84 J.-A. PEMBERTON
and thereby adding to the bitterness of the blow when it came, was the
fact that, as Wright pointed out, the administration in Washington had
‘unquestionably made every effort to avoid action which would inter-
fere with the efficiency of sanctions, although under strong pressure from
Italian-American organizations and from isolationists’ (the latter having
scored two recent victories in the form of the neutrality acts of 1935 and
1936), ‘to follow a different policy.’^256
In their introduction to the proceedings of the Yosemite conference,
Holland and Mitchell noted that discussions of the changes that had
taken place in the Pacific area since the time of the Banff conference had
been ‘overshadowed’ by the ‘more momentous events’ that had occurred
in other parts of the world.^257 In particular, they noted, the confer-
ence’s attention had been focussed on certain events in Europe and the
Mediterranean, namely, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland and the
Italian aggression against Ethiopia. Having observed that the discussions
at the conference concerning these events had greatly benefitted from
the presence of a large number of European members and that the same
events had caused Great Britain and France take less of an active inter-
est in the Pacific area thereby affecting the regional balance of power,
Holland and Mitchell declared that it would be mistaken to interpret the
security situation in the Pacific area solely in light of the behaviour or
situation of certain European powers as there were many other compli-
cating factors. Nonetheless, they cautioned that ‘it would be unwise to
suppose...that the Italian success in Ethiopia, and the apparent weakness
of the British position in the Mediterranean were wholly unobserved by
Japanese political and military leaders, or that the timing of Japan’s more
recent attempts to advance her position in North China and Mongolia
was unrelated to, or unaffected by what happened in Europe.’^258
Against the background of German rearmament, the triumph of
Italy’s imperialist campaign and the conclusion of ‘the long-rumoured’
political entente between Germany and Japan in the form of the Anti-
Comintern Pact, announced not long after the Yosemite conference
(^257) Holland and Mitchell, Problems of the Pacific, 1933, 2.
(^258) Ibid.
(^256) Ibid., 431.