CRUMBLING HERITAGE 311

handed the rule of righteousness on a great naval Power at the
far end of the world. The only result of Anglo-Saxon disapproval
of aggression was Japan's exit from the League, taking her con-
quest with her.

^ Two years after Hitler's irruption on the European scene, a
still more brazen aggression occurred. A noisy Fascist Italy, seek-
ing preferential markets, raw materials and an outlet for her
expanding population—now shut out from the Americas by
restrictive emigration acts—revived a long dormant claim on
Abyssinia.1

At the instance of Italy herself, Abyssinia had been admitted
to the League, and was therefore recognised by the British public
as an equal and sovereign fellow nation. What complicated the
outrage was that Italy was still a kind of tacit ally of Britain and
France. Mussolini, who, as western Europe's first dictator, was
believed to have no love for his upstart Teuton imitator,
had only recently declared from the stronghold of the
Brenner Pass that Fascist Italy would not allow Austria to be
absorbed in the Reich. With Germany rearming in open violation
of the Peace Treaties, the loyal alignment of the three victor
Powers against the reviving barbarian seemed vital to the safety
of them all.

The French, always more sensitive than the British to the
peril beyond the Rhine, were painfully aware of this. When
Italy, true to her boasts and warlike preparations, marched into
Abyssinia in the autumn of 1935, they did their best to restrain
the pacific enthusiasm of the British for vindicating the violated
principles of international law. But the British were not to be
restrained. Their politicians had repeatedly told them that the
Great War had been fought to end war for ever. The heroic and
loved dead had died and the millions had suffered for the sake of
that great consummation. And the League of Nations, honoured
in Britain as nowhere else, was the guarantee that peace should
endure. Its Covenant was the British people's war gain. They
would not allow it to be flouted.

But their dilemma was tragic. For they could not protect the

integrity of League principles without waging another war—

. that which they had hoped above all things to avert—and so

lln The ttipes Atlas of 1896 the whole of Abyssinia was coloured green as an Italian
possession. Only the defeat of the Italians by the Abyssinian warriors at Ariowa
prevented Abyssinia from becoming Italian, as the Sudan, at that time, became British.