CHAPTER VIII
SANCTIONS AGAINST ITALY, 1935
WORLD peace now suffered its second heavy stroke. The loss by Britain of air parity was followed by the transference of Italy to the German side. The two events combined enabled Hitler to advance along his predetermined deadly course. We have seen how helpful Mussolini had been in the protection of Austrian independence, with all that it implied in Central and South-eastern Europe. Now he was to march over to the opposite camp. Nazi Germany was no longer to be alone. One of the principal Allies of the First World War would soon join her. The gravity of this downward turn in the balance of safety oppressed my mind.
Mussolini’s designs upon Abyssinia were unsuited to the ethics of the twentieth century. They belonged to those dark ages when white men felt themselves entitled to conquer yellow, brown, black, or red men, and subjugate them by their superior strength and weapons. In our enlightened days, when crimes and cruelties have been committed from which the savages of former times would have recoiled, or of which they would at least have been incapable, such conduct was at once obsolete and reprehensible. Moreover, Abyssinia was a member of the League of Nations. By a curious inversion it was Italy who had in 1923 pressed for her inclusion, and Britain who had opposed it. The British view was that the character of the Ethiopian Government and the conditions prevailing in that wild land of tyranny, slavery, and tribal war were not consonant with membership of the League. But the Italians had had their way, and Abyssinia was a member of the League, with all its rights and such securities as it could offer. Here indeed was a testing case for the instrument of world government upon which the hopes of all good men were founded.
The Italian Dictator was not actuated solely by desire for territorial gains. His rule, his safety, depended upon prestige. The humiliating defeat which Italy had suffered forty years before at Adowa, and the mockery of the world when an Italian army had not only been destroyed or captured but shamefully mutilated, rankled in the minds of all Italians. They had seen how Britain had after the passage of years avenged both Khartoum and Majuba. To proclaim their manhood by avenging Adowa meant almost as much in Italy as the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine in France. There seemed no way in which Mussolini could more easily or at less risk and cost consolidate his own power or, as he saw it, raise the authority of Italy in Europe than by wiping out the stain of bygone years and adding Abyssinia to the recently-built Italian Empire. All such thoughts were wrong and evil, but since it is always wise to try to understand another country’s point of view they may be recorded.
In the fearful struggle against rearming Nazi Germany which I could feel approaching with inexorable strides, I was most reluctant to see Italy estranged, and even driven into the opposite camp. There was no doubt that the attack by one member of the League of Nations upon another at this juncture, if not resented, would be finally destructive of the League as a factor for welding together the forces which could alone control the might of resurgent Germany and the awful Hitler menace. More could perhaps be got out of the vindicated majesty of the League than Italy could ever give, withhold, or transfer. If therefore the League were prepared to use the united strength of all its members to curb Mussolini’s policy, it was our bounden duty to take our share and play a faithful part. There seemed in all the circumstances no obligation upon Britain to take the lead herself. She had a duty to take account of her own weakness caused by the loss of air parity, and even more of the military position of France, in the face of German rearmament. One thing was clear and certain. Half-measures were useless for the League, and pernicious to Britain if she assumed its leadership. If we thought it right and necessary for the law and welfare of Europe to quarrel mortally with Mussolini’s Italy, we must also strike him down. The fall of the lesser Dictator might combine and bring into action all the forces—and they were still overwhelming—which would enable us to restrain the greater Dictator, and thus prevent a second German war.
These general reflections are a prelude to the narrative of this chapter.
