ITALY: Neutral on the Spot

Benito Mussolini last week caused to be published in every Italian newspaper and aired by every radio station a momentous telegram from Adolf Hitler:

“I am convinced that, thanks to German military strength, I will be able to accomplish the task set for me. Under these circumstances, I do not think I shall require military assistance from Italy.”

Day before, B. Mussolini’s Council of Ministers announced that in the German-Polish war, “whose origin lies in the Versailles Treaty,” Italy would take no part. And B. Mussolini, in his reply to Franklin Roosevelt’s plea for humane bombing (see p. 13), repeated once more that Italy was not fighting anyone just now.

Never were three news items more heartily welcomed by the Italian people. In Rome’s streets and cafés there were handshaking, backslapping, happy chortling until B. Mussolini’s police impressed upon his people that such joy was unseemly in a nation which was supposed to be learning how to love war and think it beautiful (TIME, Dec. 6, 1937).

Fact was, B. Mussolini’s reasons for staying neutral were not all happy ones. Whereas A. Hitler behind his West Wall was comparatively safe for the time being from the wrath of Great Britain & France, B. Mussolini was in just about the world’s hottest spot. One martial move by him, he well knew, and Italy would suffer the full fury of the French Army and two navies. She would probably lose Ethiopia, have to fight hard to hold Libya and not starve. And the Turks would make life unbearable by driving behind the Greeks at Albania (see p. 34).

There were a lot of other unhappy reasons for B. Mussolini’s neutrality: the Italian people are fed up with the efficiency experts and barking generals sent among them by A. Hitler to improve their working and fighting. Hitler’s deal with Stalin affronted Fascism, despite feverish rationalizations (TIME, Sept. 4). Italy would not have Spain, now, to hamper France’s rear. That alliance of godless ones affronted also the Roman Catholic faith. Italy is dirt poor. Above all, though B. Mussolini can pep them up enormously, the Italian people do not honestly like to fight.

But strong as these sorry reasons were, two splendid ways of looking at his neutrality remained to Il Duce. In the military situation created by the West Wall-Maginot Line stalemate, a neutral Italy, blocking access to Germany via the Tyrolean passes, had tremendous nuisance value. It would force Britain & France to go clear around through the Dardanelles, Black Sea and Rumania to assist Poland and establish the Salonika front (see p. 22). It was nuisance so great that it might bring B. Mussolini a fancy price if he chose to sell out.

That he would ever desert the Axis, as Italy deserted the Kaiser in 1915, B. Mussolini has many times emphatically, indignantly denied. Nevertheless, last week’s pressures by Britain and France were in precisely that direction, and they were truly great pressures. Count Ciano’s Foreign Office became almost the full-time habitat of British Ambassador Sir Percy Loraine and French Ambassador André François-Poncet.

Before announcing his neutrality, Mussolini had gone through the motions of an Axis partner about to go to work. He conducted a mobilization so complete that, when they realized its scope, it shocked his people. The nation was blacked out. Coffee was forbidden to all but soldiers, gasoline to all but State officials and the military. All private motor travel was forbidden after September 3. Then, after the neutrality decision, the terrifying atmosphere was relaxed. Italy was ready to defend herself if attacked, was the word. Command of Italy’s armies was divided between General Graziani, no disciple of the Germans, and Crown Prince Umberto, no favorite of Mussolini’s but a great favorite (as his father’s son) with the people.

Night lights were turned on again. Foreign mails arrived on time. Troops were withdrawn from Libya’s Egyptian border. The French border was reopened.

But the German border was not reopened except to pedestrians. Exports stopped moving into Hitlerland from Mussoliniland, because the neutrality which B. Mussolini announced for himself was a status which Britain and France, preoccupied though they were with other business, watched with stern, forbidding eyes. The only good Indian used to be a dead Indian. The only safe Mussolini from now on is a Mussolini whose hand performs as his tongue has avowed.