(4 of 5)
Perhaps too late last week Britain's more experienced Labor politicians realized the trap into which their Party was being led by the anti-Fascist zeal of the Trades Union Congress's proletarian Socialists. Believing that not "force" but consistent Pacifism must always and ultimately be the guiding principle of British Labor, Lord Ponsonby, the Labor Party's leader in the House of Lords, resigned last week. Its leader in the Commons, "Old George" Lansbury, again threatened to resign. The Young Labor rival Herbert Morrison, who is most anxious to succeed him, announced that he smelt a Geneva rat.
"If the League of Nations is being secretly used for the interests of Imperialism," cried Mr. Morrison at Hackney, "then our Party must be free to make a new declaration superseding that of the Trades Union Congress. Labor can give no blank check of approval to this Government. We are not interested in the struggles of rival imperialisms [British & Italian], and we are not going to be drawn into them!"
All this went over the average British head but the public was vaguely troubled when Wartime Prime Minister David Lloyd George arose and bellowed with Welsh impetuosity, "We are within two weeks of War!"
"Derisory!" Fleet movements in last week's gigantic international game of bluff & bully overshadowed the League of Nations, but its dynamo of diplomacy whined on. The Committee of Five, instructed to find a formula for the Ethiopian crisis (TIME, Sept. 16), labored zealously under the chairmanship of Spain's Chief Delegate, idealistic Philosopher-Diplomatist Salvador de Madariaga in Geneva. At first inclined to recommend that Italy be given a status over Ethiopia similar to that which Britain holds over the nominally independent Kingdom of Irak, the Committee finally decided to recommend for Ethiopia the status recommended by the League two years ago for Liberia and indignantly refused by that Negro Republic.
In effect this scheme was for Ethiopia's Emperor to consent to receive in Addis Ababa a League High Commissioner who would reorganize the Ethiopian police, finances, jurisprudence, education and health services. Numerous Europeans, nominated by the League, would be needed to put through these reforms. Depending on whether the reforming Europeans were predominantly Italian—and the Committee of Five omitted the vital question of their nationality completely last week—this plan might offer something or nothing to Il Duce.
While the Committee was thrashing its scheme out Italy's Premier heard they were going to offer him two strips of territory in Ethiopia's more arid areas. "It looks as if the League thinks I am a collector of deserts!" joked the Dictator with one of the few Englishmen he likes, the London Daily Mail's Ward Price. "The plan is not only unacceptable but derisory!"
Not wishing to be derided, the Committee of Five left out the deserts, offered to Ethiopia's dusky but non-Negro ruler and to Il Duce only what the Negroes of Liberia have refused.