Feb. 11.
This journal would not be so rash. as to attempt the justification of British policy and actions in Europe and Africa, to say nothing of that extra-continental enclave Geneva, during the past two years. It is well aware that the apparently em-photic verdict of the British. electorate in November last is capable of several interpretations in terms of foreign affairs. Apologies for winning the war have been frequently expressed by France and Great Britain. The United States of America and Japan would, no, doubt, join in that rueful demonstration were they not intensely preoccupied in their own business.
Yet when Signor Mussolini displays such magnificent talent for self-deception in conversing with Sir Arnold Wilson for the delectation of Mr. J. L. Garvin, as to reproach Great Britain for the continuance of the Ethiopian campaign, it seems that the process of apology has been sadly neglected by the chief villain of the world peace. Dictators have sensitive souls in pleasing contrast to the vigour of their criticism of other countries and therefore care must be taken in reminding Signor Mussolini of certain fiery denunciations of last summer and flamboyant appeals to the arbitrament of war, coupled with a fervent readiness to shed much Italian blood in proof of the futility of the League of Nations. No doubt the Italian Premier has reason to puzzle over the curious circumstance that, despite the veherejection of the Hoare-Laval plan, British opinion is already prepared to accept the view that those proposals were eminently sound and may eventually form the basis of a settlement, In the desperate effort to unravel the tangle caused by Signor Mussolin's adventure in Ethiopia, the technique of casting the blame on the British scapegoat seems to be widely accepted. Mr. Hilaire Belloc has discovered that British propaganda has skilfully swathed Victorian imperialism the respectable garb of twentieth~ century collectivism, Other critics wax eloquent on the bullying attitude of the Royal Navy and, inconsistently enough, allege that that handmaid of Foreign policy has Jbeen so weak as {0 invite self-destruction at Italian hands in the Eastern Mediterranean last summer.
All this is very distressing. "That unfailing dispenser of consolation to British statesmen, Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, in one incoherent breath, invests the League of Nations with the function of policing the world and, by that token, adjures it to con template on the shores of the Red Sea roadless, lawless region inhabited, so far as it is inhabited at all by pugnacious braves who kill each other for presilge and attach the same prestige to the killing of one European as to three of themselves.
Blissfully oblivious of his own prefaces of the era before he fell in love with dictatorships, Mr. Shaw calls upon the League to allow Italy to undertake the replacement of present conditions by what he describes as "civilization." He adds:
To call such an advance of elviliza~ tion an act of aggression on the same footing as an unprovoked bombardment of Venice by the Fy. or of Portsmouth by the Fleet, is a most dangerous of language and confusion of thought.
1 Is pathetic to find Shavian agility thus reduced to the pedestrian occupation of setting up ninepins merely for the delight of bowling, them over, Mr. Shaw must be allowed, in his old-fashioned way, expose his incapacity for serious {thinking on any serious subject. He thas, however, produced further valu~ able proof of the wickedness of Great Britain, His discovery of her ma~
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.