ITALIAN DISPUTE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 17, 21 January 1936, Page 5

ITALIAN DISPUTE

AMERICAN VIEWPOINT

EMBARGO A ROAD TO TROUBLE

BRITAIN'S OBJECTS

Recent weeks have disclosed a rising tide of uneasiness and criticism of the neutrality policy of the Roosevelt Administration which is certain to find expression just as soon as Congress convenes, writes Frank Simonds in the "San Francisco Chronicle." At that time the' President will unquestionably ask for-a modification of the existing law, which expires on February 29, to permit the executive to exercise discretionary powers in 'dealing with the problem. The Secretary of State, on his part, will seek for legislation enabling the Government to fix quotas in various essential raw materials. Both will bs confronted by strong opposition and the present chances of a bestowal of discretionary power are excessively Meantime practical politicians on the Democratic side are becoming increasingly disturbed by the fact that all over the United States ItalianAmericans are quietly but not less effectively organising to take sanctions of their own upon thj present Administration at the forthcoming presidential election. This detail is important for not only are there several millions ofltalian voters but these are mainly located in pivotal States. Exactly the same resentments, which GermanAmericans felt against the Democratic Party after the United States became an open belligerent are today discoverable among Italians of all shades of political sympathy and every class of society. Since in recent years the bulk of this vote has been Democratic, the implications of the impending shift are plain. . ■ '■ * HUNGER BLOCKADE. ' Looking to the criticisms which have been, directed against the Administration's • course it-is plain that the incident of the oil embargo has served to crystallise and fortify these views. After some months of crisis it had become patent that, while in the end the "hunger blockade" of the economic embargo could etarve and freeze the Italian people into a condition which would lead to domestic upheaval and the overthrow of Mussolini and the Fascist regime, both in and out of Britain there developed apprehension over protracted tension and certainty of an eventual collapse of Italy into the hands of Communists. British policy, still inspired by the determination to break Italy's purpose to establish a colonial, domain on the flank of the British roads to India and from the Cape to Cairo, was therefore forced to seek a quicker means of coercing Italians into surrender arid that way lay through cutting off oil supplies. The success of such a venture, however, manifestly depended upon persuading the United States to come along with Britain 'and thus to make possible the tightening of the noose about the Italian neck. • • Actually Tory statesmanship hart three objectives in mind. The first was the obvious desire to enlist American aid in the strangulation of Italy's military machine by an oil embargo. Not less important from the British point of view, was the need to impress the. Italians with the idea that the United States was just as hostile as England1 to; the Italian cause and thus ■to create a burning resentment against Americans in Italy. In this way Rome would be roused to some angry but costly threat against Washington, which would awaken irritation and further, compromise Italy's cause in American eyes.' "ON A LIMB." Finally, the British were anxious that Italian resentment should be so spread out that in the period following the present crisis the Italians would not single out British trade aj a unique target for reprisals. If Italian anger could be stirred up against the United States to a pitch at which there would be no • tariff discrimination between the two countries, then ■ the costs to England of her campaign against Italian expansion would be greatly reduced. Now see how this threefold purpose was realised. Jin London and in Geneva and at British inspiration talk of an oil embargo was. suddenly let loose. Thereupon Washington, satisfied that an embargo was going to be im- . posed, rushed suddenly into the open. ' arid began its coercive measures directed at stopping American sales of oil to Italy. Once the British saw that the United States had gone too far to retreat, then it consented, upon the urging pf M. Laval, to postpone the League embargo. The United States was thus left out on a limb, the target of all Italian resentment and, as the British calculated, ill-considered words in Rome created unmistakable irritation in Washington. Threats of reprisals by Italy, too, added/fuel to the fire. In the eyes of Italy the United States has become, not merely an enemy Jike Great Britain, but a foe replacing Britain.in the front rank in the matter of the oil embargo, which 'insured Italian ruin. Thus overnight the United States became as completely embroiled with Italy as if it had actually been a member of the League of Nations. And that, of course, has been the primary purpose of the British ever since the Anglo-Italian crisis began. When the perilous nature of the situation into which they had adventured blindly was tardily perceived by the State Department, it attempted to effect a strategic retirement by asserting that :t was concerned not in instituting an embargo but in keeping American sales down to normal proportions. That end was in itself beyond criticism, because it is the essence of real neutrality, but had it been announced in advance it would have been fatal to the whole British project. EFFECT IGNORED. What the State Department has steadily ignored during the present cvisis has been- the effect and not the technical justification of its performances. T-rom start to finish it has left the world with the impression that the design of the United States Government was to overlook' no opportunity to'support the British cause, nominally that of the League,' which was even remotely to be reconciled . with the restriction's of the neutrality act. Always there, has, been about our course the suggestion of clever lawyers seeking to make law serve their own purposes which were far from consistent with the spirit of the lsw itself. Between 1914 and 1917, that is until the."United States entered the World War, the State Department was directed, once Mr. Bryan had resigned, by a secretary who has left behind the record of his conviction that we must eventually enter the war as the ally of Great Britain. The American Ambassador at the Court of St. James was an even more uncompromising advocate of Anglo-American partnership. And Colonel House was, almost from the start, completely responsive to British urgings. The President, who was sincerely anxious to be neutral and the Congress which was fanatically resolved not to be involved, there-

