Geneva and Oil Sanctions The proceedings at Geneva this week
dispel any idea that, to quote certain writers who assert with monotonous incessancy what they desire, " oil-sanctions are dead." They are by no means dead. The Committee of Eighteen on Wednesday decided to convene at once a committee of experts to pronounce on the material practicability of an embargo on petrol for Italy. That this is no mere face-saving device is clear from the fact that the experts are to concentrate on oil, disregarding for the moment the other commodities—coal, iron and steel— which it is proposed to prohibit ; that the question of stopping the marine transport of petrol as well as its export is to be studied ; and that M. Tituleseu, as Foreign Minister of one of the chief exporting States, speaking in the Committee of Eighteen, entered the emphatic reminder that the principle of an embargo had been definitely agreed on already. Furthermore the disclosure by Mr. Eden that seven League States in the Mediterranean area had declared both their willingness and their ability to give support to Great Britain in the event of an attack by Italy .on the British fleet may be taken to remove finally any danger of military reaction by Signor Mussolini to a petrol ban. Simultaneously the Committee of Thirteen registered, necessarily, the conviction that no good purpose would be served by attempting a new peace initiative at this juncture. It looks as if that will have to wait till the end of the campaigning season, failing developments in Italy of which there is at present no sign. - * *
