SANCTIONS TO-DAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22609, 28 June 1935, Page 6

SANCTIONS TO-DAY

LEAGUE EMPLOYMENT OBSTACLES IN THE WAY The Geneva resolution censuring Germany brings once more to the fore the Question of economic and financial sanctions, writes Salvador de Madariaaa, permanent Spanish delegate to the League of Nations, in the Daily Telegraph. The idea of a sanction or penalty is natural. There can be no collective life without discipline, and no discipline without punishment. „ . • . , . That is why all organisations created by man contain the provision of penallt explains why the designers of the League Covenant considered as an important element of the new body Article 18, which punishes violations of the system of pacific settlement of international disputes, and in particular violations of Articles 12, 13 and 15, by measures which are to be taken against the aggressor by all members of the League. Experience, however, has shown that this article of the Covenant has given such insignificant results that it would scarcely be exaggerating to call them mi. It is worth while to review the reasons which may explain this check. COVENANT'S WEAKNESS. First of all, there is a general reason. Article 16 is an article of the Covenant; hence anything which weakens the Covenant must weaken Article 16. Now, as everybody knows, one of the most important members of the League was amputated almost at birth. The United States by refusing to ratify, not the Treaty oj Versailles, but the Covenant, deprived its stipulations of all the efficacy it could aspire to by being universal. The weakness generalised and spread to to all the Articles of the Covenant, but of them all Article 16 was certainly the most affected. In the long run, the participation of the United States was not essential to the engagement not to have recourse to armed strife without first exhausting certain pacific proceedings to resolve the dispute. But how can an economic and financial boycott or a naval blockade be applied so long as one of the most powerful nations in the world remains indifferent, hostije, or simply unpredictable? To this inhibition has been added another not less important. It has been noticeable, in the course of the Leagues existence, that the principal obstacle to the success of the system- of sanctions Hoes not proceed from the application of the measure it calls for. It proceeds from unwillingness to put the matter on record, from voluntary blindness to the act of the most obvious transgressor. AVOIDING PENALTY. It is clear that this blindness arises, at least in part, from the desire to avoid the application of punishment which would be the logical consequence ol explicit recognition of the transgressor — just as a father, who for particular reasons, does not want to punish his son, pretends not to see his misdeeds. But this singular and certainly unexpected fact which characterises the first stage of the League's task, this dislike of recognising that there has been a violation of the Covenant, arises equally from another cause not less active.

Whatever the situation and however irregular it may be, all other nations feel themselves linked to the alleged transgressor by ties, conversations, treaties, mutual promises, and present or future interests. Or else they find in their own past some episode which is not sufficiently different from the one under discussion to allow them to demand their pound of flesh with the inflexibility of Shylock. Hence very often the solution is hybrid, the decision vacillating and the text labyrinthine.

That is why it is a mistake—natural and excusable enough, but still a mistake —to wish to increase penalties in order to reinforce the decisions, of the combined nations. Thereby an attempt is made to strengthen the arms, whereas up to the present it has been the brain and heart which have failed. But if we follow the course of the sanction from its legal beginnings, through the political decision whereby its application is decided, to the economic and financial phase of its enforcement, we see new and still more complex obstacles arise to hamper its efficacy. WHY INACTION RULES. Let us substitute symbols which everybody can replace for the names of the countries which suit them. Consider a nation A, of great economic strength, and another B, of small weight. So far as A is concerned, economic relations with B hav e no importance. But for B, the country A is its best client. Hence, breaking off economic relations between A and B would be a minor matter for A, but a national disaster for B. What will Bdo if the rest of the international alphabet declare A to be a transgressor and demand a boycott? This relatively frequent case explains a good deal of the opposition to the application of penalties But there are others. It may happen —and, in fact, it has happened—that a country M occupies a predominant position in a country F, where it ha* large investments, spread over many industrial and other interests. If P, having been declared at fault, is to be subjected to an economic boycott, what will happen? The transgressor will take advantage of the circumstances to loosen the economic ties which bind it to M: it will stop payment of dividends, confiscate capital and plants, and thus draw profits from " punishment." You will say that war would follow, that P would be defeated, and thus everything would come out all right, like a fairy tale, virtue triumphant in the end. But if we have supposed that economie sanctions are for the purpose of avoiding war, the argument is poor. Thus the facts reveal little by little the heart of the difficulty. It is of little moment that the action ie legally and ethically justified. Life demands that economic currents follow their natural course. It is not possible for States, even for the most righteous reasons, to divert economic life, which has its own laws. The means of enforcing international discipline ought, therefore, to be searched; for on other grounds. There is only one means, that of public opinion. To those who hold that all this is very vague, we reply that, even assuming economic sanctions were enforceable, they could only be enforced through a public opinion sufficiently vigorous to repress the contrary tendencies of trade and of the trader. ' .'"' Thus, without the backing of publie opinion there can be no sanctions: and with public opinion, they are no longe* necessary.