Italy Looks to Geneva
To End Sanctions Woes
By a Staff Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
ROME—Strong efforts are being
made to find in the Sino-Japanese
crisis, in the disturbances in Palestine, and finally in the tendency on the North and South American continents toward an autonomous political concentration additional arguments for complete and immediate abolition of the sanctions imposed upon Italy and for the reconstruction of close European solidarity.
No doubt is professed here that all these extra- and anti-European developments have been created and fostered by the bickering and quarrels in Europe arising out of the action of the League during the past year. Instead of holding fast to its common political principles and of preserving the ideals of western civilization Europe has--in Italian eyes--presented a lamentable spectacle of discord due to its having pursued at once visionary Utopian ideas and selfish particular interests and has thus lost its spiritual force and its political influence upon the outside world and therewith its title to be feared and respected.
"Can It Be Denied?"
Can it be denied, asks one Italian writer, that Japan would hesitate if Europe were not still under the hypnotic influence of sanctions? At bottom what occurred in Europe on March 7, when German troops marched into the Rhineland, is now being repeated in the Far East and for the same motives. What, then will the League do? Will it hear the cannonades coming from a China that may be far distant geographically but that is plitically a near neighbor owing to China's membership of the League? That ITaly herself may have, by her action in Ethiopia, been mainly responsible for the foregoing diagnosis of the European situation is not so much as hinted at in any of the lamentations that have filled the Italian press in the last few weeks. Be that asit may the desire to play, in the interests of ITaly, upon the British and French concern for the Far East is only too transparent.
Hope for Geneva Action
It is evidently upon the re-awakening of British fears and preoccupations that most weight is being laid. The greatest attention is being paid to British action at Geneva in the immediate future. Exaggerated hopes are discouraged despite the British Cabinet's announcement that sanctions should be lifted. An improvement in Anglo-Italian relations dates from Benito Mussolini's recent declarations to the British press that from the conversations between the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and Italy's Ambassador, Dino Grandi. But any friendship will take time to ripen and may meet with obstacles both in England and perhaps even more so in Geneva. Italy stil maintains strong relserves, but the appointment of Sir Samuel Hoare to the British Admiralty is held to justify optimism. It is believed here that Stanley