NEWS OF THE WEEK A S the meeting of the League
of Nations Council on Monday approaches, discussion both of peace proposals and of an intensification of sanctions increases. Many of the peace rumours, such as the reported Belgian initiative, may be discounted. There is likely to be, and should be, no repetition of sectional conversations on the Hoare-Laval model. Geneva is the right place for peace discussions, and the League and its committees are the right instruments. There is little doubt that Signor Mussolini would welcome any not unduly discreditable way of escape from his African adventure—though it is worth remembering that it is no more than a month since his defiant Pontinia speech was delivered. He knows, if the Italian people with their censored Press do not know, that the campaign is going ill for Italy, and he knows, as the ordinary Italian does not, what the condition of Italy's finances will be after another three months of war. Peace is everywhere and on all grounds most earnestly to be desired, but the League cannot, in the moment of the greatest victory it has yet achieved for the principle of collective action, afford to recede by half an inch from the fundamental doctrine that no peace terms are tolerable which will yield profit to an aggressor from his aggression. In every discussion of concrete peace terms that condition must be paramount and final.
