THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1936 BRITAIN AND THE LEAGUE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 121, 6 May 1936, Page 6

THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1936 BRITAIN AND THE LEAGUE.

When now it is too late to be of any practical assistance in saving the immediate victim from the consequences of a pitiless invasion the nations of the world are beginning to wake up to what it really means to have left Signor Mussolini to work his arrogant will in Abyssinia. It is only tvhen his complete conquest of the country is virtually an accomplished fact that light suddenly 'lawns on them as to what that implies for themselves and for others. The implication, of course, is that, just as much as before the Great War that was to end wars, the power of the sword—in this case of the aerial bomb and of poison gas, shed indiscriminately on soldier and civilian alike—is still to be the final arbiter, whether in settling differences between big nations or in gratifying the ambitions of the strong to swallow up the weak. It means, too, that the most solemn treaties, conventions, covenants and pacts must be regarded as the mere “scraps of paper” that the German Chancellor in August, 1914, held them to be. That is, in effect, the pretty pass io which the Christian world has come after all the lessons it was supposed to learn from four and a half years of the greatest and most devastating war the world has known. It is little wonder that, as we are told to-day, the British Prime Minister confesses to a feeling of “bitter humiliation” at the League’s failure to save Abyssinia. But the humiliation comes not from any recognition of failure on his own country’s part, but of failure on the part oi an association of fifty Christian nations, among which it was taking a lead, to hold back one of them which, in violation of the most solemn pledges, was bent on crushing out of existence another, in itself hopelessly helpless. The humiliation falls upon all Christendom, and most heavily of all upon the offending country from whose centre Christianity was first spread through the world. Upon Great Britain herself no very great reproach can fall, ex cept perhaps insofar as, despite previous warning experiences, she was foolish enough to place some reliance upon the solemn engagements to which other countries had subscribed. For years she strove, with all the influences she could bring to bear, in the hope of inducing a measure of general disarmament that might well have served to prevent any such war as that which Italy has waged upon Abyssinia. Not only this, but by way of setting an example she refrained from maintaining her own naval and military strength at the point necessary for the adequate defence of her realm—this, 100, in

the face of seeing others building up theirs to something far beyond defensive needs. It is in this, if in anything, that she has failed in her purpose, for it is quite manifest that it is her weakness which has encouraged Signor Mussolini to go to the lengths he has with a sense of impunity. This is something upon which theoretical pacifists may well ponder. It has been in the interests of peace that Great Britain has allowed herself to fall into a position in which the Italian dictator has been able to treat with something like scorn the efforts she has made to preserve It.

There is a good deal of irony, too. to be found in the fact that even America seems to have wakened up to the dangers arising from the League’s apparent impotence. She seems to forget that this arises very largely from the fact that she deserted it at its .birth, though it was of her own President’s original begetting. Nor does she appear to bear in mind the fact that it has been mainly because she would not fall in with them that the economic sanctions imposed or proposed by the League have proved ineffective to achieve their object. Of all the nations on earth the United States of America should be the last to criticise any failure on the part of the League. Possibly, too, our American friends may take some little note of the fact that it has been to the British Embassy in Addis Ababa that they have had to look for protection of the occupants of their own from a populace driven to drunken desperation. Was it not much the same at Shanghai not so very long ago, and how long is self-sufficient America going to look to effete Great Britain to act as policeman for the world?