INTERNATIONAL: Peace and Pirates

At the Paris Exposition last week the pavilion of the League of Nations collapsed of its own weight, but in Geneva the apparatus of the League worked hard and Democracy, personified by Britain and France, cut an impressive figure.

Ever since the Ethiopian crisis, when Italian air power made Britain’s base at Malta virtually untenable for her best warships and they withdrew to Egyptian waters for safety, His Majesty’s Government have sought some pretext for active co-operation with the French Navy and use of its bases in the Mediterranean by the British fleet. Last week the decisions reached fortnight ago at Nyon for naval co-operation by Britain and France to patrol the Mediterranean and destroy “pirate submarines”* (TIME, Sept. 20), were whipped into final shape at Geneva by the two foreign ministers chiefly concerned, Britain’s Anthony Eden and France’s Yvon Delbos. They used the Hotel des Bergues, where many of the League of Nations’ most vital decisions are made in bedroom conferences, and before the week was out Britain, France and their satellite nations had agreed to hunt in the Mediterranean not only “pirate submarines” but also “pirate warships” and “pirate war planes.”

In the open forum of the League Council the job of loudly naming for the first time a pirate power was performed by Premier Juan Negrin of Leftist Spain. Alphabetical rotation had made him president of the Council at this session, but Mr. Negrin handed his gavel to the Delegate of Ecuador, moved to another seat at the horseshoe table, drew himself up and cried: “The anonymous State whose warships are trying by constant aggressions to create a state of terrorism in the Mediterranean is Italy!”

Britain and France, apart from their main purpose of getting technical co-operation started between their two navies—just as the British and French armies drew together in close technical cooperation during the World War—adopted toward Italy last week an attitude in which surface politeness was blended with hauteur. The great Democracies did not join Leftist Spain in crying “Pirate!” at Il Duce, indeed they carefully sent to Rome copies of every project they adopted or discussed, even held up release of one of these to the press until it could be scanned by Premier Mussolini. To most observers it was obvious that British Foreign Secretary Eden, who hates and scorns Il Duce, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who wants to make friends with the Italian Dictator with whom he exchanges friendly personal letters (TIME, Aug. 9), were continuing to work at somewhat ludicrous cross purposes—except that the big job of starting Anglo-French naval cooperation had been accomplished, looms this week as a great white plume in the helmet of Democracy.

“Unequal Treatment,” In Mr. Eden’s desire to spite Il Duce, the statesmen at Nyon last fortnight and at Geneva last week, invited Italy to undertake an anti-pirate patrol only in the Tyrrhenian Sea immediately adjoining Italy, while Britain and France are to patrol the Mediterranean proper. This joker invitation said in effect: “As you are the Pirate, we intend to destroy your pirate ships everywhere except in your back yard, and we invite you to destroy them there!” This seemed in London and Paris to be just about diplomacy’s best joke of the year, but in Rome it did not take Benito Mussolini long to see that he could turn it immensely to his advantage in Berlin—and this week Il Duce is journeying to visit the Führer.

Ever since the War, Germans have had drilled into them that Britain and France have meted out “unequal treatment” to the Reich and that this is the Crime of the Century. It was in defiant efforts to force “equal treatment” from Democratic powers that the Nazis clamored loudest and ultimately tore up the Treaty of Versailles (TIME, Feb. 8). Last week Il Duce set the Italian press to clamoring that Britain and France have now denied “equality” to Italy, demanding that the Italian navy be given an equal share in any patrol of the Mediterranean. As these editorials were read beyond the Rhine, German editors began to grind out reams of comment extremely favorable to Italy and in terms of her right to “equality” and “honor.” This was the kind of talk which most easily fires Nazis and they fairly ate it up. Soon even the London Times, frequently pro-German, sympathetically observed “the Italian demand for parity is comprehensible.” Geneva was seen to have contributed precisely the psychological ingredient Dictators Mussolini and Hitler needed to give their meeting this week punch and purpose in the minds of Italians and Germans—they can cut the figure of Fascist brothers struggling for equality against the oppressive forces of Democracy.

