WAR AND THE LEAGUE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22716, 31 October 1935, Page 18

WAR AND THE LEAGUE

FACED WITH A FACT A GREAT TEST t (Fuoai Odb Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, October 5. From a reading of the London newspapers this week it would be difficult for a foreigner to know how far the people of Great Britain were supporters of the League. Newspapers may be divided into three groups. First, there is the group which only a few months ago were deploring the increase of armaments in this country —the Daily Herald, the NewsChronicle, and the Star. These, with the Manchester Guardian, are now stern supporters of sanctions firmly and ruthlessly applied, with the possibility of dragging Great Britain into war; The second is the Beaverbrook and Rothermere group. The Daily Mail, the Evening News, the Daily Express, and the Standard are calling loudly for Britain to keep out of the mess, to turn her back on the League, and to have nothing at all to do with the present trouble. The more solid newspapers—The Times and the Daily Tele graph—support tbeVCovernment in their stand for the Covenant. " What cannot be compromised is a principle," says The Times. "And the principle is no abstraction. If the members of the League are prepared to tolerate inactivity a concrete and unequivocal act of unprovoked aggression, then the Covenant and the Pact of Paris are dead. If they are dead, the world specifically abandons its greatest effort for the restraint of war. Thus it is sober truth that the principle ultimately concerns the future and perhaps the lives of millions in Europe am! other continents. "British opinion has a firm grasp of this truth. It is neither alarmist nor alarmed, and there is correspondingly no vacillation or confusion in British policy. The Government's undertaking is of the simplest. The area of war can be re•tricted and the restraint of war maintained by the covenanted nations. While all stand by the Covenant, the British Government will take its share in all measures unanimously directed to both these ends. Thus in this fateful week the Council will sit to confront a test that is grave and a duty that is plain. Else where the Italian DictatorMaunches his country upon a still more formidable hazard. At best it must lavish Italian life and treasure for a dubious return. At worst it may be gambling all that he has counted for gain since his rula began." EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS. " British policy, as the whole world is aware." says the Daily Telegraph, " is firm for the application of collective sanctions on the declared aggressor. . . . If the other members of the League ae cept the British initiative, then Great Britain's subsequent part will be. ' as one among many, to solve the problems as they arise, as a loyal colleague with the other States.' That these problems are likeiy to present many difficulties is obvious, but are. faced with courage and loyalty from the outset, they should not prove insuperable. Loyalty, perhaps is even more essential than courageloyalty, that is to say. to the basic principles of the League which, as the Libera! Leader justly observed, it is ' everybody s business' to uphold." HATRED OF FASCISM. The " Morning Tost" seems to reserve its opinion on League matters and sauctiorus, and to devote much space to attackimr the Socialists. "Wo hope we are not risking war," says the Post, " for the aspirations nursed in the bosoms of our Socialists and for the hatred they bear against their opposite numbers the Fascists. It is not, after all, the comrades who would bear the brunt, but our devoted sailors who have been sent to sea in a partly superannuated fleet. Labour, which cannot flinch and must not shrink, exercises its vicarious bravado at the expense of the navy, which it has done all in its power to reduce below the danger level. It is not our Socialists but our sailors and our soldiers who cannot flinch and must not shrink, if and when the worst comes to the worst. " Those same Pacifists who ranted at East Fulham against armaments now

shake their clenched lists at Italy, and threaten Signor Mussolini with the ships which they tried to destroy. This, we may hope, is no part of the British national character. "We could wish that the 'national conscience ' were less spasmodic and more responsible, and that it did not get so mixed up with certain political prepossessions. Tlie people who are most emphatic about supporting the national conscience witli naval guns are just those who have been most insistent on reducing the kuus beneath the margin of safety" NO HESITATION. "Sanctions," says the Daily Herald, "have a purpose. And that purpose is to stop the war speedily and to compel the aggressor to withdraw without having gained anything by his aggression. " From that two things follow. First, that action must be swift; second, that it must be effective. It is no moment for hesitations or half measures. " Neither military nor naval ' acts of war' arc needed. Economic pressure on Italy, the stoppage of supplies to the invading army, are adequate, and they can be put into operation without the tiring of a single 6hot. " But they must be put into operation thoroughly and immediately. Half-hearted and ineffective measures —the ' minimum sanctions ' of which there is some talk — might satisfy some curious consciences without excessively disturbing the Duce. " But the duty of the League now is not to consider Signor Mussolini's feelings. It is, we repeat once again, to stop the war. And to that supreme task all its efforts and all its resources must be devoted."