TENSION RISING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1938, Page 5

TENSION RISING

ITALIAN DEMANDS RESENTED IN FRANCE AGGRESSIVE TALK IN GERMAN PRESS. ADVICE TO DEMOCRACIES. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. LONDON, December 4. While the campaign for territorial revision in the Mediterranean is in full blast in the Italian P/ess, the French Press continues angrily to oppose Italian aspirations in Tunis, Corsica, and Nice, and unanimously demands an emphatic declaration from the Government in view of the pending signature of the Franco-German pact. It declares that‘not one inch of French territory can be bargained, and regrets the fictitious agitation after France’s attempts to bettex- relations, notably by hex- recognition of the Abyssinian conquest. Several newspapers suggest that Germany views Italy’s claims, sympathetically as a sop to Signor Mussolini’s accommodating policy regarding the Polish and Hungarian claims and Czechoslovakia. The Berlin correspondent of “The Times” says that German newspapers continue to greet Count Ciano's speech with enthusiastic reference to the brotherhood in arms of the axis Powers and their readiness to use “all means” to achieve theii- common political aims. Britain and France are bluntly told that they cannot hold theii’ overseas possessions except by Italy’s and Germany’s goodwill, and they will find it cheaper to meet Italian and German conditions for the final pacification of Europe than to resist them. The newspapers add that the friendships that Germany may form with others do not alter the fact that fundamentally her policy is based on the Rome-Berlin axis and the antiComintern Pact. ' PROTEST APPROVED. BRITISH PRESS ON ITALIAN OUTBURST. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, December 3. The protest by the French Ambassador is described as proper and well justified by “The Times,” which suggests that it is well to bear in mind that the more one party seems bent upon appeasement, the bigger the opportunity may appear to the other to raise the cost of agreement. It emphasises that it is a matter of universal importance that diplomacy by agitation should not be allowed to take the place of diplomacy by consultation. - • The demonstration in the Italian Chamber is regarded as untimely by the “Daily Telegraph” in the sense both that it follows France’s recognition of the Italian Empire and that it immediately precedes Mr Chamberlain’s visit to Rome. _