As she sat down she said to herself, ‘Yes, but we didn’t stop Italy.’
At question time, one young woman asked why, if sanctions were such a fine new instrument to stop war and everything had been thought out beforehand, they had not been brought against Italy fast enough?
Edith took a deep breath and felt for the young woman with her wish to be reassured. ‘It was not sanctions which failed but the question of political will.’
And what, Edith, is political will?
The same woman half-rose from the seating, and said, ‘And how do we find this political will?’
‘The political will to act is a strange and mysterious thing. I don’t pretend to know how to analyse it.
‘Political will seems to depend on political timing—there seems to be a time when moral concern, political vigour, and political gravity are concentrated and resolute.
Her mind found a joke.
‘There is a diplomatic joke—“Last month it was inevitable; this month it is possible; next month it will be out of the question.”
‘But when it comes to the time for action, time passing allows impedance and torpor to develop. The passing of time is the enemy of political action.
‘If this gravity and vigour are not effectively used at the time, they dissipate and political attention shifts to other matters. I suppose that is why we have the expression “strike while the iron is hot”.
‘There is a moral moment, it seems, when the issue is clear, the remedy obvious, and people are prepared to act.
‘But if time is allowed for the aggressive nation to stall, diplomatically obfuscate, make false declarations, move in secret—that is, fritter away time and diplomatic energy—the moral moment can be lost.
‘This was what happened in part, back in October. The League did act—the Sanctions Committee swung into action.
‘Within weeks, Italy’s financial difficulties started to appear and confusion and fear were showing in the Italian economy.
‘Then Italy moved troops to the French border—a bluff, but it caused France to talk of the matter as a national security problem for them.
‘This required talks and further talks—outside the League—between France and Italy, and France and its ally, the UK, which took France’s attention away from the Ethiopian issue. Governments have only a limited amount of political attention or energy for a matter.
‘France and England then said that they would make one last effort diplomatically to convince Italy to desist.
‘The League Sanctions Committee was asked to hold off from full implementation of the sanctions.
‘This hiatus allowed Italy to make diplomatic war while getting on with its real war against Ethiopia. Italy also threatened other military action, claiming, for instance, it would consider the applications of the sanctions to be an aggressive act and that Italy would attack those nations which applied them—the Italians argued that sanctions would “spread the conflict”.
‘So we had this new argument against sanctions—that they would spread the conflict.’
Edith found that the whole room was deathly silent. Had what she said brought about a sense of defeat?
‘However, the beauty of sanctions is that if an aggressor does choose to retaliate or “spread the conflict” they at the same time “spread their resources”—their already dwindling resources—thus further weakening their economy and their military resources.
‘The more they spread their resources, the more they reduce their resources.
‘But for the League, the moral moment had been dissipated, the momentum had been lost—diplomatic impedance had brought sanctions to a halt. Political will melted like an ice cream in a little boy’s hand.’
She looked out at them; she saw they were dismayed.
A few were shaking their heads.
She was not here to dismay them.
‘The problem with France—and with any country—is not the principle of putting “national interests” above everything. The problem is that “national interest” is a lazy formulation, is rarely obvious and never unanimously perceived.
‘Paradoxically, national interest can mean the subjugation in the short term of one national “interest”—say, a trade in a commodity. Making these judgements is the test of diplomatic wisdom.’
The chair took another question from a woman. ‘You mean that sanctions can work only in a perfectly wise world?’
Edith looked into the woman’s eyes and said, ‘Even imperfectly applied sanctions can work: the instrument has within it a tolerance for imperfection.
‘The world has to have things in position so it can act fast.’
The woman sat down, and then stood up, remembering to say ‘Thank you’ in a weak voice.
As Edith spoke with strong conviction, without nervousness, she realised that she loved—almost to obsession—the instrument of sanctions and desperately wanted to see it tried.
She didn’t care so much about the particular issue anymore: she felt the need of an inventor to see the invention tested, whether it blew up or not.
Perhaps she’d become preoccupied with technique rather than with international morality.
She pushed aside this new self-observation and returned her attention to the woman who had sat down and was now standing again.
The woman said, ‘Then who should have forced what you call the moral moment? Who should have called the bluff?’
‘A resolute international leader can engender political will—in his own country and in the international forum.’
She knew that was a circular argument. Where did ‘resolute leaders’ get their will?
She had no ready answer for that.
She then said, ‘All is never lost. Once a diplomatic chain of events has occurred, whether the chain leads to success or failure, that diplomatic chain becomes part of the institutional memory of the world, lodges itself, as it were, in the diplomatic memory, and the next time a similar situation occurs that memory will cause people to behave differently. Perhaps the next time they will use this memory of failure to forge the political will—to call the bluff of an aggressor.’
