"Taranaki Central Press" FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1937. ITALIAN DIPLOMACY.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 397, 2 April 1937, Page 4

"Taranaki Central Press" FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1937. ITALIAN DIPLOMACY.

The foreign policy of Italy is very hard to follow. In Spain, Italy and Germany have a common objective, but their ambitions run counter to one another along the Danube, and Germany is not greatly interested in Italy’s Mediterranean projects. It may be assumed, however, that the signing of an Italian-Yugoslav treaty of friendship, reported in a cable message, is a move against PanGermanic influences in Europe. Yugoslavia during 1936 was flirting with Germany, particularly j in the realm of economics and armaments, but a better under- I standing with France, reinforcing the military alliance between the , two countries, was supposed to have been achieved by the unveil- i ing in Paris of a statue to King Alexander. Yugoslavia, of all the Balkan countries, most strictly applied the economic sanctions of the League while Italy was conquering Abyssinia, and she suffered for it more heavily than Italy because the prosperous trade between the two countries was strangled. The three main problems separating the countries are, the Albanian question, the status of the Yugoslav minority in Italy, and the relations between Italy and the Little Entente. There has I always been mutual distrust and violent antagonism between the ! countries, and that makes the signing of a pact of friendship all j the more notable. It is probable, indeed, that Italy has given substantial conces- | sions to Yugoslavia, because her own position on the international J chessboaid is not at the moment very secure. She is under the j necessity of maintaining an army of 250,000 men in Abyssinia, ; under dangerous and difficult conditions and, as one writer has put it, “a boa does not ramp about the jungle looking for more food whilst his body is still bulging with the undigested animal that formed his last meal.’’

Italy may be in a mood to mak e friends. Certainly she has shown of late an inclination to court British friendship.