Dark Palace (33 page)

But as she stood up and excused herself to go to the Ladies, she thought that as a good Women's College girl, she would gird her loins and go into the fray.

For all her experience at public speaking she was, this time, as well as being flat from the lunch, unsure of herself. She felt she was back in the Public Issues Society. She'd grown small again. For the first time in her life she was taking the role of lecturer in her old university.

She knew that once started, she would become caught up in the talk and the flatness would go and a spring of energy would arise, but one still had to live with the nervousness of starting. And with the fear that there would be no voice with which to
start
.

The banked seating of the history lecture theatre was full.

They hadn't installed microphones. Behind the times.

She began with a few of the old jokes about the League, ‘The world's wastepaper bin' and so on.

‘The joke I like best came from the Prime Minister of Canada, Mackenzie King, who called us “The League of Notions”.'

The laughter gave her strength. Laughter from an audience was sweet music. The spring of energy began to flow.

She then turned to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia.

‘Confronted by the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy—with both countries being members of the League, and with Italy
a permanent member of the League Council—this is how the League went about its business.

‘Firstly, it had to determine whether a state of war existed.

‘Swiftly, the Council decided that Italy had breached Article VI of the Covenant of the League and was, under international law, an aggressor state.

‘The matter went then to the League Assembly. Voice after voice spoke for strong action. It seemed that after years of uncertainty and timidity the League could act.

‘Australia spoke out against Italy.

‘I was in the Assembly for this debate. I was moved by the voice of our smallest member state, Haiti. Its delegate, Laired Nemours, said he spoke not only for the smallest member state but also for the oldest black republic on the continent of America. He said, “Great or small, strong or weak, near or far, white or coloured, let us never forget that one day we may be somebody's Ethiopia.”

‘At this point in the crisis it was obvious what must happen: Italy was wrong; the League was obliged to take collective action against Italy.

‘We decided to use our newest weapon—economic sanctions. Something for which careful planning had gone on for years.

‘I want to explain this new method of stopping wars.'

She stared out at them. The laughter of the opening jokes was fine but she'd plunged perhaps too deeply, too soon. It sounded like a lecture. It was a lecture. Ask a question.

‘I assume that you all understand what we mean when we talk of “sanctions”?'

She searched the faces, some nodded, some shook their heads.

She explained the new sanctions system. ‘The Covenant includes all methods of collective action to stop war—military and otherwise—available to the League for bringing an aggressor to heel—all described as sanctions.

‘Increasingly, in diplomatic circles the word sanctions is used to describe the non-violent economic weapons which can be turned against an aggressor to stop that nation from waging war.

‘We have come a long way in creating these economic sanctions as a non-military answer, although they have never yet been properly tested.

‘So at the League we wheeled it out, as it were, from its hangar—gleamingly sharp and well designed.

‘We set up the Sanctions Coordination Committee, a new organism for the League. I was the League's liaison officer on the committee.

‘This was a gigantic step forward. Never in history had this new united form of economic action been taken against a country.

‘There are two views on the use of this instrument: one argued to me by the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Anthony Eden, during the crisis, was that economic sanctions had to be applied swiftly and totally. What he called the Ton of Bricks approach.

‘The other position is the Turn of the Screw, that they should be applied gradually so that they do least damage to those countries applying the sanctions—remember that by joining in the sanctions, innocent countries lose exports they would normally have made to the aggressor or they lose much needed imports from the aggressor.

‘The screws get tighter and tighter until the aggressor submits.

‘The first action under the gradual sanctions plan is to stop the flow of arms and munitions to the aggressor nation.

‘If this doesn't work, you tighten the screws another notch—you stop all financial credits and loans.

‘If this doesn't bring the aggressor nation to its knees, you stop the flow of exports from that country—all countries agree to stop buying the goods of the aggressor country. This
means all League members close their ports to Italian shipping.

‘And now, if that doesn't work, you stop the flow of what are called first list raw materials. These are rubber, tin, aluminium, manganese, nickel, rare minerals and transport animals, all associated with war industries.