If situations which arose were ever the same. Bartou thought not. And if you could identify them as the same.
Was that really correct? Was there a world memory.
Maybe the League was the world memory.
A man stood up and asked, ‘If a country can bluff the world by threatening to spread the conflict, how do we ever know that it is bluff and that the conflict would not be spread in some frightful way?’
Edith knew the horrible answer.
She heard in her head the voice of Ambrose giving the answer he had once given in their bedroom during a discussion. She had never used that answer.
Now she saw no way of avoiding it.
‘There is something called the Dilemma of Preventative Action. If you take strong and successful action—be it military or economic—to prevent some predicted dreadful thing happening, history will never ever know if that predicted dreadful thing really would’ve happened. If we had wrecked the Italian economy for a time, caused some hardship there before they were able to properly invade Ethiopia, we would never have known if they would’ve spread the conflict or done the brutal things we feared they would. History cannot tell you that you were right to act; it can only tell you when you were wrong not to act.’
The man remained standing waiting for more of an answer.
She was sucked on into the question. ‘And there will always be those who condemn the preventative action if it is successful—the surgery—and there is often very little conclusive evidence that can be given afterwards to say that the dreadful things would’ve happened had there not been the surgery.’
The man said, ‘Does that mean that we’ll always go to war when the dreadful things are underway, can be seen to be happening—that we will only act when it’s too late?’
She thought and said tiredly, ‘It could be that democr
acies will always go to war too late. Because they have to pause for debate and listen to qualms. Yes.’
‘Is that your complete answer?’
While saying this Edith was hearing for the first time the true meaning of this political truth.
She saw clearly that the members of the League and the democracies would always have trouble taking joint action. She saw that nations were falling back on defending themselves alone or in alliances. They were falling back into the dark ages. Away from the vision of a single sensible world of decent nations.
‘Is the League dead then?’ the man insisted.
She looked at the intent faces yearning for her to say something which would keep the faith. To lift the meeting.
She had never seen faces so craving for reassurance.
The chair cut in and said, ‘Each person is entitled to one question I think, Mr Tierney. You have, if I count correctly, asked three.’
She could hide behind the chair’s ruling.
She looked out at their eyes.
Regardless of the chair, they wanted an answer to the deep and existential question on the political condition.
Before she could try to answer, the chairman then called on Hermann Black to move a vote of thanks which was seconded by someone she didn’t know and the meeting was closed with loud applause.
She had been relieved from giving the answer.
She decided then that she had to answer. That the question went to the very core of the human political condition.
She went back to the podium and said, ‘Please. Please may I beg your attention for a second?’
The audience paused in their postures of rising from seats and the gathering of things.
‘I haven’t answered the last question. I don’t want you to go away thinking I’m an artful dodger.’
Their faces once more turned to her.
She knew that only a second-class mind cannot adequately and comprehensively explain the opposite of what one personally believed. You were either involved in inquiry or you were involved in making propaganda.
She decided she had to go in against her argument.
‘I would be simply a publicist if I put only the case for the things I believe. I would not be a true inquirer. And universities are for inquiry.
‘There are three things against sanctions—that they could spread the conflict; that they could be seen, in themselves, as an act of aggression; and they hurt the poor or those who are unable to protect themselves from being injured by the sanctions within the country.
‘The leaders are always quarantined from the impact of sanctions by their control of food and medicine. Only the powerless suffer.
‘But sanctions as a preventative action—and as distinct from military action—at least, do not cost people their lives.
‘I think you want me to tell you what I believe about the future of world politics from my experience at the League.’
She saw that no one was leaving. They were standing listening to her.
‘I believe that no significant international injustice remains forever,’ she said. ‘That Ethiopia will regain its independence.
‘That Mussolini will answer for misusing his country’s resources in war.
‘That a failure of will at one time is not a failure of will for all times. That democratic countries are self-examining and self-correcting.
‘And that sometimes that will, having failed, can at times, reassert itself. That democratic will is resurgent. I believe that democracies can come together with great force. And will learn how to do this.
‘Democratic states in combination are still learning the hardest lessons: when to act and when not to act; how to act; which instruments of collective action?; and how to act swiftly. There is an old Indian proverb—it is good to help; but it is wiser to know how to help.
‘The League of Nations is a college as much as it is a political instrument.
‘We are all learning.’
The audience began to clap and it grew into massive applause.
She saw belief in the eyes of the audience.
She wondered if her answers were a sham.
Whether they would survive the test of the cold light of day.
Everyone was still standing and clapping.
On stage, Elkin, in the chair, was clapping. Chairmen were not supposed to clap.
Even Mr Powell and young Follan were clapping.
It was pleasing and she was flushed, but her relentless punishing mind was already saying sardonically in her head, ‘Explain again what constitutes “political will”, Edith.’
