Evening Post. MONDAY, MAY 4, 1936. AN EMPEROR DEPARTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 104, 4 May 1936, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, MAY 4, 1936. AN EMPEROR DEPARTS

Haile Selassie'ie departure from Abyssinia puts an end to the hope that either the rains or League sanctions can check the Italian aggressor in his inarch to the Ethiopian capital. Military critics and,sanetionists confront an accomplished fact. In London the Emperor's departure is regarded as the end of organised resistance, and it is said to be "an awkward question" whether he is still head of the State of Abyssinia. Equally awkward is the question what dealings the League Power Ambassadors shall have with the Italian occupier, and to what extent, dealings with him would constitute "recognition" of Italy. But the Duce has broken so many contracts, usages, and customs (including the League Covenant and the chemical warfare agreements) that the legalisation of his position is probably not concerning him for the present. He has demonstrated the power of a mechanised army over inhospitable country, distances, and climate, in the face of the League's half-sanctions. His physical success seems to have reduced guaranteed rights to abstractions. There is no evidence that guarantors will resort to counter-force. ' Nor is there any evidence that anything less than counter-force would be of the least avail. It is true that at the British Trades Union Congress last September the president (Sir Walter Citrine) was prepared to consider sanctions even to the extent of closing the Suez Canal. But since then the League of Nations has failed notably to institute oil sanctions; and to close the Suez Canal now as an eleventhhour (or thirteenth-hour) preventive is hardly to be expected from a body which failed in (and since) December to sanction oil. Besides, since the Trades Union Congress and the British General Election were swung to sanctions over Fascism in Abyssinia, the whole outlook of the League of Nations has been altered by Nazi Fascism 'in Europe. All through those stages of the Abyssinian war when prevention of an aggressor might have received a genuine trial,- an indispensable League Power, France, side-stepped the issue,, anticipating a move from the only quarter she is vitally concerned about—Germany. Now that her anticipation has been realised, a flood of proposals for a reconstructed peace has burst upon Europe, profoundly modifying the .whole situation. The League, like Abyssinia, lately has been marching towards reconstruction, hustled on by lawbreaking. League sanctions were deemed in November a sufficient policy. In May the sufficiency of sanctions is no longer maintainable, and the sufficiency of the League itself is no longer believed in. A new Abyssinia demands a new Geneva.

The safety of the situation is that it suggests "time to consider." Time to do a variety of things, but saving Abyssinia hardly seems to be one of them. People :qow will recall the Laval-Hoare proposal in December to buy off the aggressor with half Abyssinia, and Sir Sanluel Hoare's fear that, failing this expedient, Abyssinia might march to a worse fate through being led to believe that the League could do more preventing than was actually within the League's capacity. Abyssinia certainly has been led to believe in a greater measure of League support than she has received, but the League's failure to deliver cannot be. laid at the door of the Government which sent its fleet to the Mediterranean and received almost a monopoly of Italian abuse. The present Foreign Secretary (Mr. Eden), in declaring that Britain has played her part, reaffirms .a peaceseeking policy conceived in' "a spirit of realism." A spirit of realism, as distinct from a spirit of idealism, does not insist on securing 100 per cent, of a treaty or Covenant in Abyssinia at the price of war in Europe. A peace-seeking realist is one who measures preponderating forces just as much as. lie reads treaties. From this it follows that a realist may be open to criticism from particular standpoints. If realism fails to keep a League contract in Abyssinia, will history forgive the lapse in view of the possibility of undisturbed peace in Europe?

Not since the Kaiser left for Holland has world attention been so focused on the departure of a wardefeated Emperor. The tragedy of the League Covenant and the use of prohibited means of war is a real tragedy for civilisation, but the tragedy of the Emperor himself may be variously valued. Modern Abyssinia has not been either a racial or a political unity. What unity there has been is such as may be attained by the strongest of a number of rivals for the throne, and llie Emperor has ruled by the strength of his power more than by any descent from the Queen of Sheba and Solomon. The idealism of the Abyssinian dynasty, and its realism, are two very different things. Once the hand of force fails, no Solomonic glory preserves the prestige of the regime, and the spectacle is seen "of a looting crowd of unrestrained savages who parade the

streets of Addis Ababa in lop hats and use the ammunition of war as fireworks. All this is pitiful, and an anti-climax to the picture of prolonged provincial resistance following the fall of the capital. Actually, the suddenness of what seems to be the final chapter of Ihe major operations, if not the end of all, may be a human mercy. At least it need not bo necessary, in the extinction of further resistance, to employ ihosc engines of war that represent a breach of both written and moral contracts, and which have introduced a new chapter into the colour problem and race-hatred.