MASTERY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 1 May 1930, Page 13

MASTERY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.

The British people, • who like and admire King Alfonso as a picturesque and gallant figure of a man, commiserate with, him in his present difficult position. Alfonso's dilemma when the Spanish political system broke down was analagous to that of King Victor Emmanuel at the time of the Fascist march-on Rome. Though in the post-war world there is no place for an absolute monarch, for the dictatorship of a servant of the Throne there is. That Alfonso was closely concerned with the beginning of the Directory is no more to be denied than that ho ended it; and jt was therefore inevitable that he should now be saddled with a .portion of the blame *f or the Primo mess. . The circumstance that Seuor Sanchez Guerra's bitter attack on the King has brought the now Government strongly to tho defence of tho Throne cannot blind us to the precarious position, not only of tho present wearer of the Spanish Crown, but also of the whole institution of the monarchy in Spain. Apart from the personal popularity of King Alfonso and his Consort in this country and the fact that the Queen of. Spain was an English Princess, the situation in Spain, of vital importance as it is to the future balance of power in the Mediterranean, merits, the most careful attention of our statesmen. One of tho most striking features of the post-war period has been the resuscitation of an ago-old problem —the struggle for mastery in the Mediterranean. It was the Versailles peace, which altered the whole balance of power in Europe, that brought the Mediterranean . back into prominence. This great inland sea, the largest in the world, washes the shores of the lands more closely affected by the disappearance, or virtual disappearance, of old Powers and the resurgence of new. On my desk as I write lies the hand atlas I habitually use, published in Vienna a year or two after the Armistice and showing the new boundaries of Europe and the redistribution of territory in the New World. With shrewd political prevision the Austrian cartographer opens (after-the familiar map of tho world on Mercator's Projection) with a map of the Mediterranean States. Tho ex-citizen of the Habsburg Monarchy knew what the disruption of the Habsburg system and the aggrandisement of Italy meant. Thirty years ago, before Germany's challenge to our sea supremacy was clearly denned, when France and Russia came second and third respectively in the table of naval strengths, the command of the Mediterranean was the principal preoccupation of British foreign policy. The jealous eyes which Tsarist Russia e{ist upon Constantinople and the unrestricted control of tho Straits were a constant menace to the equilibrium of strength in Mediterranean waters. Accordingly, following Nelson's fundamental principle that the proper station of the British Fleet in war is the nearest possible point to the hostile force, the fighting strength of our Navy was concentrated in the Mediterranean and continued to be so until the growing German peril and tho system of alliances between Britain and France and Britain and Russia to which it led ended with the transference of our main naval strength to the North Sea. FRANCE AND ITALY. France and Italy are the two Powers which to-day confront one another for the mastery of ,theso smiling waters. Within propor limits and without the stressing of any specifically hostile aims, tho rivalry botween the two States has been the obvious and hitherto insurmountable obstacle in tho way of the Naval Conference. Faced with the necessity of conserving her dwindling jtnan-powor and at the same time of roducing her enomous expenditure on national defence,

France, in the post-war period, has como to rely more and more upon the native levies of her North African Empire to defed her homo frontiers against attack. But, as Admiral Mahan pointed out, control of the sea is the power of a belligerent to carry out overseas expeditions at will. The whole of modern French policy is based on the hypothesis that tho French fleet will be ablo to keep open tho vital communications between Franco and North Africa in time of war. THE REVOLUTIONARY SYSTEM. As for Italy, fate has played into Mussolini's hands. I was present at the Versailles Peace Conference, and I remember tliat tho constant apprehension, of the Italian Delegation Was the aggrandisement of Greece. But the Smyrna disaster and tho collapse of the Greek monarchy made an end of Greece becoming what Athens used to be, the dominant naval Power in' tho Mediter-' ranean. Franco remained as the' Carthago to bar the road to Komo's plans of expansion. Britons have lost sight of the great struggle now going forward for the leadership of the Latin world. In its roots the struggle goes back to the French Revolution when the first French Republic was established on a definitely Liberal basis, that is to say, directed against absolutism in any form, whether political or religious. France's varying experiments in government, from the Consulate to the Third Bepublic, did not alter the essential tendency of the French people as moulded by the Bevolution—-to welcome and absorb all elements of resistance to the pre-Bevolutionary system. Thus it was French bayonets which, under Napoleon ILL, drove the Habsburgs out of Italy, put an end to the temporal power of the Papacy and helped Cavour to realise the Liberal.dream of Italian unity. Though the definitely anti-clerical trend of every French Cabinet recent years was sensibly diminished in the "Sacred Union" of French Parties in the war years, it drove the bulk of the Latin world into the Central European camp and, at one time, undoubtedly prepossessed the Vatican against the Entente Allies. ENGLAND'S RESPONSIBILITY. Fascist Italy has settled the Roman question and now stands on the shores of " the Latin sea,'' champion of Latin Catholics as distinct from the Greek Orthodox and tho anti-clericals. There was a natural affinity between her and the Spain of Primo de Rivera, just as, across the Adriatic, Jugo-Slavia, Greek Orthodox and passionately hostile to Fascist aspirations, sails in the leeway of France. This redistribution of the balance of power will ultimately bring Austria and probably South Germany into the Italian camp against France. France remains at the head of the Fronde against the Empires of, Hohenzollern and Habsburg and tho spiritual rule of Borne, destined to be what Tsarist Russia was, the protective Power of the Balkan States. ' ■ . We may take it that the French Government is weeping no tears for the fall of tho Spanish Directory, for a Spanish Re-public, established on the principles of 1789, would be a precious counterweight against Fascist predominance. Great Britain, whom the Spanish War of Succession left a Mediterranean Power, cannot remain indifferent to any essential shifting of the Mediterranean equilibrium. The Locarno Pact, the Kellogg Pact, and whatever conclusion to "which the Naval Conference may come, do not lessen our responsibility in the matter. The Mediterranean is oirf high road to Empire.