Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  She removed her gloves, placing them in the handbag glove loop.

  They were perhaps too fashionable. She wouldn’t wear them during her talk.

  Black said, ‘Let’s have a lighter conversation before we thoroughly depress ourselves. Tell us about the Palais des Nations.’

  ‘That’s one thing the League has started and will complete,’ she said, laughing. ‘We have moved house although the Assembly room is still being completed and a few other parts. I love the Palais. Dignified and practical. But …’

  ‘What’s the “but”,’ Black asked.

  ‘I won’t criticise the first building the world has built together.’

  ‘I think you should tell us your “but”.’

  ‘For my tastes, the Assembly hall is too ornate,’ she said. ‘But the Assembly will try it out for the first time next year. By the way, the rostrum is made from Australian woods. We were the first nation to make a gift to the League.’

  She made a gesture of bleakness. ‘In the days when we were really achieving things we were in the shabby Palais Wilson which I also loved. Now in these inglorious days we are ineffective and frustrated—but living in a Palace. And I’m being gloomy again.’

  Again, some dark laughter.

  ‘And,’ she announced, ‘I’m going to order another two bottles of wine—on my account. To say “happily returned” to my alma mater.’

  She felt the undergraduates deserved it. She’d wait for later.

  ‘Hear, hear.’

  ‘A generous gesture,’ said Elkin.

  Then with vehemence, a demand, a cry, from the man Powell, ‘Italy’s as good as out of the League. Germany’s out. Brazil is out. Japan’s out. The US is never going to join. It’s all over. Admit it. It’s all done for. Disarmament Conference has died. Rearmament has begun.’

  ‘Costa Rica has also withdrawn,’ added Black.

  She felt compelled to keep up morale. ‘We have gained the Dominican Republic, Ireland, Iraq, Mexico, and Turkey.’

  ‘And the USSR,’ said Follan. ‘Which shows that the USSR at least remains international in its thinking even if the Americans do not.’

  ‘Yes, and the USSR. A rather important new member,’ she said.

  ‘To what end have they joined?’ Powell said to Follan.

  She hadn’t told them that Guatemala and Honduras and Nicaragua were all pulling out because they couldn’t pay. ‘I think the League gains are still ahead of the losses. On last count.’

  Powell wasn’t to be placated. ‘We have to admit that disarmament is dead.’

  He stared at her, waiting for her response. The others were obviously uncomfortable but not surprised by Powell’s persistent irritation.

  To give the official line or to speak her heart?

  In a measured voice, she said, ‘If it were all over, I wouldn’t still be there working for it—nor other Australians such as Duncan Hall and this year Australia’s chair of the Council, Stanley Bruce. We all believe there’s something to be done. There are all the health projects—and even the US is enthusiastically contributing to those—there’s lots of good things still going on.’

  She hadn’t answered his question.

  ‘But it cannot keep the peace!’ the man Powell almost shouted.

  ‘Easy on, Enoch,’ said Elkin. ‘It’s a lunch, not a rally.’

  ‘And we’re all on the same side,’ said Black.

  Again, Edith spoke quietly and slowly, with control, ‘Disputes, yes, admittedly minor, are still settled by the League. The Moslem countries are using Geneva as a meeting place to deal with their problems and emerging as nation states out of their mandates. Iraq is now a nation and a member of the League. Things like that.’

  Alva then spoke up. ‘You have to agree with Mr Powell that one of the great illusions of the League is already flat, the illusion of disarmament. It may still be “peace for all nations”, but it’ll have to be an armed peace.’

  It was something Alva had obviously been burning to say and had, by the sound of it, prepared somewhat before coming. It sounded like she’d decided she should have her say. It all came out in a lump.

  And, Edith noted, it was, possibly, a speech against her. It was—she further noted—also Mussolini’s newly stated position.

  Edith looked at Alva, smiling but quietly wondering about her.

  Since coming back she had not had a long talk with Alva about her politics. And their letters had been so sporadic and light-hearted they’d given no clear view of what Alva had been thinking over the years.

  ‘Mussolini sometimes makes sense,’ Edith said, showing that she recognised the line of thought. ‘But I don’t think we should quote him.’

  The men laughingly agreed. Alva laughed half-heartedly but appeared squashed.

  She hadn’t wanted to squash Alva. She’d make it up to her later.

  Despite her confident clubby manner, Edith felt enfeebled as she heard the disheartened tone of the luncheon group. What could she say? How could she be Doctor Cheerup?

  ‘The nutrition report is very good,’ she heard herself say.

  Oh God, was that the best she could do?

  ‘Treating illnesses, feeding the children …’ She felt her head drooping—she was speaking to the breadbasket.

  Head up, shoulders back, Edith.

  ‘Health is a foundation for order—through people who are healthier, through their well-being.’

  Oh, it was all so limp. Edith felt like McGeachy from Information Section struggling to interest reporters. It was rather pathetic to base the hope for peace on free Oslo lunches and milk for school children and getting people to eat breakfast.

  Oh dear.

