June 27, 1936

THE TABLET

A Weekly N ew sp ap e r a n d Review

V ol. 167. No. 5016.

L ondon, June 27, 1936

R eg is tered at the General P ost Of f ic e as a New s pape r .

Sixpence

PRINCIPAL

W E EK BY W EEK

Page

Sanctions, the Last Phase, Foreign Exchange, League Reform, the Dardanelles 809 C A TH O L IC S A T OXFORD .................................. 812 G. K. C., FURTHER T R IB U T E S :—

A rnold Lunn, Douglas Jerrold, A . H. Pollen, T . S. Gregory ....................................................... 813 C AM P IO N HALL, OXFORD .................................. 815 PARIS LETTER ...................................................... 816 ROME LETTER ...................................................... 817 TH E SAN C T A S A N C T O R U M .................................. 818

CONTENTS

TH E CHURCH IN TH E W ORLD :—

F rance, Y ugoslavia, U.S.A., Belgian Congo, A laska ................................................................ 819 TH E N EW BOOKS :—

Page

Mr. Gladstone, Pre-Christian Science, Judaism, H avelock Ellis, etc........................ 820 LETTERS TO TH E ED ITO R :—

Jews and A rabs, B iology in Schools ... 825 C ARD IN A L SEREDI ................................................ 828 CHESS AND CROSSW ORD .................................. 830 A PO S TO L A T E OF THE COUNTRYSIDE ... 834 ST. PETER AND ST. P A U L ........................... 836

WEEK BY WEEK

S A N C T IO N S , t h e l a s t p h a s e r I y H E Government has come through its ordeal o f calling off sanctions rather more easily than many o f its supporters feared. In the first o f the two rather unsatisfactory debates in the House o f Commons Mr. Eden spoke some words which go to the root o f the matter. “ Many times in this dispute this Government have given the lead— many times; and hon. gentlemen opposite will find not one time when anybody else has given it. Many times we have given the lead.

“ W e gave it in January o f last year, when it was our insistence which brought this dispute within the action o f the Council itself. It was our action and our efforts in the intervening months that resulted in the Council in May handling this dispute, which resulted in the passage o f a resolution which maintained the right o f the Council, hitherto unchallenged by Italy, to follow the course o f the dispute, and which secured the acceptance then, in May, o f the principle and o f the machinery o f conciliation.

“ Again, it was through the initiative o f the British Government that the Council met in July when it otherwise would not have met till September. It was at our initiative, jointly with the French Government, that a three-Power Conference was called in Paris in August last year. It is quite true that the Paris Conference was abortive, but no one who at that time or now looks up its proceedings will maintain that our own Government did not do the utmost they could to bring about its success. Again, in September, my right hon. friend the First Lord o f the Admiralty (S ir S. H oare) took the lead at Geneva in a speech which met with approval from all sections o f opinion in this country.

N ew S e r ie s . V o l . C X X X V . N o . 4415.

“ In October, when it came to the organisation and application o f the collective action which fifty nations o f the League had decided fo r the first time in history that they would take, again it was this Government which took the lead both in proposing and in organising the work o f those committees.”

It is not surprising i f the Italians have, from the first, considered the whole sanctions campaign as due to Britain and to nobody else, and as something that would never have come into being but for a new and strange policy on the part o f the British Government. Not only was there no initiative except from ourselves, but the support o f other nations principally took place on paper or by word o f mouth. Sir John Simon could quote figures showing the very real drop in Britain’s trade with Italy, which has virtually stopped. But the Argentine, he said, in March, 1935, was importing from Italy 811,000 gold dollars’ worth, and in March, 1936, was importing 863,000 gold dollars’ worth; and what was true o f imports was true o f exports to Italy, that the application o f the sanctions had been very partial. What hope was there that the enforcement would be more rigorous now that the war was over and there was no prospect o f their achieving the end fo r which they had been put on?

In some quarters the whole sanctions episode is regarded as a considerable advance in international morality; and it is true that merely to get fifty nations to vote fo r measures largely injurious to themselves at a time when every country wants all the trade it can get, was a memorable event. It was largely a tribute to the powerful reputation o f this country, to the belief that we had deep reasons o f our own for nipping the Italian enterprise in A fr ica firmly in the bud. The realisation that we had no such deep and limited purpose has been one o f the many surprises for foreign opinion. The