November 28 1924
EGYPT’S case will not be dealt with by the League of Nations.
The appeal issued by the Cairo Parliament and addressed to the League and to “the free Parliaments of the world” was not even “considered” at Geneva. In the first place, Egypt is not a member of the League of Nations; in the next, that appeal was not broadcasted by a Government, but by a Parliament – and, as the London Times judiciously reminded all concerned yesterday, Geneva “deals only with Governments and not with Parliaments”.
Ziwar Pasha will not authorise an effort to bring his country’s cause against Britian before the League Assembly; action of that kind is not permitted under the terms of his contract. A member of the League could raise the question; but the representative of any nation who said “Cairo” would promptly be asked to sit down, and reminded that he had no right to talk about Nilian affairs while the Government of the people who live near the Nile remained silently acquiescent. But, despite these technical difficulties which bar the way to a discussion on the Egyptian issue at Geneva, the bare fact that such a discussion is impossible will discredit the League so thoroughly that its dissolution may become inevitable.
Greece was a member; therefore the Greek case against [Benito] Mussolini’s display of brute force in the Levant was accepted and endorsed – more enthusiastically by the representatives of Great Britian, perhaps, than by delegates from any other nation: indeed, all England was angry because M Poincare’s emissaries hung back. But then Italy was the Power that had used its armed might to terrorise and plunder a weak country in revenge for a crime condemned as heartily in Athens as in Rome. Now the “boot is on the other foot”; therefore the situation must be viewed from an entirely different aspect.
It is not long since the Morning Post wrote: -
“The League of Nations is the sort of dustbin into which we are always willing to shoot the property of our neighbours, but never our own”.
A dustbin is not regarded as a savoury article of furniture under the most favourable conditions; when the sides and bottom are knocked out of it; the bin not merely ceased to be useful: its presence anywhere is a positive danger to public health. No small nation can now believe for an hour that it has anything to gain by contributing to the maintenance and recognising the existence of a broken dustbin.
Irish News editorial on the dispute between Egypt and Great Britain triggered by the assassination of the Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, Lee Stack, and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations as a robust and fair arbitrator of disputes.
