400 THE BRITISH APPROACH TO POLITICS

Nor is it correct to assume that a decision to impose military
sanctions, if necessary, means taking on an added risk of war.
If it is known that sanctions certainly will be imposed, the
aggressor cannot reasonably hope for success, and if he has afty
wisdom will abandon his aggression. He may, of course, be
desperate and take the risk; and the League States, and the
citizens of them, must face the fact that there is a chance of
conflict. But the greater the preparedness to impose sanctions,
the less the likelihood that they will need to be used. On the
other hand, if the aggressor is not checked, others will in time
follow his example, and then the risk of war for all States will be
increased. If, when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, the
League Powers had required her to evacuate it or face economic
and, if necessary, military sanctions, it is, to say the least, unlikely
that she would have persisted. 1fhe failure to check that aggression
has been followed by other major aggressions; was the risk
involved in using sanctions then greater than the risk of war
which now threatens the world?

THE DECLINE OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY.

The success of Japan's aggression was a turning-point in the
history of the post-War years. In 1935 began the Italo-Abyssinian
War; in 1936, the intervention by foreign powers in the Spanish
Civil War; in 1937 the renewed Japanese attack on China. This
inability to prevent war cannot be ascribed to the defects of the
League method. The real cause was the unwillingness of Govern,-
ments to use that method against a Great Power. They refused
to accept the proposition that State Sovereignty must be limited
by the duties of Collective Security—-the duty of refraining from
aggression oneself, and the duty of helping to check the aggressor.
Moreover, the defects that there were in the League method were
the result of insistence by States Members on their Sovereignty.
In refusing to limit Sovereignty, Governments were supported
by great numbers of their subjects. Why, they felt, should they
be committed to protect from aggression remote nations in which