‘And, if by now this doesn't work, you stop the flow of second list materials, which are oil, iron, steel, coal and coke.

‘If this still doesn't stop them, you prevent all travel to the aggressor country, and finally, if all this fails—which is hardly conceivable because no country is that self-sufficient—you can stop the flow of food and, in some cases, water, to the country.

‘And I'd also like to see the leaders and the top circles of an aggressor country being stopped from going abroad on expensive holidays to the French Riviera and to fashionable clinics in Switzerland or shopping in Paris and so on.'

She received some claps and chuckles from the audience.

At least they were listening. She outlined in more detail the other mechanisms which the League had up its sleeve.

As she went on she felt she had their interest. She was interested in what she was saying, which she always took to be a good sign. She had spoken about this before but as she went on she became convinced once again that sanctions were the way forward.

‘While doing this, though, it is important to keep diplomatic channels open until all else has failed. You do not break diplomatic relations.

‘You use this as the final step when you cut the aggressive nation off from the world community entirely—diplomatically, by travel, by mail, cable and telephone, and by expulsion from the League.

‘They become an outcast nation.

‘Now isn't it a beautiful way to avoid war? Such a fine instrument of non-military peace-making?'

Her enthusiasm was there in her voice, and her hands were in the air, she realised. Maybe she was becoming an orator?

‘Someone is sure to ask about those nations which were not members of the League and neutrals who might want to continue trade with the aggressor nation regardless of what the League wants to happen.

‘In the case of Italy, some of the neutrals and the US were willing to go along with the League sanctions on military equipment. But America increased its sale of oil to Italy and thus broke the oil sanction. I suppose for the Americans, business is business.'

Some cynical laughter.

‘So ultimately, to make sanctions work might require a League naval blockade and the interdiction of any ships attempting to trade with the aggressor nation. Although moves have been made to ban all submarines, I would favour the League having its own fleet of submarines, as a way of imposing embargoes.

‘But yes, all nets break—some things will get through to the embargoed nation. But not enough to sustain that nation in its aggression.

‘This beautiful instrument of peace has other parts to it: the scheme of reverse sanctions, that is, ways of economically helping that nation which has been attacked; the Treaty of Financial Assistance for Victims of Aggression, to provide funding and materials for the attacked nation. This Treaty has not yet been fully ratified.

‘But when in place it will mean that while economically strangling the aggressor, we strengthen the victim.

‘The League very early on recognised the importance of having the machinery of sanctioning in place so that it could be quickly applied as soon as bloodshed begins.

‘So over the years we prepared the plans made for just the situation which occurred with Italy.

‘Because some of those countries applying the sanctions are
hurt more than others, we have tried to statistically evaluate the degree of burden—country to country.

‘Those nations which suffer from having their trade with the aggressor suspended are compensated from a fund administered by the League.

‘By the way, another possible economic weapon being discussed is for the League members to buy the entire production of strategic materials needed by an aggressor nation—for example, all of Sweden's surplus iron ore production which normally would be bought by, say, Germany. And to then hold this stockpile of materials for sale at a later date.

‘This would then render a country such as Germany impotent. I am speaking hypothetically about Germany, of course.'

Knowing laughter.

She went on for a while with more detail on ways of stopping aggression and then glanced at her watch.

She had a joke for the end.

‘The world renowned cartoonist, Emery Kelen, who spends most of his time in Geneva, and whom I have the good fortune to call a friend, said this to me about sanctions.

‘He said that the only people who should not boycott Mussolini are the cartoonists and the satirists.'

There was strong laughter.

‘If Ethiopia had not collapsed and if we had acted fast enough—used the Ton of Bricks approach—we might have stopped Italy in her tracks. As it was, Ethiopia could not hold out.'

She then said her concluding sentence, with great emphasis, ‘I think, at last, we might now know how to stop war without military action.'

She left a silence now for emphasis, and there were murmurs of appreciation in the audience.

‘Thank you.'

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.