  ‘Maybe,’ she joked, ‘Italians wouldn’t go to war if they ate breakfast. We are trying to get them to eat a proper breakfast. The coffee may irritate their stomachs. Lead to troublesome digestions.’

  They laughed.

  Elkin asked politely what interest there was in the Australian initiatives on fairer distribution of food in the world.

  ‘Very little, I’m afraid,’ she said. And then looked at them and grimaced, ‘None. No interest at all.’

  Dr Cheerup said, ‘We’ve produced tables recommending diets according to occupation. World-wide.’

  Oh dear, it was getting worse.

  Hay-rake diplomacy.

  Abruptly, she felt as if she were Ambrose—Ambrose and the hay-rake fiasco. A few years ago Ambrose, in the midst of what turned out to be a nervous collapse, had seen the solution to the world’s ills in more efficient agricultural machinery—in fact, specifically, in a new design for a hay-rake. Ambrose had cracked up after making this submission.

  Perhaps she was cracking up.

  The League was cracking up—the League was close to having a nervous collapse.

  That was the truth of the matter.

  ‘Did the League determine how much a professor should eat?’ Elkin joked, trying to lead them out of their gloom.

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘Should be less than a student,’ one of the undergraduates said from the end of the table. ‘Students have much healthier appetites.’

  They all laughed and heads looked to the student who blushed with the success of his quip. The student, suddenly aware of all the attention he had captured, added, ‘I would’ve thought.’

  ‘We’re doing nutritional surveys of Australian families,’ Black said. ‘For the first time, we will have a picture of what Australians eat. They don’t eat enough greens. We know that much.’

  Elkin tapped his watch and indicated it was time for them all to stroll across to the lecture theatre. ‘Don’t know what happened to Miss Wedgewood.’

  Edith’s confidence and sense of mission had dwindled. She felt flat.

  She felt hurt, too, that the Principal of Women’s College hadn’t shown up to have lunch and given support to an old girl.

  But as she stood up and excused herself to go to the Ladies, she thought that as a good Women
’s College girl, she would gird her loins and go into the fray.

  The Beautiful Instrument

  For all her experience at public speaking she was, this time, as well as being flat from the lunch, unsure of herself. She felt she was back in the Public Issues Society. She’d grown small again. For the first time in her life she was taking the role of lecturer in her old university.

  She knew that once started, she would become caught up in the talk and the flatness would go and a spring of energy would arise, but one still had to live with the nervousness of starting. And with the fear that there would be no voice with which to start.

  The banked seating of the history lecture theatre was full.

  They hadn’t installed microphones. Behind the times.

  She began with a few of the old jokes about the League, ‘The world’s wastepaper bin’ and so on.

  ‘The joke I like best came from the Prime Minister of Canada, Mackenzie King, who called us “The League of Notions”.’

  The laughter gave her strength. Laughter from an audience was sweet music. The spring of energy began to flow.

  She then turned to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia.

  ‘Confronted by the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy—with both countries being members of the League, and with Italy a permanent member of the League Council—this is how the League went about its business.

  ‘Firstly, it had to determine whether a state of war existed.

  ‘Swiftly, the Council decided that Italy had breached Article VI of the Covenant of the League and was, under international law, an aggressor state.

  ‘The matter went then to the League Assembly. Voice after voice spoke for strong action. It seemed that after years of uncertainty and timidity the League could act.

  ‘Australia spoke out against Italy.

  ‘I was in the Assembly for this debate. I was moved by the voice of our smallest member state, Haiti. Its delegate, Laired Nemours, said he spoke not only for the smallest member state but also for the oldest black republic on the continent of America. He said, “Great or small, strong or weak, near or far, white or coloured, let us never forget that one day we may be somebody’s Ethiopia.”

  ‘At this point in the crisis it was obvious what must happen: Italy was wrong; the League was obliged to take collective action against Italy.

  ‘We decided to use our newest weapon—economic sanctions. Something for which careful planning had gone on for years.

  ‘I want to explain this new method of stopping wars.’

  She stared out at them. The laughter of the opening jokes was fine but she’d plunged perhaps too deeply, too soon. It sounded like a lecture. It was a lecture. Ask a question.

  ‘I assume that you all understand what we mean when we talk of “sanctions”?’

  She searched the faces, some nodded, some shook their heads.

  She explained the new sanctions system. ‘The Covenant includes all methods of collective action to stop war—military and otherwise—available to the League for bringing an aggressor to heel—all described as sanctions.

  ‘Increasingly, in diplomatic circles the word sanctions is used to describe the non-violent economic weapons which can be turned against an aggressor to stop that nation from waging war.

  ‘We have come a long way in creating these economic sanctions as a non-military answer, although they have never yet been properly tested.

  ‘So at the League we wheeled it out, as it were, from its hangar—gleamingly sharp and well designed.

  ‘We set up the Sanctions Coordination Committee, a new organism for the League. I was the League’s liaison officer on the committee.

  ‘This was a gigantic step forward. Never in history had this new united form of economic action been taken against a country.

