ABSTRACT

THE debate of February 27th, 1933, was an anti-climax. The proposal for an arms embargo had appealed to many as a safe way of doing something, or, at any rate, of acquiring the feeling that something was being done, about the Far Eastern situation. Public attention had been concentrated to such a degree upon the project that the Government’s unexpected decision left a void it was not easy to fill. The form of the decision, and the grounds upon which it was based, exposed the obstacles in the way of an effective embargo, and, indeed, in the way of any international action against Japan; and did so in circumstances which deprived of plausibility the customary attempts to throw the chief responsibility upon the British Government.