The League: Sanctions

>Up stood Poland’s Delegation at Geneva last week. In the name of their Government they endorsed all League sanctions against Italy, including the drastic buy-nothing-from-Italy sanction known as “Proposal No. 3.” But, announced the Poles, until Italians complete and deliver to Poland the warships they are now building for her near Trieste, the Polish Government reserves the right not to be bound by any interpretation of sanctions which would prevent her from buying warships from Italy.

>With British Minister for League of Nations Affairs Captain Anthony Eden cracking the whip, Geneva statesmen rushed onto paper a veritable literature of proposed sanctions and a wealth of erudite interpretations of the Covenant. These boiled down to the unprecedented conclusion, solemnly voiced in various ways, that no treaty the terms of which are in conflict with the Covenant can be regarded by League States as valid against it.

>The sanctions sequence which began with “Proposal No. 1” was extended last week through “Proposal No. 5.” Under this body of Geneva proposals, League States would not only sell Italy no implements of war and extend her no credit but also would buy nothing from Italy and would mutually assist League States whose trade suffers from such self-denial. Blocked was a British move to have the League propose that its States sell nothing to Italy. On French initiative Geneva proposed instead that “key products” required as war materials be not sold to Italy and the list of these adopted as “Proposal No. 4” was surprisingly short. One “key product”: mules.

>Great stir greeted word that Belgium had actually adopted the no-credit-to-Italy sanction, but this exciting news proved false. At week’s end only Communist Russia had officially shut off extension of credits to Fascist Italy. Bursting with suspicion, Russia’s Foreign Commissar Litvinoff glared at Geneva’s assembled Capitalist statesmen, told them tartly that the Soviet Union will keep vigilant watch and at the first sign that they are chiseling on sanctions will herself resume trade with Italy.

>Personal animosity toward Dictator Mussolini appeared to spring at Geneva last week so clearly from Captain Eden that he began to get daily threats in impassioned Latin scrawls. (Sample: “Pig! Somebody ought to stick you!”) Ultimately Scotland Yard operatives and Swiss detectives flung a veritable phalanx around the British Minister. He got safely away to London when Geneva finally shut up shop last week, League statesmen dispersing to the capitals in which their proposed sanctions are being considered.

>Various dates were mentioned as the “deadline” which all proper League States must make in applying sanctions, but the great nonLeague trilogy, Japan, Germany and the U. S., held the really decisive position. British hopes were high of drawing the U. S. into sanctions but Japan remained inscrutable and Germany appeared hostile. Nazi leaders saw clearly that Italian success in Ethiopia will speed Germany in regaining her lost colonies. Their attitude toward the League was sufficiently revealed by the Propaganda & Public Enlightenment Ministry’s newsorgan which fulminated that “it will become rather dangerous if the League is to be converted into an institute of morals.”

>After virtually saying in so many words that oil-rich Venezuelan Dictator Juan Vicente Gomez will continue to sell Italy all the oil she wants, Venezuelan Delegate Cesar Zumeta announced for the record that his country is cooperating with the League. Said Venezuela’s oily Cesar: “My country regards it as essential that the League should take steps to settle disputes by other means than force, and it is in this sense that Venezuela is cooperating.”