Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 1940. MUSSOLINI’S LATEST TURN.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 April 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 1940. MUSSOLINI’S LATEST TURN.

VEUTRAL nations throughout, the world are in the main . friendly to the Allies. The greatest of all the neutrals, the United States, shows this friendship openly and irankly. bo, too do manv of the Latin American countries. Keenly alive as they are to the necessity of being extremely circumspect the Western European, neutrals are on good terms with the Alhes and are likely to be at least confirmed in that attitude by the effective help now being extended to Norway in her need and by the assurance that Sweden also will be assisted should she ii'i her turn- be attacked. Several of the Balkan States are linked with the Allies by treaties and guarantees, aiming at the preservation, of peace in. the Near and Middle East and at. combined action should peace be upset by aggression. Tn contrast with a state of affairs thus generally favourable from the Allied standpoint. Fascist Italy, though committed for the time being to a non-belligerent policy, lias exhibited of late pronounced signs of bias against the Allies and particularly against Britain. Apart from the anti-Biitish demonstrations in Rome and Milan reported yesterday, the controlled Italian Press has taken up a distinctly pro-German attitude with regard to the invasion, of Norway and the operations in which that invasion is being countered by the Allies. Methodical attempts appear to have been made to conceal the facts and to suggest that the situation was improving in favour of Germany. One of the most significant of recent reports states

that; — Signor Mussolini was to have made a speech on Saturday (next), but it has now been cancelled, and the meeting at which the speech was to have been made has been postponed indefinitely. No doubt this cancellation and postponement find their explanation in the failure and threatened complete collapse of Nazi hopes based on the invasion of Norway and the consequent. disappearance of material of which Mussolini hoped to make use in promoting a pro-German policy. Some foreign, correspondents have suggested of late that the Duee was preparing to abandon the policy of co-operating with Hungary, Turkey and other States to protect the Balkans against aggression, and, as one writer put it, “to move into the Russo-German orbit.” This does not necessarily mean that Mussolini is prepared to throw Italy into the war as an ally of Germany. What is suggested is rather that he hopes to attain a position in,which he would be able to scheme tor what he and his associates call a “just peace”—-a war settlement in which the Allies would be cheeked sufficiently to enable Italy to expand as a military and naval Power, “with an eye to imperial self-sufficiency.” .On this subject, Mr Saville R. Davis wrote recently in the “Christian Science Monitor”: — Increasingly in recent days Italian commentators and spokesmen are returning to the thesis earlier held by II Duce that Europe should be directed by a quadrumviate of the major Western European Powers. Such a Four Power domination would result in a fairly even balance of power within itself. And as the Italians see it, this grouping would operate until it became possible to lift the “leadership principle” of European fascism into the international sphere. It is suggested that Italy, or rather the present Italian dictatorship, takes the view of the war which was formulated recently in an article in the London “Economist”:— That anything short of the full overthrow of the National Socialist regime in Germany represents full defeat for the Allies; that anything more than mere retention of power represents an extensive victory for the German Government. These contentions obviously are true and for that reason it becomes just as necessary that the Allies should counter Mussolini's present tactics as that they should defeat decisively the mad-dog aggression in which Germany is at present engaged. Assuming that his aims and intentions are correctly inter-

preted, the Italian dictator has abandoned the policy of cooperating with Italy’s Balkan neighbours to stop Bolshevism at- the Carpathians, in order to scheme once again for the kind of peace which Hitler and his fellow-gangsters would be delighted to accept. Fortunately there is every reason to believe that Mussolini has a difficult and rather hopeless road to follow in any attempt he may now make to revive a thoroughly vicious policy—a policy under which Europe would be abandoned to the wolves of aggression, and Italy Would endeavour, for her part, to lay hands on all the spoil within her reach. Mr A. Duff-Cooper was reported yesterday as stating in a speech in London that :—

There is rising resentment against the present regime in Italy. . . . The Press is allowed to say only what Signor Mussolini sanctions. However, others, in not unimportant .positions, are great friends of the Allies. There is no reason to suppose that these statements are overdrawn. It has been credibly reported that at. the outbreak of Ihe present war, Mussolini was intent on ordering a general mobilisation—not in order immediately Io make common cause with Germany, but in the hope of exercising bargaining pressure and extorting concessions—and that King Victor Emmanuel, 'with the support of a strong party in the country and With the sympathy of Ihe Vatican, refused to sign the mobilisation decree. It must be hoped that the better sense of Italy itself will defeat any renewed attempt Mussolini may make to make his country an ally—if a self-seeking one—of international gangsterdom. Should the event fall olherwise. no other course will be open to the Allies than that ol' taking positive and drastic action against an Italy attempting 1o impede their approach to the just and stable peace they are pledged to attain —a peace of Which the most essential initial condition is the decisive overthrow of Hitlerism.