The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought

Chapter Nine: British Policy

55 It is unfortunate that diplomatic habits force statesmen to clothe their aims in idealist garb; this practice contributes to the appearance of a number of foolish questions . Many people have gravely asked whether Great Britain was pursuing its own interests in this affair, and they believe that a yes or no answer would shed a decisive light on the international situation. What should we think, truly, about a government that would leave out of its preoccupations the interests of the nation that it governs? We will put the question in entirely different terms; we are seeking the motives for the British intervention, without asking whether Chapter Nine Br itis h P ol ic y 56 | The Ethiopian Campaign and French Political Thought they deserve the rather useless qualification of being interested or idealist. The distinction between legitimate motives , in accord with the right of each and the common good of international society, and illegitimate motives, seems to us much more certain and fruitful than the parliamentary distinction between interest and ideal. It is a matter of course that in a case of such great historical importance, an unlimited number of motives enter into play, and interpenetrate one another. It is not even certain that it is possible to designate a main motive to which all the others are subordinated. What seems possible to us is to draw out the whole set of dominant motives. We have earlier alluded to the undertakings tending to assure Great Britain’s dominance over Western Ethiopia. It is beyond question that British policy, having recently decided to exercise its own control over the waters of the Blue Nile, looked upon the arrival of an Italian force in the Lake Tsana region with great uneasiness. That anxiety was insufficient , we believe, to explain by itself the intervention with which we are familiar; it was a second-order factor operating in concert with other factors. We would attribute a similar character to worries relative to the security of the route to the Indies. The Italian arrival in Eritrea did not elicit any British protest, and the Eritrean colony, for a half-century, in no way compromised freedom to pursue the imperial path; the occupation of the Ethiopian hinterland doubtless brought about a considerable strengthening of the Italian power on the shores of the Red Sea, but why would that power be hostile? Everything depended, in truth, on the intentions that Great Britain ascribed to the Italian government . Difficulties that would have been easily resolved given confidence, took on a tragic bearing when they arose in a context that was itself tragic. If there had only been the British Policy | 57 question of Lake Tsana and of the route to the Indies, the British intervention would have had a hard time not being unjust; it would only have been a way to oppose the necessary expansion of the Italian nation. But it was an entirely different matter; the British statesmen had seen a great imperial formation emerging from Tripoli to Mogadishu; Marshal Italo Balbo, sent to Libya upon his return from Chicago, did not refrain from action; he had organized a powerful army whose use could not be understood except as a threat to Egypt. Threatened in the west by Libya’s troops, Egypt ran the risk of also being threatened in the southeast on the day that the Italians subjugated Ethiopia and integrated its army; it had also been hit with propaganda that could quickly lead to revolutionary acts. At the same time, the development of Italian aviation abolished the defensive value of the port of Malta; Great Britain’s supremacy in the Mediterranean could be compromised in the near future. And the bellicose declarations took their normal course, which was highly antipathetic to the British people. All this constituted an alarming set of circumstances. British diplomats and journalists thus expressed these alarms; soon, and this was perhaps the decisive event, Italy reacted with a campaign of mad provocations. If the celebrated interview [Times (London), 1 August 1935] with Henri de Kérillis is accurate, Mussolini is supposed to have said to his interviewer that a statesman must let himself be guided by instinct rather than by perusing history books. Instinct, perhaps, does not know that you do not provoke British power without consequences; but history bears witness to that. Concentration of the British fleet in the Mediterranean was the response of insulted imperial...