She told her relentlessly punishing mind to go away—to let her have a moment of triumph, let the League have a moment of acclaim. It could be its last.
It was applause for her belief in the ingenuity of the human political mind. She had won applause for the visionary and inventive nature of higher politics.
The applause died away and people left. Follan came over and shook her hand, and others of the committee came over to thank her. The appreciation sounded genuine.
She gathered her notes and put them in her handbag. The best part of her speech had not been in her notes.
Perhaps today there’d also been the confrontation of herself with her student past, a confrontation with her days of inadequacy.
She had come back to face that inadequacy.
Perhaps, today, she’d at last graduated.
Old Friends
After the thanks and the congratulations, Edith saw Alva waiting patiently at the back of the lecture theatre, as arranged, and she excused herself from the well-wishers and went over to her.
They hugged again and then took a taxi to Mockbells coffee shop, one of their old undergraduate haunts.
When they were seated, she said to Alva, ‘Well? How did I go?’
Alva seemed confused. ‘How did you go?’
‘With my talk? How did it go?’
‘You want me to tell you how your talk was received!?’
‘My going back like that after the talk was all over and having a second go. I’ve never done that before in my life.’
‘They applauded. It was an ovation.’
‘But was it just politeness?’
‘Isn’t it rather immodest to ask me to praise you … to your face?’ Alva looked down at the table.
Alva was irritated.
Edith was taken aback.
Edith put her hands on Alva’s hands but realised that Alva was not responsive. She searched Alva’s face for additional meaning. ‘I suppose it is a seeking of praise. Public speaking is always nerve-wracking. I want to know.’
‘You just want me to say how brilliant you are.’
‘Alva, deep down I’m seeking reassurance. Plain and simple reassurance. That I didn’t make an ass of myself.’
The paradox of it—she had been trying to reassure the audience and now desperately needed to be reassured herself.
Alva seemed to disbelieve her. ‘You don’t need reassurance from a plain old laboratory assistant like me.’ And then she laughed unpleasantly. ‘And anyhow, politeness would prevent me telling you the truth.’
Alva’s agitation now seemed to imply there’d been some nasty failure in the speech. Applause could never really be trusted, nor the remarks of the organising committee afterwards. Nor the vote of thanks. Even laughter from an audience was a qualified acceptance.
Edith said, ‘A friend can tell the truth.’
‘A friend?’
Was she also presuming Alva’s friendship? ‘It’s rather frightening to be with someone after a talk who doesn’t mention it. I’m sitting here thinking you found it all dull propaganda.’
Edith was now embarrassed, floundering. Of course, if it had flopped, Alva might not be able to find the words. Edith could see then how it must seem to Alva—that Alva didn’t think her own reaction to be important to Edith.
Edith said. ‘Alva, you’ve talked in public—you must know the feeling?’
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br /> ‘I have never talked in public’ she said, with some irritation. ‘Not in the way you talk in public. I can’t imagine doing it. Furthermore, no one gives me an opportunity.’
Edith thought back to the Public Issues Society and yes, she couldn’t remember Alva speaking.
Edith kept back her spontaneous retort—then get up on your hind legs and talk!
She did not remember this whining attitude in Alva.
Edith kept this all back and softened her voice, tightening her hands on Alva’s, ‘I find it so demanding,’ Edith said. ‘Every time I get up to speak.’
‘You don’t show it.’
‘It’s there.’
Alva stared back at her, ‘You’re brilliant and composed and assured—all those things. And you know it.’
The words came out almost resentfully.
‘Alva. I see now I shouldn’t have asked. It was unfair. I apologise. You don’t have to say anything.’
‘Now you want me to stop because you realise that my opinion doesn’t count for beans?’
‘No! I do value your opinion—but I should never’ve sought it. I felt today in the talk that I had so little to give—so little true soundness. That perhaps I was bluffing. I had only sad stories to tell. I felt the League had let the world down. Oddly, I felt I had let everyone down. As if I was sent from this country to set things right with the world and have come back as a flop.’
‘That’s a rather big-noting way of seeing yourself.’
Alva was being impossible. Edith began to bristle, ‘Alva! I wasn’t being that serious. I don’t see myself that way—it was just a caricature of myself. A caricature of my dreams.’
Alva seemed to respond to Edith’s stronger tone. ‘To tell you the truth, I expected you to be more critical. To say honestly that the League had crashed.’
Hah. So now there was some true criticism of the talk.
Edith restrained herself from falling back into the role of Champion of the League. Edith softened her voice. ‘I thought I was bleak enough.’
‘I can’t see why you say sanctions and blockades are any better than war. Surely it means starving the population into submission? And it’s the children who suffer. There are always rations for soldiers.’
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