THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 171 No. 5114

LONDON MAY 14th, 1938

SIXPENCE

IN T i n s I S S U E

AMERICA AND MR. CHAMBERLAIN

By Christopher Hollis

WALTER PATER AND THE

By J. Lewis May CHURCH

BEYOND EUROPE

Editorial

CONTINENTAL BROADCAST

PROGRAMMES

Full List o f Contents on page 624.

DISTRACTIONS

By Hilaire Belloc

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK

Cleaning the Slate

The hundred-and-first meeting of the Council of the League of Nations heard an opening speech by Lord Halifax on the Anglo-Italian pact, which he justly claimed had done a great deal not merely for the two signatories, but for all the countries touching the Mediterranean, and therefore perturbed by an estrangement between the leading Powers there. The moment there is a large question mark in international relations anywhere, all sorts of lesser relationships become fluid and the pace of manoeuvre is accentuated.

Lord Halifax received a general approval for his main contention that the agreement is one of the best things that have happened in international affairs in the last few years. His exposition was only the prelude to asking the members of the League for the price which has to be paid for the agreement. That price is the burial of a dead policy, but the League is not being asked to eat any of its words or go back on any of its resolutions. Its condemnation of the Italian action stands on record, just as it remains a matter of history that the nations under British leadership attempted the novel experiment of pressure through economic measures. There was never any obligation on the League members to go to the ultimate lengths of force.

The moral is clear that the League offers no advantages over the old concert of Europe. The position remains as it always was, that on matters in which the great Powers can agree on a common policy, they can enforce their will on any particular small Power, or even upon several small Powers. But they cannot coerce each other unless they are unanimous and resolute, and they are not in the least likely to be unanimous. The whole League policy as it was originally conceived, accepted, and indeed demanded, a virtually universal membership. Once Germany had left the League in 1933, it was the height of folly to proceed with sanctions against Italy and to throw Italy and Germany together. Hitler in Rome

That the Rome-Berlin axis remains, that a special friendship of these two countries is an abiding legacy of the sanctions experiment, was implicit in the speeches made on the occasion of Hitler’s Rome visit. But a difference of emphasis could be noted. Signor Mussolini was more concerned with the peace of Europe, his guest with the advance of the two nations. The visit was not the occasion for any elaborate or far-reaching discussions. It is well known that the Italians very much hope for a slow and moderate German policy towards the smaller countries of Central Europe. There seems every reason to suppose that this advice in fact suits the Germans, who are, at the moment, primarily concerned with establishing the necessity for a new approach to the whole question of minorities. The Germans know that in this matter, time is on their side. If they can get opinion in France and England to see Central Europe as the patchwork, and in places the mosaic, of races that it is, certain lines of argument which now threaten the general peace will fade away.