THE H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1935 CLOSING SUEZ CANAL.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 232, 17 September 1935, Page 6

THE H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1935 CLOSING SUEZ CANAL.

In yesterday’s cable messages special attention was drawn to the question of closing the Suez Canal as a possible measure to be taken should it unhappily come to a need and decision for the application °f sanctions under the League of Nations Covenant in connection with the Italo-Abys-sinia dispute. There can be little doubt that this is a subject which must cause Signor Mussolini a good deal of apprehension. There is no great difficulty in seeing that were the canal, through which all his troops with their vast equipment have already passed freely, to be closed to him and his shipping, his expeditionary forces would be practically cut off from their home base and their source of supplies and reinforcement. There is no way open to him for transport by land, while even the long sea route round Africa might well be blocked at the Strait of Gibraltar. The preservation of his right to use the canal is thus a matter of vital importance to him.

Despite all the vast military preparation he has made for crushing Abyssinian resistance, it is pretty generally held that the campaign ,if it is to achieve its purpose of complete subjugation, will not be one of mere months but of years. The prospect of his only effective line of communication with headquarters being 'cut cannot therefore but cause him a good deal of uneasiness. It would be manifest disaster for the hundreds of thousands of men he has landed in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland were they to find themselves forced to live off a hostile country while at the same time open to the attacks of a warlike, even if ill-equipped, people skilled in guerilla tactics. It is only in keeping with Signor Mussolini’s consistent inconsistency that under these circumstances he should, in support of his continuous right to use the canal for the purposes of his Ethiopian adventure, invoke the League Covenant, which in other respects he proposes to set at naught. When, a

little while back, suggestions regarding the closing of the canal were appearing in the Press he was quick to make reference to the fact that the Treaty of Versailles fully preserved the Suez Canal Convention of 1888. By (hat convention it was declared, with some specific qualifications ami reservations, that the canal should “always be free and open, in time of war as in time of peace, to every vessel of commerce or of war without distine tion of flag.” What II Dnce seems to overlook, however, is that, assuming him Io be found by Hie League Council or Assembly to have violated the Covenant embodied in the Treaty, he is at once deprived of any rights he might otherwise claim

under it. If found guilty of any

such breach as is now in evident contemplation, Italy at once becomes an outlaw among the nations which still hold themselves bound by the Covenant. Without further formality she would be “at war” with each and all of them. Under such conditions there could be no question as to asserting rights of passage against enemy warships. Signor Mussolini seems also to forget that during the Great War, in spite of the 1888 Convention, the canal was closed to Germany and her allies, a step in which Italy no doubt fully concurred. Thus, if matters should draw to a final crisis through his refusal to listen to all friendly counsels of conciliation and compromise, there can be little question as to what might bt done, though, of course, a powerful Italian navy would have to be reckoned with.

As to how the position is regarded in view of the rather unsettled code of international law, the Royal Institute of International Affairs puts it pretty pointedly thus. “A law cannot be effective unless the arm of the law is behind it. The refusal of a passage for vessels of a declared aggressor needs to be backed by the power necessary to enforce the refusal. To render the closing of the Canal effective, a mandate would have to be conferred by the League, presumably on France and Britain, but the real sanction involved is not so much the closing the Canal itself as the effective prevention in the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea of access to it. Thus, the legal right of closure need never arise and sanctions become a question of preventing approach, rather than prohibiting transit.” However, there is still some fair hope, de-, spite Signor Mussolini’s present uncompromising attitude, that, along with other sanctions, the question of blocking the canal will not require to be practically considered.