fore found their efforts invariably nullified.

Today it is not to be questioned that the Secretary of State is profoundly pro-League at heart and enormously influenced by the Ambassador-at-large, Mr. Norman H. Davis, who is equally pro-British and pro-League. All the course of the State Department- since the crisis arrived has therefore been inspired by the desire to avoid interfering in any way with the attempts of the League to coerce Italy. From start to finish Judge Hull and those whose advice he has taken have acted upon the assumption that what was at stake was a moral and not a political question and that the main issue was between the League and Italy and not between London and Rome. From the very outset official Washington has refused to recognise that once the Home Fleet had been dispatched to the Mediterranean the League and Ethiopian detail in the dispute became minor and that the question of war or peace was one between Rome and London. ■ . ■ "PISTOL AT HIS HEAD." When the British dispatched their ships to Gibraltar and Alexandria they presented a pistol at Mussolini's head and demanded a submission whi'.'h, in effect, Would constitute a humiliation at once intolerable to Italian pride and fatal to II Duce and the Fascist regime. Yet none among the European diplomats in Washington has ever mistaken the reality of the situation as contrasted with the pretty fiction of League activity accepted by our State Department. Again and again I have heard repeated the single question, "Will the British consent to let Mussolini have that irreducible minimum of a victory in his Ethiopian affair without which he is , ruined, or have they. resolved to destroy him now to avoid trouble later?" As to the League's part, no one has taken it seriously of itself or regarded it as other than an instrument in British hands. As long as our State Department clung to the notion of a League action, as long as it thought of the crisis as moral and not political, so long was it bound in the.very nature of things to play into British hands. And, of course every effort of British propaganda, has been to create and preserve this illusion while, in fact, Great Britain' pursued towards Mussolini exactly the,same uncompromising course that it once adopted towards Napoleon. 'Again, in fact, there were not lacking British voices which suggested that the present British policy was wiser than that of the earlier, since it aimed at destroying Mussolini before he had reached imperial stature. CONCERN FOR PRINCIPLE. -What the American public and the State Department have failed .to grasp fully in 'this crisis is that whenever Great Britain gets into a dispute with any other country, over political or imperial questions, which are utterly destitute of moral content, it will strive again, as it did-successfully during the World War, to persuade the American people that its action is determined by concern for moral principle, for the sanctity of treaties or the reign of international "law. The design of all such enterprises is to create the impression in the United States that mere concern for morality must make America the ally of Britain. "Unless all;signs fail Congress, when it' reconvenes, will come back fully .awake to the, fashion in which its own Neutrality Act has been nullified and as a consequence we have been made the more or less unconscious ally of England against Italy, because the State Department has been dominated by League sentiments and British sympathies. Coming from recent contact with the people the members of Congress will■ know,, as the State Department cannot, how the masses of the people! kfe'el .at the spectacle of the steady'; drift of American policy to the support of one of two European rivals and to the championship of British imperialism against Italian. Those legislators who have Italian constituents will, moreover, have poignant feelings on this.score. The old,battle of 1919 between the executive and legislative branches of the Government, the one practising involvement, the other demanding neutrality, seems likely to be fought again. Actually, however, to be neutral it is necessary not merely to refrain from open alliance but also from falling into a trap which makes us a silent partner of one of two nations at odds.