Evening Post. MONDAY, JUNE 7, 1937. LONG-RANGE LION-TAMING

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 133, 7 June 1937, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, JUNE 7, 1937. LONG-RANGE LION-TAMING

It is to be doubted whether the hand of democracy is being strengthened by vague suggestions, that the European democracies are mishandling the case against European dictatorships. That there is a case against the dictatorships is obvious enough. The case against Italy arising out of the Abyssinian war has no legal flaw whatever, and if there is any legal doubt as to whether the law of nations has been broken by the action of dictatorship Governments, and by many thousands of their subjects, in Spain, the moral indictment remains. The wrongs are admitted: what is in doubt is the methods of righting them. JV'hat are those methods? In the case of Abyssinia, the method adopted was that of the League of Nations. Spain has been dealt with differently, by the forming of a Non-intervention Committee. There are some people who now advocate the transfer of the Spanish problem from the Committee to_ the League, whose record in Abyssinia is t already widely known. What tends to weaken the hand of democracy is a suggestion that failure in Abyssinia, and failure (up to date) in Spain, are due not to machinery ■•weaknesses of the League or of the Committee, but to irresolution or mii competence on the part of the Govj ernments on the democratic side. The machinery, it is charged, would have worked effectively if Britain and France had possessed the will and the skill. Some American newspapers allege that a pro-Fascist or pro-Franco section in Britain is somehow or in some way impeding the Non-intervention Committee, and turning the non-intervention policy; into a pro-rebel and anti-Govern-ment weapon. But no evidence is adduced in support of this allegation; nor can we discover in the pages of critics any specific plan for exerting against Italy and Germany enough pressure to discipline them without amounting to war. Such a plan would be a discovery of vital importance, and it is a shame to keep it in secrecy if it exists. If Such a plan were to emerge, the whispering would have something to pivot on, and might even become constructive. But it is merely destructive and demoralising in its present vague, planless form. Some of the murmurings tend to suggest not so much that the job of disciplining dictatorship countries is difficult, as that some of the democratic Governments are slacking. If this is so, the Governments are worthy of condemnation. If not, the whisperers are. t)o the advocates of a League handling of Spain, with abolition of the Non-intervention Committee, expect that the history of Geneva and Abyssinia will be repeated? Or do they rely on a reformed League to effect the salvation of Spain? In the latter, case, a reform is needed on which a number of people can agree. Btit it seems that the limited number of people forming the Imperial Conference cannot so agree; so what chance is there that the nations of the world will agree, in time to rescue Spain? At the Imperial Conference, it is cabled, Mr. Savage "vigorously advocated a stronger League." That is to say, he said that the League might be stronger —and) nearly everybody agrees. That he failed to reveal any strengthening plan that appealed to the other delegates as being practicable is sufficiently shown'by the negative tone of Saturday's cablegrams. So the problem remains just where it was. Collective action through the League or through the Non-intervention Committee suffers from weaknesses that are inherent. There are damaging suggestions, but no proofs, that the democratic Governments are to blame more than the inherent weaknesses. Advocates of "stronger courses" by democratic Governments, and by Britain in particular, seem to be located, thousands of miles from where the fighting would begin, in America or even New Zealand. Even so, the "stronger courses" are merely hinted at, not indicated. Their advocates provide no definite lead around which public opinion can form itself. Lion-taming is never the simplest game. One does not gain confidence in it when the lion-tamers operate at long range. Resounding phrases do not abolish facts. "The leadership of the nations," says Mr. Lloyd George, "is vacant; let the British Empire take it." Britain's own leadership of the British Empire was not accepted on the vital point of Locarno, yet it is assumed that the Empire as a unit can have the leadership of the nations for the asking. Men talk in one world, and live in another. A dictatorship country can achieve a unity of common speech and common objective, and can appear to be proceeding, resolutely and planfully, straight to its mark. The fact that the democratic Governments do not present that picture of directed energy offers a target for critics, yet the fault is part of the virtues and vices of democracy and part of the price thereof. These virtues and vices are reflected in Parliaments, in Imperial Conferences, in Non-inter-vention Committees, and in Leagues of Nations. Why, then, assume that drifts already familiar in democracy

are the failings of the man (or men) at the wheel? And why, above all, make such an assumption when the critics themselves are planless, or are devoted to plans impossible, or are small, remote factors in the big general scheme? Democrats do not strengthen the hand of democracy when they are pointless critics or when they point to things that cannot be clone.