Ever since the Stresa Conference Mussolini’s preparations for the conquest of Abyssinia had been apparent. It was evident that British opinion would be hostile to such an act of Italian aggression. Those of us who saw in Hitler’s Germany a danger not only to peace but to survival dreaded this movement of a first-class Power, as Italy was then rated, from our side to the other. I remember a dinner at which Sir Robert Vansittart and Mr. Duff Cooper, then only an Under-Secretary, were present, at which this adverse change in the balance of Europe was clearly foreseen. The project was mooted of some of us going out to see Mussolini in order to explain to him the inevitable effects which would be produced in Great Britain. Nothing came of this; nor would it have been of any good. Mussolini, like Hitler, regarded Britannia as a frightened, flabby old woman, who at the worst would only bluster, and was anyhow incapable of making war. Lord Lloyd, who was on friendly terms with him, noted how he had been struck by the Joad resolution of the Oxford undergraduates in 1933 refusing to “fight for King and Country”.
In August the Foreign Secretary invited me and also the Opposition Party leaders to visit him separately at the Foreign Office, and the fact of these consultations was made public by the Government. Sir Samuel Hoare told me of this growing anxiety about Italian aggression against Abyssinia, and asked me how far I should be prepared to go against it. Wishing to know more about the internal and personal situation at the Foreign Office under diarchy before replying, I asked about Eden’s view. “I will get him to come,” said Hoare, and in a few minutes Anthony arrived, smiling and in the best of tempers. We had an easy talk. I said I thought the Foreign Secretary was justified in going as far with the League of Nations against Italy as he could carry France; but I added that he ought not to put any pressure upon France, because of her military convention with Italy and her German preoccupation; and that in the circumstances I did not expect France would go very far. Generally I strongly advised the Ministers not to try to take a leading part or to put themselves forward too prominently. In this I was of course oppressed by my German fears and the conditions to which our defences had been reduced.
As the summer of 1935 drew on the movement of Italian troopships through the Suez Canal was continuous, and considerable forces and supplies were assembled along the eastern Abyssinian frontier. Suddenly an extraordinary and to me, after my talks at the Foreign Office, a quite unexpected event occurred. On August 24 the Cabinet resolved and declared that Britain would uphold its obligation under its treaties and under the Covenant of the League. Mr. Eden, Minister for League of Nations Affairs and almost co-equal of the Foreign Secretary, had already been for some weeks at Geneva, where he had rallied the Assembly to a policy of “Sanctions” against Italy if she invaded Abyssinia. The peculiar office to which he had been appointed made him by its very nature concentrate upon the Abyssinian question with an emphasis which outweighed other aspects. “Sanctions” meant the cutting off from Italy of all financial aid and of economic supplies, and the giving of all such assistance to Abyssinia. To a country like Italy, dependent for so many commodities needed in war upon unhampered imports from overseas, this was indeed a formidable deterrent. Eden’s zeal and address and the principles which he proclaimed dominated the Assembly. On September 11 the Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, having arrived at Geneva, himself addressed them:
I will begin by reaffirming the support of the League by the Government I represent and the interest of the British people in collective security.… The ideas enshrined in the Covenant and in particular the aspiration to establish the rule of law in international affairs have become part of our national conscience. It is to the principles of the League and not to any particular manifestation that the British nation has demonstrated its adherence. Any other view is at once an under-estimation of our good faith and an imputation upon our sincerity. In conformity with its precise and explicit obligations the League stands, and my country stands with it, for the collective maintena
nce of the Covenant in its entirety, and particularly for steady and collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression.
In spite of my anxieties about Germany, and little as I liked the way our affairs were handled, I remember being stirred by this speech when I read it in Riviera sunshine. It aroused everyone, and reverberated throughout the United States. It united all those forces in Britain which stood for a fearless combination of righteousness and strength. Here at least was a policy. If only the orator had realised what tremendous powers he held unleashed in his hand at that moment he might indeed for a while have led the world.
These declarations gathered their validity from the fact that they had behind them, like many causes which in the past have proved vital to human progress and freedom, the British Navy. For the first and the last time the League of Nations seemed to have at its disposal a secular arm. Here was the international police force upon the ultimate authority of which all kinds of diplomatic and economic pressures and persuasion could be employed. When on September 12, the very next day, the battle-cruisers Hood and Renown, accompanied by the Second Cruiser Squadron and a destroyer flotilla, arrived at Gibraltar, it was assumed on all sides that Britain would back her words with deeds. Policy and action alike gained immediate and overwhelming support at home. It was taken for granted, not unnaturally, that neither the declaration nor the movement of warships would have been made without careful expert calculation by the Admiralty of the fleet or fleets required in the Mediterranean to make our undertakings good.