  ‘There are two views on the use of this instrument: one argued to me by the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Anthony Eden, during the crisis, was that economic sanctions had to be applied swiftly and totally. What he called the Ton of Bricks approach.

  ‘The other position is the Turn of the Screw, that they should be applied gradually so that they do least damage to those countries applying the sanctions—remember that by joining in the sanctions, innocent countries lose exports they would normally have made to the aggressor or they lose much needed imports from the aggressor.

  ‘The screws get tighter and tighter until the aggressor submits.

  ‘The first action under the gradual sanctions plan is to stop the flow of arms and munitions to the aggressor nation.

  ‘If this doesn’t work, you tighten the screws another notch—you stop all financial credits and loans.

  ‘If this doesn’t bring the aggressor nation to its knees, you stop the flow of exports from that country—all countries agree to stop buying the goods of the aggressor country. This means all League members close their ports to Italian shipping.

  ‘And now, if that doesn’t work, you stop the flow of what are called first list raw materials. These are rubber, tin, aluminium, manganese, nickel, rare minerals and transport animals, all associated with war industries.

  ‘And, if by now this doesn’t work, you stop the flow of second list materials, which are oil, iron, steel, coal and coke.

  ‘If this still doesn’t stop them, you prevent all travel to the aggressor country, and finally, if all this fails—which is hardly conceivable because no country is that self-sufficient—you can stop the flow of food and, in some cases, water, to the country.

  ‘And I’d also like to see the leaders and the top circles of an aggressor country being stopped from going abroad on expensive holidays to the French Riviera and to fashionable clinics in Switzerland or shopping in Paris and so on.’

  She received some claps and chuckles from the audience.

  At least they were listening. She outlined in more detail the other mechanisms which the League had up its sleeve.

  As she went on she felt she had their interest. She was interested in what she was saying, which she always took to be a good sign. She had spoken about this before but as she went on she became convinced once again that sanctions were the way forward.

  ‘While doing this, though, it is important to keep diplomatic channels open until all else has failed. You do not break diplomatic relations.

  ‘You use this as the final step when you cut the aggressive nation off from the world community entirely—diplomatically, by travel, by mail, cable and telephone, and by expulsion from the League.

  ‘They become an outcast nation.

  ‘Now isn’t it a beautiful way to avoid war? Such a fine instrument of non-military peace-making?’

  Her enthusiasm was there in her voice, and her hands were in the air, she realised. Maybe she was becoming an orator?

  ‘Someone is sure to ask about those nations which were not members of the League and neutrals who might want to continue trade with the aggressor nation regardless of what the League wants to happen.

  ‘In the case of Italy, some of the neutrals and the US were willing to go along with the League sanctions on military equipment. But America increased its sale of oil to Italy and thus broke the oil sanction. I suppose for the Americans, business is business.’

  Some cynical laughter.

  ‘So ultimately, to make sanctions work might require a League naval blockade and the interdiction of any ships attempting to trade with the aggressor nation. Although moves have been made to ban all submarines, I would favour the League having its own fleet of submarines, as a way of imposing embargoes.

  ‘But yes, all nets break—some things will get through to the embargoed nation. But not enough to sustain that nation in its aggression.

  ‘This beautiful instrument of peace has other parts to it: the scheme of reverse sanctions, that is, ways of economically helping that nation which has been attacked; the Treaty of Financial Assistance for Victims of Aggression, to provide funding and materials for the attacked nation. This Treaty has not yet been fully ratified.
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br />   ‘But when in place it will mean that while economically strangling the aggressor, we strengthen the victim.

  ‘The League very early on recognised the importance of having the machinery of sanctioning in place so that it could be quickly applied as soon as bloodshed begins.

  ‘So over the years we prepared the plans made for just the situation which occurred with Italy.

  ‘Because some of those countries applying the sanctions are hurt more than others, we have tried to statistically evaluate the degree of burden—country to country.

  ‘Those nations which suffer from having their trade with the aggressor suspended are compensated from a fund administered by the League.

  ‘By the way, another possible economic weapon being discussed is for the League members to buy the entire production of strategic materials needed by an aggressor nation—for example, all of Sweden’s surplus iron ore production which normally would be bought by, say, Germany. And to then hold this stockpile of materials for sale at a later date.

  ‘This would then render a country such as Germany impotent. I am speaking hypothetically about Germany, of course.’

  Knowing laughter.

  She went on for a while with more detail on ways of stopping aggression and then glanced at her watch.

  She had a joke for the end.

  ‘The world renowned cartoonist, Emery Kelen, who spends most of his time in Geneva, and whom I have the good fortune to call a friend, said this to me about sanctions.

  ‘He said that the only people who should not boycott Mussolini are the cartoonists and the satirists.’

  There was strong laughter.

  ‘If Ethiopia had not collapsed and if we had acted fast enough—used the Ton of Bricks approach—we might have stopped Italy in her tracks. As it was, Ethiopia could not hold out.’

  She then said her concluding sentence, with great emphasis, ‘I think, at last, we might now know how to stop war without military action.’

  She left a silence now for emphasis, and there were murmurs of appreciation in the audience.

  ‘Thank you.’