THE WORLD 399

country's trade if she persisted in aggression, accepted the order.
With the threat of war removed, a Commission of Enquiry
reported on the merits of the dispute and its report was accepted.
The mechanism of Collective Security had worked.

DIFFICULTIES OF SANCTIONS.

But Greece was a tiny tand vulnerable country. If a Great
Power were the aggressor, the mere threat of sanctions might
not be sufficient. Already, in 1923, when Greece herself had
suffered attack from Italy, the dispute had been somewhat
Unsatisfactorily settled by the Conference of Ambassadors rather
than by the League, with the threat of further attacks scarcely
hidden in the background. If the League method were to work,
the States must be prepared, in the last extremity, to wage war
on the aggressor. It is true that economic sanctions can have
enormous, and perhaps decisive effect, even on a Great Power;
neither Japan nor Italy, to quote only two of many possible
examples, could long survive a complete breaking-off of trade.
Such measures may or may not inflict more suffering than
military action on the population of the aggressor State; this will
depend on the circumstances of each Power. But the principle,
and the difficulty, is the same. As Italy showed in the war against
Abyssinia, an aggressor can always make economic sanctions
ineffective by stating that if it is prevented from getting certain
supplies by trade it will take them by force, or revenge itself
by acts of war. Then the League States must either nerve, them-
selves to military action, or be content to impose only such
sanctions as the aggressor permits.

Sanctions may therefore be criticised as an attempt to cure
war by means of war. But this objection can only be logically
made by those who condemn the use of force even to support
law. A State which keeps trained forces to protect its own territory
and maintain internal order, and the citizens who assent to this,
cannot say that they have made a moral objection to force when
asked to use it to uphold international law.