At the end of September I had to make a speech at the City Carlton Club, an orthodox body of some influence. I tried to convey a warning to Mussolini, which I believe he read, but in October, undeterred by belated British naval movements, he launched the Italian armies upon the invasion of Abyssinia. On the 10th, by the votes of fifty sovereign States to one, the Assembly of the League resolved to take collective measures against Italy, and a Committee of Eighteen was appointed to make further efforts for a peaceful solution. Mussolini, thus confronted, made a clear-cut statement marked by deep shrewdness. Instead of saying, “Italy will meet sanctions with war,” he said, “Italy will meet them with discipline, with frugality, and with sacrifice.” At the same time however he intimated that he would not tolerate the imposition of any sanctions which hampered his invasion of Abyssinia. If that enterprise were endangered he would go to war with whoever stood in his path. “Fifty nations!” he said. “Fifty nations, led by one!” Such was the position in the weeks which preceded the Dissolution of Parliament in Britain and the General Election, which was now constitutionally due.
Bloodshed in Abyssinia, hatred of Fascism, the invocation of Sanctions by the League, produced a convulsion within the British Labour Party. Trade unionists, among whom Mr. Ernest Bevin was outstanding, were by no means pacifist by temperament. A very strong desire to fight the Italian Dictator, to enforce Sanctions of a decisive character, and to use the British Fleet, if need be, surged through the sturdy wage-earners. Rough and harsh words were spoken at excited meetings. On one occasion Mr. Bevin complained that “he was tired of having George Lansbury’s conscience carted about from conference to conference”. Many members of the Parliamentary Labour Party shared the trade union mood. In a far wider sphere, all the leaders of the League of Nations Union felt themselves bound to the cause of the League. Here were principles in obedience to which lifelong humanitarians were ready to die, and if to die, also to kill. On October 8 Mr. Lansbury resigned his leadership of the Labour Parliamentary Party, and Major Attlee, who had a fine war record, reigned in his stead.
But this national awakening was not in accord with Mr. Baldwin’s outlook or intentions. It was not till several months after the election that I began to understand the principles upon which Sanctions were founded. The Prime Minister had declared that Sanctions meant war; secondly, he was resolved there must be no war; and, thirdly, he decided upon Sanctions. It was evidently impossible to reconcile these three conditions. Under the guidance of Britain and the pressures of Laval the League of Nations Committee, charged with devising Sanctions, kept clear of any that would provoke war. A large number of commodities, some of which were war materials, were prohibited from entering Italy, and an imposing schedule was drawn up. But oil, without which the campaign in Abyssinia could not have been maintained, continued to enter freely, because it was understood that to stop it meant war. Here the attitude of the United States, not a member of the League of Nations, and the world’s main oil supplier, though benevolent, was uncertain. Moreover, to stop it to Italy involved also stopping it to Germany. The export of aluminium to Italy was strictly forbidden; but aluminium was almost the only metal that Italy produced in quantities beyond her own needs. The importation of scrap iron and iron ore into Italy was sternly vetoed in the name of public justice. But as the Italian metallurgical industry made but little use of them, and as steel billets and pig iron were not interfered with, Italy suffered no hindrance. Thus the measures pressed with so great a parade were not real sanctions to paralyse the aggressor, but merely such half-hearted sanctions as the aggressor would tolerate, because in fact, though onerous, they stimulated Italian war spirit. The League of Nations therefore proceeded to the rescue of Abyssinia on the basis that nothing must be done to hamper the invading Italian armies. These facts were not known to the British public at the time of the election. They earnestly supported the policy of Sanctions, and believed that this was a sure way of bringing the Italian assault upon Abyssinia to an end.
