-ENGLISH SAGA

destroying the one achievement of the war to end war. Reluc-
tant to ignore the Italian challenge, equally reluctant to embark
on hostilities in which, as it became painfiilly clear, they could
not count on the help of the nations associated with them in the
Covenant, they tried the expedient of commercial sanctions.
Even to these the associated nations, loath to dislocate their
trade, gave only tepid support. Ineffectual for any purpose save
to irritate Italy against what seemed. British sanctimony—for
who were the British to cavil at imperial conquest?—sanctions
not only failed to stop her triumphal march into Addis Abbaba
but drove her out of the League into the arms of her hereditary
enemy. Henceforward the two Dictators marched together on
one brazen axis, with the other aggressor of the Far East in
uneasy co-operation. Their declared aim was a New Order con-
structed on falsehood, menace and violence.

Hitler snatched at his opportunity. While the Italo-Abyssi-
nian war was still waging, he reoccupied the demilitarised Rhine-
land, relying on pacifist opinion in a disarmed Britain to prevent
more than verbal protests at this breach of the Peace Treaties and
Locarno, France, suffering from internal dissension and indus-
trial unrest, dared not act alone. The door of Europe was slammed
in her face. Henceforward she could only come to the assistance
of her eastern allies by breaking through a fortified German
frontier. It was the end of Versailles. It was virtually, though
scarcely any one yet knew it, the end of peace.

• «•••• • •

Such was the fate of the dream which the soldiers brought
back from the trenches. On September 3rd, 1939, it seemed as if
the dead, had died in vain. The veterans of the Great War had
seen their homely ideals of a decent life constantly frustrated by
1 economic factors beyond their control or even that of their
politicians. The home of their own with a garden, the job in
which they could take pride, the security for themselves and
their dear ones, had had to wait. In their patient English way
they had accepted the feet, hoping that gradual amelioration of
social conditions might one day ensure the promised land for
their children and children's children. In that hope they had
passively adopted the Baldwinian thesis, put aside bitterness, and
worked for the slow realisation of a more just and happier
-society in the days after their death. But even for this limited
realisation, peace was essential. A repetition of the terrible