GOING TO ITALY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 February 1940, Page 5

GOING TO ITALY

MR SUMNER WELLES’S MISSION AFTER-WAR PROBLEMS TO BE DISCUSSED, j BASIS FOR COLLABORATION SOUGHT. By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright. NEW YORK. February 19. A correspondent of the United Press of America, who is accompanying Mr Sumner Welles, in a radio message from the Italian liner Rex, says that Mr Welles will see Signor Mussolini and the Foreign Minister. Count Ciano, immediately he arrives in Rome on February 27 and will try to lay the basis for collaboration between Italy and America after the war settlement. Italy is represented as being receptive to suggestions because she feels Washington recognises the importance of Italian arbitrations. It is believed that the conversations in Rome may set the tenor of the whole of Mr Welles's mission. The fact that he is not seeing the Pope and tho monarchs of Belgium and Holland can be attributed to Mr Roosevelt not wanting it to be regarded as a peace mission. Mr Myron Taylor (Mr Roosevelt’s personal representative in the Vatican City) will keep in touch with the Pope's peace plans, and will emphasise on his arrival that his mission is not connected with that of Mr Welles.