765.84/2625
Text of the Note Which the Italian Government Addressed on November 11, 1935, to All the Governments Which, at Geneva, Voted for Sanctions Against Italy
1. The Italian Government, with its note of October 7 last,6 and with the declarations of its delegate to the Council and to the Assembly of the League of Nations, denied the basis of the resolutions adopted at Geneva regarding the conflict between Italy and Ethiopia. It repelled the accusation of having violated the obligations undertaken under Article 12 of the Covenant. Today, when, following the said resolutions and affirmations, numerous member states are proceeding, with reference to Article 16 of the Covenant, to the application of measures bringing pressure on Italy, the Royal Government renews the broadest and most decided protest against the gravity and the injustice of the proceedings which have been adopted to its injury.
The Italian Government states in opposition:
- (1)
- That the reasons set forth in the Italian Memorial7 have not been taken into sufficient consideration.
- (2)
- That the provisions of the Covenant of the League of Nations answering to the situation denounced have not been applied.
2. The situation which has come about since the last meeting of the Council and the Assembly has brought to the Italian arguments and protest the confirmation of facts of such significant evidence as to [Page 685] corroborate the basis of the reasons given by Italy, and, on the other hand, as to invalidate the basis of the presumptions on which there were taken, with respect to her, those decisions the juridical and moral bases of which Italy must again deny: in point of fact, numerous populations, guided by their civil and religious authorities, have come to place themselves under the protection of Italy. The Italian Government has abolished slavery in the occupied territories, giving to 16,000 slaves that liberty which they would have awaited in vain from the Government at Addis Ababa, despite the clauses of the Covenant and the undertakings assumed at the moment of its admission as a member of the League of Nations. The liberated populations see in Italy, not the aggressor state, but the power which has the right and the capacity of extending that high protection which the very Covenant of the League of Nations, in its Article 22, recognizes as the civilizing mission incumbent upon the more advanced nations. This attitude of the populations of Tigre, which have been liberated from the Shoan government, and of the religious authorities of Axum, permits the belief that, a fortiori, the same situation of fact exists in all the regions of non-Amharic race, where domination has made itself felt in the form of pitiless oppression and of extermination for more than half a century. The League of Nations should take account of such facts which have developed since the decisions at Geneva, and should draw therefrom the necessary conclusions.
Among these conclusions, it is undeniable that new obligations of protection are incumbent on Italy because of the attitude of the populations which have placed in her their trust, which populations would be devoted to terrible reprisals and vendettas should Italian protection cease.
3. In contrast to these facts, the procedure adopted in the conflict between Italy and Ethiopia, which procedure purported to follow strictly the letter of the Covenant, has in actual fact, killed its spirit. The governments of numerous states have, through rigid and hasty actions, been induced to consider and to provide for the application to Italy of measures of pressure which have been concerted at a conference of coordination which is not, in fact, an organ of the League of Nations and which has carried on and is carrying on its investigations and labors without Italy being informed thereof in any way. The various Governments therefore remain individually the judges and the parties responsible toward Italy both with respect to the scope of the measures that they adopt and their legal justification.
4. The first measure considered by the said committee and proposed to the Governments represented, namely, the embargo on arms and munitions for Italy and the lifting of the same embargo in favor of Ethiopia, constitutes an immediate and direct aid in rendering very much worse that special situation of menace which the Italian [Page 686] Government had vainly denounced to the League of Nations and which has led to the necessity under which it finds itself of providing urgently and with its own means alone for the security of its own colonies.
Such a measure, far from facilitating the end of the conflict and actuating a settlement in the spirit of the Covenant, increases its gravity and entails the danger of prolonging the duration thereof. It should not be forgotten that the supplies of war materials now opened wide to Ethiopia are in open conflict with the proposals of the Committee of the League of Nations which recognized that that nation should be subjected to a strict international control adapted to check its perilous disorder, already demonstrated by the necessity under which the three adjacent countries found themselves in 1930 of coming to an agreement8 to limit and control the importation of arms into Ethiopia even in time of peace.
5. The Coordination Committee has therefore elaborated the modalities and the scope of numerous measures of an economic and financial nature without giving any consideration to the fact that sanctions of such a nature were never applied in cases of previous conflicts, which developed, however, under conditions much more serious because a plea for peaceful adjustment had not ever been submitted previously. The Committee has, finally, proposed to the Governments to put into effect simultaneously and definitively, at a very close date, all the measures considered, by the collective action of some of those countries represented on it, neglecting all criteria of gradualness and progressive application. Such sanctions will thus be applied against Italy for the first time, under conditions de facto and de jure that the Italian Government and people consider unjust and arbitrary and against which the Royal Government must therefore raise the most determined opposition.
In the economic field and, once again, in the moral field, the Italian Government must call the full attention of each nation belonging to the League of Nations to the gravity of the measures which the Coordination Committee of Geneva proposes to apply to Italy and to the consequences which they are liable to bring not only upon a great nation to which there belongs an essential part in the work of reconstruction and collaboration that is one of the fundamental tasks of the League of Nations, but also upon the economic situation of the world, already so strained, whose effort at restoration it breaks up.
No one can deny the right and the necessity which the Italian Government will have to defend and insure the very existence of its people. Thus it will be obliged to take measures of an economic and financial character that may mean, among other things, substantial deviations from the present currents of exchange and trade, so that it may procure [Page 687] everything needed for the life of the nation. The prohibition of all Italian exports, is not so much an economic measure as a true act of hostility that fully justifies the inevitable Italian counter measures.
The Italian Government believes moreover that the situation of the parties involved does not detract from the value of the objective consideration that the artificial attempt to exclude from world economy a market of 44 millions of individuals runs the risk of drying up immediately and certainly the founts of sustenance and life of millions of workers the world over.
The sanctions and counter-sanctions will finally bring very serious consequences of a moral and psychological order by causing a spiritual disturbance which may endure even long after the sanctions will have fulfilled their purposes and obtained the result of increasing the economic disorder of the world.
7 [sic]. Italy, which derives her character of charter member of the League of Nations from the sacrifices of blood made also by her sons in order that the League might arise, has been unwilling hitherto to detach herself from the Geneva Institution, in spite of her opposition to the proceeding followed against her, because she desires to prevent a conflict like the one in question from giving rise to wider complications.
The Italian Government, however, while it has taken all the measures suitable to prevent subsequent dangers from growing out of the situation created, believes it should in time call the full attention of the Governments of the States Members of the League of Nations to the responsibility involved in the measures in course of application and to the gravity of their consequences.
The Italian Government will be grateful to know in what way this Government, in its free and sovereign estimation, intends to be governed with regard to the restrictive measures proposed against Italy.
November 11, 1935.