THE PEACE OF EUROPE.

Evening Star, Issue 21749, 18 June 1934, Page 8

THE PEACE OF EUROPE.

The Dictators have met and parted. What will come of the meeting at Venice we have yet to learn. The Italian official communique tells us virtually nothing, except that the personal relations established between Signor Mussolini and Herr Hitler will be continued. An Italian publicity official adds that Hitler agreed to recognise Austrian independence, which would bo a gain of the first importance, but Berlin denies that any sort of definite agreement was arrived at in this regard. The union of Austria and Germany, by strengthening the latter State and extending her frontiers into Eastern and Southern Europe, would create an entirely new political situation in Europe. France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia have the most direct reason to dread it, nor is it clear how long Dr Dollfuss, left to his own resources, would be able to prevent it. If the conversations merely revealed, in regard to another matter, that “ Germany was disposed to return to the League of Nations provided that her complete rights regarding armaments were recognised,” the position remains as it was in that respect. The Italian Press has not been allowed to disclose any results of the meeting, though it affirms that they will have “ wor!d-_ wido repercussions.” That may be so, or the conference may follow tho precedent of one held at Thory, in Switzerland, about the time of Locarno, when Briand and Stresemann smoked cigars and drank coffee together. All the world wondered, and all sorts of agreements were predicted, blit nothing carao of it. It might have been more fruitful if those had not been democratic leaders, requiring national assent for their conclusions, but nothing came of an earlier meeting, quite in the Hitler and Mussolini manner, known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. At one of the interviews, held two years ago, between Emil Ludwig and Mussolini to which we have previously referred, Mussolini chose to talk for a space on the lines of his latest pronouncement—on the need for finding “ a minimum of political unity, without which Europe’s destiny is doomed to decline.” Herr Ludwig thought this was an opportunity which he might snatch, and tho result is recorded by him as follows:

Seizing my chance 1 said: “ If you really believe what you say, why don’t you found Europe? Napoleon tried tb do so, and so did Briand. Well, Briand is dead, and, para-

doxically enough, the mantle falls on your shoulders. You seem more ready to accept the heritage than you were five years ago. Your life history would make people regard you seriously if you were to undertake this great enterprise, for a man stands more firmly if, when climbing to a great altitude, he has climbed slowly. Mussolini as the founder of Europe! You might become, the loading figure of the twentieth century !” I dwelt at some length upon tins topic, which for me has become a religion. He contemplated mo quizzically, and answered without enthusiasm: “ True, I am nearer to this idea than I was five years ago. But the time is not yet ripe. _ The crisis has first to bo intensified. New revolutions will come, and it is as their sequel that the typo of the European of to-morrow will be established.”

Has the crisis been sufficiently intensified yet?