THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1935. THE MENACE TO PEACE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22631, 24 July 1935, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1935. THE MENACE TO PEACE

Ip a month ago Italy and Abyssinia appeared to be drifting rapidly towards war the conclusion will now be that only something in the nature of a miracle can prevent that untoward development. The utterances of Signor Mussolini and of the Ethiopian Emperor are less than ever of a kind calculated to encourage hopes that a modus vivendi which will rule out a recourse to arms may yet be discovered. The Emperor, while reaffirming his faith in the League of Nations, has very boldly denounced Italy’s methods of procedure. Signor Mussolini has affected to be annoyed, and, piquantly enough in view of the character of his own utterances, has instructed his Minister at Addis Ababa to protest against the speech as “ warlike.” What the League Powers may yet attempt with a view to persuading Italy, even at this stage, to recognise its authority to intervene and to make use of its machinery remains to be seen. But there seems little prospect of the achievement of a peaceful solution from that quarter. The machinery of Geneva could only have functioned effectually, it has* been pointed out, in the case of Japanese aggression in Manchuria if .the League members had been prepared to back the decisions at Geneva by the use of force. They were not prepared to carry the matter to the length of the application of Sanctions, and it was from Geneva and not from Manchuria that Japan retired. And China was left lamenting. There seems to be a distinct possibility that events may run a more or less similar course in the ease of the Italian threat to Abyssinia. Italy has made no secret of it that her aim is colonial expansion in North Africa. She emphasises, among other pleas for a free hand, her mission as an agent of white civilisation in a stronghold of African barbarity. “ Nobody,” Signor Mussolini has declared, “ can arrogate the intolerable claim to intervene in our concern. Only Italy may judge in so delicate a matter: this Italy who has in her history a dramatic, bloody and ■ unforgotten experience on this <point.” The question why the League of Nations is apparently 7 powerless to bring the disputants together, and to dissipate this looming menace to peace, may be viewed from several angles. Here are two of its members, almost at each other’s throats, and one of them, a European Power, distinctly aggressive, prepared evidently to act first and reason, if need be, afterwards. In an article in the Fortnightly Review an American publicist, Mr Prank H. Simonds, seeks to get at the fundamentals of the situation. The great issues affecting the question of peace have been shown, he contends, to be not those of ethnic unity or strategic security, but primarily those of economic self-sufficiency. He divides the nations into the “ Haves ” and the “ Have-nots,” between whom, in his view, the League of Nations has always been caught. 1 Peace has not been attainable, it is argued,' because all the covenants, pacts and treaties that should ensure it have, in effect if not in design, been “ nicely,calculated to perpetuate inequality in the name of peace. . . . The happy

possessors were to be assured permanent and undisturbed enjoyment of the disproportionate share of the world’s and natural resources which they had won by war, and others were to be discouraged from waging inconvenient wars over what was left.” The conclusion of this writer is that it is futile to try to win Japan, Germany or Italy back to the collective system of Geneva without assuring them economic security. If that be so, then we are apparently to concede that the League of Nations was hopeless in conception from the beginning. The nations that demand what they call economic security can only have it at somebody else’s expense, and permanent peace must appear to be impossible since the argument is that war, instead of being the supreme evil which we are supposed to assume it to be for all nations alike, is the only way out for the nations that regard the economic status quo as intolerable. It is a discouraging viewpoint, tantamount to saying that there can be no assurance of peace so long as one nation covets what its neighbour possesses and refuses to" hand out. But Mr Simonds offers no constructive alternative to the methods, the ineptitude of which he seeks to expose, of approaching the whole problem..