AN ANTICIPATED SWOOP.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 June 1940, Page 4

AN ANTICIPATED SWOOP.

JT has occasioned some comment in London that in the armistice terms dictated to France. Italy has abstained from making 1 sweeping colonial demands. At the same time it is pointed out that this by no means implies a renunciation of ambitions to lay hands on French territory, but rather, in the words of one of yesterday’s messages, that: —

Although France was not called upon to surrender territory, she was required to give up every possible means of defending it. If those terms were accepted, as the Petain Government obviously did accept them. France and all her Mediterranean possessions were left entirely at the mercy of Germany and Italy, whenever they liked to swoop. .. . Instructed and patriotic Frenchmen would not be deceived because for the moment- Germany and Italy had agreed only to render their victim helpless and to complete the process of absorption on a later and more convenient date.

Frenchmen outside the power of the enemy certainly would be very foolish if they failed to grasp these facts and their manifest implications, but there is another aspect of the position which also deserves attention. The policy of postponing the actual spoliation of France to a later occasion obviously is calculated to work Io tlie undoing of Italy as well as of France. There is no doubt that the Italian armistice terms have been determined and dictated by Germany. It is probably as little in doubt that in the event of her ultimate victory, Germany would despoil her Axis ally as well as her immediate victim and that. Italy, having done a jackal’s work, would get a jackal’s portion, or perhaps something even less than that.