Evening Post. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1936. THE LEAGUE AND THE DRIFT

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 69, 18 September 1936, Page 8

Evening Post. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1936. THE LEAGUE AND THE DRIFT

The genius of is delay; the genius of dictatorship is action. This fact has not been altered by the League of Nations; and that is one reason why some supporters of the League—by no means all of them—hope for instantly-ready League forces that will swing into military movement automatically on an act of aggression. Theoretically such a- League of Nations would have the capability—possessed now only by dictatorship Governments — of choosing instantly between action and caution. Once the League nominated an aggressor, not only its writ but its armed forces would operate. That consummation is too distant to be discussed. Inevitably the League, as it exists, must be slow in deliberation; and, almost certainly, in acition. Speed hardly can be hoped for either in self-reform, or in reform of the evils that press upon the League's attention. One dictator, not in the League, puts a brake upon both the League and the Locarno group by failing to state his position on fundamental issues (touched on in the questionnaire) of European pacification and Leaguereform; he thus' imposes delay on other Governments and on Geneva, while enjoying himself liberty of action. Another dictator, a condemned aggressor, and yet .a member of the League, demands, as the price of his co-operation in League affairs, the corpus of a League State, Abyssinia, The League's embarrassment recalls that of Herod when another wanton asked for the head of , John the Baptist on a charger. ; While the League Council and the League Assembly meet in September as fixed, the provisional dating of the Five Powers Conference for October has met with German and Italian suggestions for further time for diplomatic preparation. A demand for diplomatic delay can alj ways be made plausibly, and often sincerely. But the Rugby message 'published on Wednesday proves how [keenly alive Britain is to the dangers I of drift. Especially "in the present State of Europe." It is enough to I say that initiative is in the hands' j of two dictators neither of whom controls less than fifty million people. While the League, hitherto, is slow to decide and slower to act, the bigger of the two dictators is quite unshackled, and the lesser one, although a League member, was able to both decide and act in the Abyssinian matter quite undeterred by the sentence passed l at Geneva. All these things are implied in the phrase "present state of Europe." More also is implied, including German threats to destroy Russia, which threats, though not repeated by Herr Hitler at the Nuremberg finale, were in no sense withdrawn. An outburst like this—possibly a | cause of war before 1914^—can hapI pen at any time, in spite of the League, so long as the "present state 'of Europe" endures. And drift would probably intensify the danger. Germany is represented as fulminating against Russia and at the same time offering France limitation of armaments if France will drop the Franco-Soviet Pact. Even French and English Russophobes who regard Russia as a worse dictatorship than any, and as entering the League purely for manipulative purposes, can hardly ask the Blum Government to bow to such a decree from Berlin. There is reason to believe that some of the spectacular "incidents" in Europe are not only prepared but are carefully timed. Note how Memel and Danzig flit on and off the stage. Certainly the last has not been heard of either of them. The British and other Governments spend enormous amounts of time and money in preparing cases for the League of Nations —the British delegation alone on this occasion numbers seventy—but a Nazi group in

Danzig, at a trifling cost in everything except impudence, can send to Geneva a man like Herr Greiser, who will stage a piece of larrikinism to discourage the League in the eyes of the unthinking and to bring ridicule on its Great Power members. Cheap in every sense are demonstrations whereby a group in a pocket State with foreign affiliations can insult collective Europe; yet in matters of prestige these tilings count. The name of Greiser in the larrikin division, and the name of Mussolini in the dictator class, typify the lesser and the greater of the obstacles which League patience is trying to \surmount. To the people at Geneva belong the obloquy and the thorns, and to the Duce and Marshal Badoglio belong the glory and the pageants. Yet the whole moral nature of man (when not debased) cries out that in truth the-roles are reversed.

Will the September sessions at Geneva be disfigured by another stage-managed "incident" like Greiser's? How can the Abyssinian problem be adjusted without doingviolence to moral arid mental faculties alike ? Will humanisation suggest any alleviation of the bloodflow in Spain? What will be M. Litvinoff's reply to Nazi threats and Nazi attempts to frighten France? France, it is cabled, will move in the matter of limitation of armaments. Tho subject is hoary'; so is France's connection with it; but the Blum (Government may bring a new outlook. How M. Blum will achieve any progress it is hard to see, so long as Germany says that the price of limitation is the dropping of the pact with Russia. Nothing in the Geneva sphere nor in the Locarno sphere can be done without France, but any French initiative is beset with difficulties, as the reactions of the Soviet Pact (and, before that, M. Laval's pro-Italianism) clearly prove. Of course, there is League reform, as propounded by New Zealand and "over a dozen Governments," but Britain, it is cabled today, "considers reform at present not practical politics." How can it be if Germany is writing new history without answering the questionnaire? Apparently League diplomacy cannot escape from delay, and dictatorship can hardly abstain from action. But the initiative has risks as well as gains. Collective security, sitting on a throne of patience, may yet profit by the high-handed mistakes of its dictator enemies.