GLOOM OVER GENEVA
NO one who has ever believed in what the League of Nations stands for can fail to be profoundly depressed as he turns his gaze on Geneva today. The hundred-and-first meeting of the League of Nations has just been held. It was attended by the Foreign Ministers of the only three Great Powers which are members of the League, but its discussions were little more than a protracted register of impotence. The Council had before it the question of the attitude of its members in regard to the results of a war which was waged in flagrant violation of the plain provisions of the League Covenant and which the League attempted, half-heartedly and unsuccessfully, to stop ; the upshot was that each State will hold itself free to recognise the position the aggressor has established in the victim's incompletely conquered country. It had before it a civil war, that has become in part an international war, in the territory of a League State in Europe ; the majority of its members were unwilling to record any opinion at all as to what attitude League States should adopt towards the conflict. It had before it another war in which an Asiatic State, a member of the League from its first year, is maintaining a heroic resistance to wanton aggression by a country which has left the League because of the League's condemnation of its earlier misdemeanours ; the Council was lavish of sympathetic words but barren of any hint of action. The best day of the Council meeting was the day that ended it— and for that reason.
These facts must be recognised in all their nakedness. But so must many others. The worst service that has been done to the League of Nations in recent months has been done by the pens of critics who fix their gaze first on the provisions of the Covenant and then on the record of the League in the last seven years, and to all appearance see no difference between the League in the world of 192o or of 1930 and the League in the world of 1938. If what is in question is the League's past history that is of no great consequence ; for those who see more profit in concerning themselves with its present and its future it is essential to face unflinchingly the situation existing in the world today. In that world there are three dominant and profoundly disturbing factors. One is Germany, progressing deliberately and relentlessly to a position in which she will be able to dominate the greater part of continental Europe ; except at sea she is more powerful than any other continental State, and every realisation of her ambitions since 1933 has imbued her with fresh zest for the reali- sation of others. The second factor is the German- Italian entente, commonly known as the Rome-Berlin axis ; what precise obligations are involved, how uneasy one of the partners to the association is, how far the two can go together before their interests clash, are questions to which the answers remain uncertain, but Signor Mussolini's speech of last Saturday at Florence suggests in what perils Europe might be involved by an open challenge to the two Powers in fields in which they are working in co-operation, as they are today in Spain. The third factor is the Anti- Comintern Pact, in which Germany, Italy and Japan— two of the most powerful States in Europe and the most powerful State in Asia—are associated. Whatever its ostensible purpose, joint action by the three Powers could be based on it wherever that course served their ends.
These, too, are facts that must be recognised in all their nakedness. How they come to be facts is of little immediate relevance. It might have been better if the League States had taken the risk and challenged Japan in 1931 ; it might have been better if the League had taken the risk and carried its sanctions against Italy to their full length in 1935 ; it might have been better if Britain and France had taken the risk and resisted Germany's reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936. Or it might have been worse ; no living man has the title to pronounce dogmatically on that. At any rate these things did not happen, the world today is what it is, and the League in such a world is not what it ought to be but what it can be. The most imperative need is peace, and the first question to .ask about a given policy is whether it tends to buttress peace, or at least diminish the danger of war, not whether it conforms in all particulars with the provisions of the Covenant. The Anglo-Italian accord cannot be justified by the latter criterion ; it can by the former. The Covenant was formed to guide the actions of a League in which a vast predominance of power over any chal- lenger was axiomatic. To assign to it the same function in a world in which three great totalitarian States are not merely outside the League but defiantly hostile to it argues slavery to a disastrous fornialism. All who have any hope for the future must believe that the Covenant (or something very like it) and the world may yet be reconciled. But to achieve that we must fix our eyes first on the world, not first.- on the Covenant.
That declaration is no betrayal of the League. You do not bring a hostile State nearer to Geneva by running foul of it further. A policy of appeasement need not cut across the League's ultimate and fundamental aims because at some point it cannot be squared with this or that article of the Covenant. The task of statesman- ship is to create a world in which the League can function as it ought at a moment when a pedantic application of procedures framed for completely different conditions would plunge civilisation in a disaster in which the first and most inevitable casualty would be the League itself. The prospect before Geneva is sombre and uncertain, but there are better grounds for hope than for despair. The League is neither dead nor dying, though its power of action in certain fields is drastically curtailed. Its industrial, economic and humanitarian organisations are doing admirable work. Its Council meetings still bring three out of the five Great Powers of Europe to periodical discussions which, if they cannot find all their desired expression in action, are none the less of very definite value ; the mere main- tenance of contact and a measure of co-operation between Western Europe and a Russia whose foreign policy is open to no criticism, whatever her internal state, is in itself an element of stability. Even in days as dark as these there is no excuse for loss of faith in the League ideal, or even of belief in the survival of the existing organisation. It may in some respects change its form and methods ; some changes, notably the complete separation of the Covenant from the Treaty of Versailles, have been too long delayed. How best its primary aim—" to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security "—can best be realised must be constantly reconsidered in the light of circumstances of the moment. Even if it be true that the present evil case of the world is the result of failure to apply the Covenant, that does not make the evil case non-existent or justify the assumption that what would have been possible before the evil happened is possible still. Both Government and people in Britain and France are pledged still to support of the League in every practicable shape. Pledged they must and will remain. With them are ranged the British Dominions, the Scandinavians, all the countries of Eastern Europe, China, the Argentine Republic and many lesser States. Their task, and they are abundantly competent to discharge it, is to keep the League alive, to develop any existing or new activities for which scope is offered, and to watch vigilantly for every opportunity of restoring it to its proper health and vigour. That can be done and must be.
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