BRITAIN AND ITALY.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 13, 8 October 1937, Page 4

BRITAIN AND ITALY.

Italy has never bulked as large in the British Press as Britain, till the silenee order of the last few days, has in the Italian. The Fascist regime has never been admired by any hut a small minority in the country. We have an inveterate and p_ersistent love of freedom. In partieular we value freedom of the Press as much as Signor Mussolini, once a Socialist journalist, might be expected to. We condemned the attack on Abyssinia because, in view of the existence of the Kellogg Pact and the Covent of the League of Nations, both of them signed by Italy, *no attitude hut that of condemnation was possible for honesk men. We condemned the extensive Italian intervention in Spain because of the criminal irresponsibility of an action which might, hut for British and French restraint, have turned a domestic conflict into a European war. This situation is in palpable and deplorable contrast with that AYist.iug at the time of the Stressa Conference just over two year§ ago, wfien variqus agreements aiming at the consolidation of peace in Europe were concluded between Great Britain, France and Italy, "the three Powers the object of whose policy is the collective maintenanee of peace within the frameWork of the League of Nations," as the officjal communique of the Conference put it. It is a situation which actually menaces peace, and so far as it can be modified by the application of some restraint on both sides it should be. That will not be achieved by the adoption of a' policy of insincere condonation. — London Spectator.