The League and Abyssinia The meetings of the Committee of
Thirteen and the League Council at Geneva during last week-end yielded no result more momentous than the issue of a "supreme appeal" to Italy to "bring to the settlement of her dispute with Ethiopia that spirit which the League of Nations is entitled to expect from one of its original members and a permanent member of the Council." The obvious fact that the long-drawn attempts at con- ciliation had failed was duly registered, and Mr. Eden, in a necessarily grave speech, said that Great Britain was prepared to consider the imposition of further economic and financial sanctions, but rather pointedly refrained from proposing them. Baron Moisi for Italy was completely unconciliatory, indicating that Italy re- quired all Abyssinia, and though the rumour of new Franco-British co-operation was insistent, M. Sarraut decided that to do nothing was safer than to do something, and M. Paul-Boncour's speech to the Council was accordingly confined to non-committal platitudes. No further meetings have been arranged till May 11th, but by then the French elections, in which the second ballot falls on May 3rd, will be over, and a faint hope of support by France for further action may be entertained. Italy, if Addis Ababa falls, will have secured all she can hope to secure before the rains, and if both the League and Abyssinia hold out her situation in the next few months may be none too enviable after all.
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