The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought

Chapter Six: The Mad Dog

35 From that time on, we saw the multiplication of Italian accusations against Ethiopia, which were abundantly reported by the French press. The accusations were of two kinds: some related to the internal situation in Ethiopia and intended to present the campaign then in preparation as a war for civilization. Others related to Ethiopia’s foreign policy and were intended to convince public opinion that it was a matter of legitimate defense. We will look at the first set of grievances a little later; here we will consider the second set. Chapter Six T h e M a d D o g 36 | The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought Italian memoirs report on numerous border incidents, of attacks of all kinds against Italian figures, of frequent failures to respect treaties. It is quite possible that some of these facts were exaggerated, others were unverifiable. But from our point of view this has little importance. It suffices that the events reported were perfectly believable and no one questioned them. Let us situate ourselves within the hypothesis most favorable to the Italians’ contentions. Let us admit that the alleged facts are all well established; let us even admit, in spite of appearances, that all the wrongs were on one side. A question remains which renders suspect the whole Italian argument: were Italy’s reasons for grievances aggravated after 1928 to the point of justifying in themselves such a change in attitude on Italy’s part? In 1928 Italy signed a treaty of friendship and arbitration;1 after the beginning of 1935, it openly wanted war. Were the reasons for the change primarily on the Ethiopian side, or indeed were they primarily on the Italian side? Did the dog go mad, or was it that the man discovered some reason to have done with it? On the Ethiopian side, all that seems certain is that the resistance to Italian penetration did not lessen from 1928 to 1935, but that resistance is perhaps only the fact of a nation determined to preserve its independence. The preponderant reasons for the change in the Italian attitude must be sought on Italy’s side. To be convinced of this, it suffices to refer to the propositions of Mussolini and his press: “We will have work for fifty years in Ethiopia.” Italy’s leaders, to the extent that they were concerned to justify their African effort in the eyes of world opinion, which they did not hesitate to defy if need be, invoked legitimate defense and just cause. You would have to be blind not to see that the will to conquer had priority among them over the chances for defense. That will to conquer, slumbering after Adowa, reawakened: that The Mad Dog | 37 is the essential change that explains the transformations in the Italian attitude with respect to Ethiopia. The condition of the dog had surely changed little, but the man decided to have done with it; he therefore declared that the dog had gone mad and if that did not meet with sufficient credence, after all it matters little: the intended action will be carried out nonetheless. Under these conditions, are we faced with a war of conquest , pure and simple? Pope Pius XI declared in a speech that the fact that a majority of the French press has failed to point out the seriousness of a war “which is nothing but a conquest” is something so unjust and horrible that one does not wish to contemplate the possibility. In expressing himself this way, the pope, following the approach of a moralist, judged that the understanding of typical cases is the first condition for understanding mixed cases. I cannot, for example, judge the legitimacy of an investment which simultaneously has the nature of a contract for a loan and the nature of a social contract unless I have previously determined the typical kinds of loan contracts and social contracts . In the concrete form of events, moral types rarely present themselves in a pure state. The historical event is a complex of several types: it is at the same time, for example, a war of conquest and a war of defense. The serious business is to decipher the type that occupies the dominant place and plays the decisive role in the complexities under consideration . Has there ever been a war of pure conquest between states having common borders? The existence of common borders between...