"ALL RUSSIA'S FAULT!"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 62, 10 September 1937, Page 8

"ALL RUSSIA'S FAULT!"

Rome cables that Italy was about to accept the invitation to the Nyon Mediterranean Conference when the Russian Note arrived. Thereupon Italy decided that she would not meet the author of the Note at a Mediterranean Conference at Nyon, but would be willing to meet the author of the Note at meetings of the Non-intervention Committee in Lpndon. Apparently Russia is less Russia in London than she would be at Nyon, because "Italy makes reservations regarding the invitation of Russia to the Conference" (Nyon), but there is no mention of similar reservations regarding Russia at the Committee. The commonsense conclusion arising from these reports of the contents of the Italian Note is that Italy is determined to make Russia's charges against her a pretext for not going to Nyon, and is not at pains-to be consistent. The Duce seeks to block Anglo-French diplomacy, and to put the blame on France's Russian friend and on rude Moscow manners

"Popolo d'ltalia" remembers that "Britain has long and constantly in the past refused Russia the right to interfere, in the Mediterranean." The paper might as well remember the Crimea, or, more recently, the enrolment of both Russia and Italy in the Allies of the Great War. Times change, and Dardanelles policy changes. The issue, that will be raised at Nyon will not be the consistency of foreign policies, but how to stop undeclared submarine war in the Mediterranean. It is correctly described as a "severely practical issue. If, as in old Australian days, bush-ranging broke out on the bushline, bush-line farmers would sink their neighbours' quarrels, on the plea that it is better to hang together than to hang separately; and it is reasonable to believe that even one or two powerful absentees would not prevent concerted action by farmers to defend their property. In short* sensible people whose interests are under actual attack by a common and law-breaking enemy regard concerted defence as a "severely practical issue. So even the absence of two Great Powers from the Mediterranean Conference may not prevent a sufficient gathering of co-operative nations to enable rapid and resultiul police work to be done. Compare the proposed Nyon Mediterranean Conference with the League of Nations. The League consists of extensive many-purposed machinery designed, inter alia, to punish aggressors. The Nyon Conference is a limited, rapidly lmprovised machine differing from the League in that its purpose is simple and direct—to stop submarining. Germany (from without) and Italy (from within) have thwarted the many-purposed League; shall the same two Powers now thwart, by abstention, the single-purposed Nyon Conference, or shall it go on without them? Britain has been accused, not with entire justice, of failing to give the League that leadership which would have prevented Abyssinia (also, for that matter, Manchukuo). Shall Britain now be accused of a similar failure to carry to practical success a concerted antisubmarining policy, and shall it again be said that the two powerful Fascist States wrecked the Nyon Conference by absence 'and again proved their dominance of Europe? One has only to ask this question— and to remember Hitler, Mussolini, and League history—to realise that Europe is once again very close to crisis. The excuse about Russia does not mask the desperate bid for power beneath the forms of diplomacy. The very complexity of League of Nations problems made for confusion and delay. But, by contrast, the simplicity of the question before the Mediterranean Conference, and the immediate need for naval police work, make for rapid and defined action, and for what the Americans would call a prompt "show-down. The issue is unclouded. In face of the submarine operations and the air attacks in tiie Mediterranean, the British Navy is up against realities in an even greater sense than it was in 1935. Also, British" naval power in the Mediterranean is readier today than it was then; and Britain herself, taught by the Abyssinian experience, is in all respects readier. The story that the Italian and German absences from Nyon are due to Russian rudeness is beside the mark. In the face of piracy the British Navy has an anti-piratical job, and invites allies; shall it, then, be paralysed by absentees? There' seems to be a chance to pick up some lost leadership in Europe, for which small States—and some important ones have frontage on the Mediterranean —have been seeking. France may be still internally distressed, but there is at least no sign of "the Lavalism that wavered between the League and Italy in 1935.

Actual- anti-subrnarining measures cannot yet be anticipated, but "it is expected fin Paris] that England and France will determine a zone [in the Mediterranean] in which submarines will be forbidden, and will take bilateral measures to ensure that the rule is rejected." This wouW mean

that all nations' submarines must keep out of the defined zone. Would such an ordinance comply with the Duce's notions of rights and privileges in an Italian lake?