The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 29, 1936. A TROUBLED WORLD.

Evening Star, Issue 22351, 29 May 1936, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 29, 1936. A TROUBLED WORLD.

The interview which we published on Wednesday with Dr Charles C. Rolls, expressing the opinion that Italy’s aggression in Abyssinia is only the beginning of au expansionist policy designed to make the Mediterranean something like an Italian lake, did not make pleasant reading. The home director for Australia and New Zealand of the Sudan Interior Mission is not likely to be a militarist or, willingly, an alarmist, and his suspicion that the present unrest in Palestine is due largely to Italian influence has been endorsed, even while ho expressed it, by a cable message from Cairo. According to this message, “ Italian propaganda, . which is undoubtedly fanning the flames of terrorism in Palestine, is increasing elsewhere in the Near East, especially in Egypt, where the success of the Abyssinian campaign has encouraged large sections to fear that Italy’s might is overshadowing that of Britain.” Superficially, at least, Signor Mussolini has accomplished his conquest of Abyssinia, but that is not likely to give any lasting satisfaction to Italians. The achievement is bound to have a thousand disappointments for them in that exploitation of it which cannot be other than a long process. In a little while, there is cause to fear, something else will be needed from II Duce to persuade his people that he is their only possible leader. The Roman Empire, whose glories he would revive, never included Abyssinia, but it did include the Mediterranean as <! our sea.” Whether or not he considered them to be practicable it would not be strange if the ambitions which Dr Rolls suggests should prove attractive to a Roman Dictator. And the words of this one, when he offers the most peaceful assurances to all the world, are not strengthened by his record.

The world is in a bad state when it includes three Powers—ltaly, Germany, and Japan—that have prospered, or appeared to prosper, in the latest phase by tearing up their international pledges and defying the League of Nations. As a -sequel to her breach of faith Germany has made proposals for a new stabilisation of Europe which have been considered by her neighbours with the result of so many questions and alternative proposals that no one can say what the outcome will be. The ambitions of Japan’s militarists in the Far East reveal themselves with sufficient plainness in what has been occurring there, and though the Tokio Government may have more sense of realities than a section of the army the control of the civilians is not easily maintained in Japan. The outlook for the British Empire is made more disturbing when we read the cabled opinion of the naval correspondent of the ‘ Daily Telegraph ’ that, owing to the steady expansion of European navies, Britain will not be in a position to maintain strong naval forces both in Europe and the Far East. . . . It is diffi-

cult to see how the dominions can escape a much heavier burden of expenditure in the future than they have undertaken in the past. A writer in the ‘ Bound Table,’ however, does not think it is a necessarily lasting position that has been reached in which the Admiralty might be compelled to say that it cannot guarantee adequate power in three places at once—in the

North Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, and at Singapore. As his judgment is expressed: “We can hardly doubt that, by a combination of sbrewd diplomacy and expenditure on' naval armament, the British Empire (if summoned thereto by a real threat to its security) would and could make the required effort. We think it necessary to put the issue thus, nob because we look upon it with equanimity or with anything but profound regret, but because foreign critics (especially among Japanese naval propagandists) are prone to repeat the crucial error of their German prototypes before the war and to assume that the British nations have become effete and are losing both the will and the power to survive. In a real and honourable sense the people of Great Britain and their partners in the dominions are pacifists to-day, bub we see no reason to suppose that they care so little for the new Commonwealth system they have created as to refuse the effort necessary for its maintenance.” At the Imperial Conference, to be held next year about tho same time as the Coronation, the main item on the agenda, it is said, will be defence. Unless various influences now dividing the ivorld should take new trends in the next twelve months that subject will not be considered too soon, as a precaution against possible dangers, by the members of the Commonwealth.