Mandate over Spain? The real bombshells of the Geneva week were exploded by two representatives of British dominions. Up at the Council table popped New Zealand’s William Joseph Jordan. “The League should assume a mandate over Spain!” he proposed. “It should hold fair elections to end the civil war.” Hasty adjournment of the Council squelched this concrete proposal. The other dominion bombshell was exploded not at Geneva but at Montreal by South African Delegate to the League of Nations Charles Theodore te Water. He declared that South Africa “would be willing to participate in a general agreement for the return to Germany of her former colonies, if it cost South Africa none of its security.” This so alarmed London bigwigs that Reuters, the news agency closest to the Government, requested all newsorgans in the United Kingdom to withhold further publication of remarks by Mr. Charles te Water who next said in Montreal: “I was speaking only in my personal capacity for I believe the atmosphere can be cleared by discussing with Germany all her general grievances.”

Imperialistic newspapers like the London Morning Post accused South Africa’s League of Nations Delegate of uttering a “calculated indiscretion.” Thus it was amid no end of Imperial pother last week that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain ended his holiday in Scotland, resumed the helm at No. 10 Downing Street. Just before he set foot in Whitehall it was suddenly announced by British officials not at Geneva but in London that Britain and France would now take a step which Germany and Italy took a few months ago, that is, withdraw their warships from the Non-Intervention Patrol which has been supposed to keep munitions from entering Spain, although actually it has been a farce.

Pirates Won’t Play? This move smacked of Mr. Chamberlain rather than of Mr. Eden. It amounted to scuttling almost the whole apparatus of Non-Intervention set up and maintained because Britain and France have insisted that this offered the best means of confining the war to Spain and minimizing its horrors (TIME, Aug. 17, 1936 et seq.). In newsorgans throughout the world the fact that Non-Intervention was being scuttled passed almost unnoticed amid the blaze of headlines about preparing to hunt pirates. Supposing, however, that the pirates should now simply decide not to play pirate any more in view of the forces arrayed, the big fact then is that Non-Intervention was scuttled last week, and thus the seas around Spain are open for either Rightists or Leftists to import unlimited munitions and men, redouble the vigor of Spain’s civil war.

Just as newsreaders were awaiting the first dispatch saying that British and French warships had convoyed some merchant ships safely past “pirate submarines,” there arrived instead the first dispatch reporting that British warships had sighted two submarines flying the Spanish Rightist flag being safely escorted across the Mediterranean by a convoy of two German and two Italian destroyers.

Significance. All signs pointed to a much deeper European game than simple scotching of “pirates” in the Mediterranean, a game in which Chamberlain and Mussolini are attempting to grope toward mutual understanding, perhaps on the lines of the Four-Power Pact by which Britain, France, Italy and Germany agreed some years ago to cooperate for the peace of the world (TIME, June 19, 1933, et ante). Dormant though it has lain, this Pact still exists, is one of the boojums with which Stalin frightens Russians from time to time, pointing to it as a “proof” that there is a Capitalist league against the Soviets. In Paris the present Chautemps Cabinet of the Left was again rocked last week by a fresh severe fall of the franc. With the Paris Exposition drawing to its close, wiseacres expected an end to the “political truce” France has observed all summer for the benefit of tourists, a sharp struggle between Left and Right with wide repercussions for which European statesmen last week were preparing as best they could.

This week the Assembly of the League declined to re-elect Spain to a seat on the Council. Thus Leftist Spanish Premier Juan Negrin was dropped as President of the Council also. The great Democracies had not used their immense League influence to keep Spain on the League Council, and she was dropped after Leftist Negrin failed to win the support of Latin America whose states are so Rightist that not one has diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia.

* By “pirate” the Geneva statesmen mean of course not a submarine freebooting about the Mediterranean for the private gain of its Jolly Rogering crew but a regular naval craft whose disciplined blue-jackets at the order of their commander torpedo merchant ships without the due warning and other amenities prescribed by international law, thus commit technical ‘”piracy.” True piracy, as the term has been understood for centuries, is “a form of robbery.” Submarines, except for a very few ultra-modern types of great size and long range, require incessant refueling and tinkering, are the last sort of craft in which any sensible pirate would put to sea. more especially since there is no room in a submarine to store goods acquired by robbery.