Still less did His Majesty’s Government contemplate the use of the Fleet. All kinds of tales were told of Italian suicide squadrons of dive-bombers which would hurl themselves upon the decks of our ships and blow them to pieces. The British fleet which was lying at Alexandria had now been reinforced. It could by a gesture have turned back Italian transports from the Suez Canal, and would as a consequence have had to offer battle to the Italian Navy. We were told that it was not capable of meeting such an antagonist. I had raised the question at the outset, but had been reassured. Our battleships of course were old, and it now appeared that we had no aircraft cover and very little antiaircraft ammunition. It transpired however that the Admiral commanding resented the suggestion attributed to him that he was not strong enough to fight a fleet action. It would seem that before taking their first decision to oppose the Italian aggression His Majesty’s Government should carefully have examined ways and means, and also made up their minds.
There is no doubt, on our present knowledge, that a bold decision would have cut the Italian communications with Ethiopia, and that we should have been successful in any naval battle which might have followed. I was never in favour of isolated action by Great Britain, but having gone so far it was a grievous deed to recoil. Moreover, Mussolini would never have dared to come to grips with a resolute British Government. Nearly the whole of the world was against him, and he would have had to risk his régime upon a single-handed war with Britain, in which a fleet action in the Mediterranean would be the early and decisive test. How could Italy have fought this war? Apart from a limited advantage in modern light cruisers, her Navy was but a fourth the size of the British. Her numerous conscript Army, which was vaunted in millions, could not come into action. Her air-power was in quantity and quality far below even our modest establishments. She would instantly have been blockaded. The Italian armies in Abyssinia would have famished for supplies and ammunition. Germany could as yet give no effective help. If ever there was an opportunity of striking a decisive blow in a generous cause with the minimum of risk, it was here and now. The fact that the nerve of the British Government was not equal to the occasion can be excused only by their sincere love of peace. Actually it played a part in leading to an infinitely more terrible war. Mussolini’s bluff succeeded, and an important spectator drew far-reaching conclusions from the fact. Hitler had long resolved on war for German aggrandisement. He now formed a view of Great Britain’s degeneracy which was only to be changed too late
for peace and too late for him. In Japan also there were pensive spectators.
The two opposite processes of gathering national unity on the burning issue of the hour and the clash of party interests inseparable from a General Election moved forward together This was greatly to the advantage of Mr. Baldwin and his supporters. “The League of Nations would remain, as heretofore, the keystone of British foreign policy”; so ran the Government’s election manifesto. “The prevention of war and the establishment of peace in the world must always be the most vital interest of the British people, and the League is the instrument which has been framed and to which we look for the attainment of these objects. We shall therefore continue to do all in our power to uphold the Covenant and to maintain and increase the efficiency of the League. In the present unhappy dispute between Italy and Abyssinia there will be no wavering in the policy we have hitherto pursued.”
The Labour Party, on the other hand, was much divided. The majority was pacifist, but Mr. Bevin’s active campaign commanded many supporters among the masses. The official leaders therefore tried to give general satisfaction by pointing opposite ways at once. On the one hand they clamoured for decisive action against the Italian Dictator; on the other they denounced the policy of rearmament. Thus Mr. Attlee in the House of Commons on October 22: “We want effective sanctions, effectively applied. We support economic sanctions. We support the League system.” But then, later in the same speech: “We are not persuaded that the way to safety is by piling up armaments. We do not believe that in this [time] there is such a thing as national defence. We think that you have to go forward to disarmament and not to the piling up of armaments.” Neither side usually has much to be proud of at election times. The Prime Minister himself was no doubt conscious of the growing strength behind the Government’s foreign policy. He was however determined not to be drawn into war on any account. It seemed to me, viewing the proceedings from outside, that he was anxious to gather as much support as possible and use it to begin British rearmament on a modest scale.
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