THE LEAGUE: Grand Fascist Blank

Benito Mussolini pointed a shiny black pistol at the League of Nations last week, fired a thunderous blank.

The black pistol was the black-shirted Fascist Grand Council, supreme organ of the Italian State. The resounding blank was a decision by the Grand Council in Rome last week. The decision: Only if the League of Nations is “radically reformed in the shortest possible time” as to its “constitution, working system and objectives” will Italy continue to remain a League member state.

After the recent scathing anti-League campaign in the Fascist Press (TIME, Nov. 27) many an Italian had expected the Grand Council to fire not a blank but the bullet of Italian resignation from the League. Il Duce’s acts (as distinguished from his words) are, however, nearly always extremely cautious. He is working slowly (and he hopes surely) to root democracy out of the League, as he has rooted it out of Italy. Last Spring he tried to create an “authoritarian” bloc of Great Powers to put the League in its place by drawing Britain, France and Germany into Italy’s (his) Four Power Pact (TIME, June 9, et ante). The Pact’s authoritarian aim was blighted when France, urged by her Little Entente allies, injected before the Pact was signed a clause making it operative “within the framework of the League.”

Since then Il Duce has been out to change the framework of the League, sincerely believing that the voices of common people and common nations ought not to interrupt the deliberations and decisions of The Great.

Deliberately the Grand Council did not postulate last week how the framework of the League should be changed. Il Duce’s strategy is not to try to impose a solution (Italy is not strong enough for that) but to make Rome the rallying point of all foes of the League-as-it-is. Let others suggest what the League should become; then, when official suggestions begin to roll in, Italy will add hers to the pot and Il Duce will try to emerge as Chief Cook.

To judge from Fascist editorials, Cook Mussolini favors: 1) explicit divorcement of the League Covenant from the Treaty of Versailles (which Il Duce has long held should be revised to appease Germany and bestow on Italy certain territories which she was promised before she entered the War but failed to get at the Peace Conference); 2) expulsion of common nations from the League Council which would become a permanent committee of Great Powers, nebulously “responsible” to the Democratic League Assembly of all states; 3) drastic reduction in League expenditures and personnel on the theory that Geneva has become a hive of bureaucratic drones.

Reactions to Benito’s blank shot:

Berlin: Dr. Alfred (“Rosie”) Rosenberg, Nazi foreign affairs expert, said that revision of the Treaty of Versailles would make possible Germany’s return to the League, added: “It is now up to the League to meet the demands of our times or sink into empty nothingness.”

London: The MacDonald Cabinet were “awaiting” positive proposals. “It is generally agreed,” ventured the London Times, “that the nominal equality of all nations in the League does not correspond with reality.”

Paris: “We do not intend,” clarioned Foreign Minister Paul-Boncour, “to permit the least injury, directly or indirectly to the League!”

Tokyo: The Foreign Office spokesman was frankly disappointed that Italy’s blank was not a bullet.

Washington and Moscow: Officials parried rumors that the U. S. and the U. S. S. R. might join a “reformed” League.