman come-back, emerges a new diplomatic terra, dualism. Dualism will be connected in history with Sir Samuel Hoare, who offers Italy sanctions in one hand and an olive branch in the other (but both within the framework of the League). Dualism

consists of taking a full part in collective action under the Covenant and at the same time persevering in efforts for a peaceful settlement of the ItaloAbyssinian dispute.

Dualism obviously lends itself to misrepresentation by opponents. A dualist statesman, alternately using force and persuasion, can be accused of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds; to some critics —^yen, it would seeing to certain Labour members of the House of Commons—he is not firm enough against Italy, while to Signor Mussolini dualism is anti-Italian and also anti-civilisation. To the appeals of both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Signor Mussolini replies that no siege can bend Italy, and that! the ' sanctions destroy the olive branch; therefore, the situation offers no possible settlement, and the bombing proceeds. As to an oil embargo, "this," he adds, "would gravely prejudice the situation"— which is an ultimatum to oil countries that the wings of the twentieth century Roman eagle (whose eggs when laid make crater-nests 20 feet wide and 15 feet deep) must on no account be clipped. When the appeal is nakedly to force, moralising becomes a plastic form of special pleading. No moralising can add to or subtract from the fact that the bombing aeroplanes are flying with oil supplied from embargoing or sanctionist countries —that is, from countries which withhold war supplies from Italy, or (in the case of the United States) from both the fighting nations, but which continue to send oil to the aggressor. Moralising, Signor Mussolini complains that sanctions are applied against Italy "only ,because she is poor in raw materials." An aggressor Italy, "poor in raw materials," asks for sympathy in a war on a League nation, Abyssinia, that is poor in everything! Could any mor : alising put up a more absurd proposition than this?

Paris messages now state that the plan is laid to establish on January 1, New Year's Day, the oil embargo that Signor Mussolini has just defined as a gravely prejudicial act. At such a critical moment the melodramatic and sanguinary appearance of the Caproni bombers intensifies the crisis, but it is impossible to see how the sanctionist countries can fail to face it, or how the United

States can be indifferent to this coup by the new Italian command. Such, then, is the forbidding weather forecast in Europe for ihe birth of the New Year.