With the Negus heading for parts unknown like Man O' War on the home stretch, the Italians have all but completed their Ethiopian conquest. Only the final overthrow of Addis Ababa remains before Mussolini can stalk into the League of Nations chambers and brag of a complete victory. Though most experts have doubted the economic value of the prize, no one can deny that the rout of the Emperer has cut away the last prop from the tottering statecraft of Geneva.

Ironically enough the League's failure to stop the war has resulted from the policy of the two nations that are most in sympathy with its ideals. France and England, mutually engaged in working out their own diplomatic salvation, have shuffied the Council about like a football, making effective sanctions or a realistic settlement equally impossible at the outset. What little prestige the League has been able to salvage cannot be credited to Paris or London.

When Mussolini sits down to dictate his terms of settlement, term which no one can now contest, the nations that have backed the wrong horse may see their way to adopting an entirely new diplomatic technique. Either the League must be strongly supported to the common advantage of all, or the French system of alliances will come into universal use. In any event, if the nations come to realize that war cannot be averted by the monks' mummery of ineffective "sanctions", a more sternly pacifistic attitude, especially in the democratic countries, may prevail on the turbulent European scene.