INTERNATIONAL: Fascist Eagle & British Lion

A British loan to help Italy develop Ethiopia has never ceased to be “in the cards.” It was predicted in London banking circles even while Anthony Eden was at his most fervent in Geneva, hurling the thunderbolts of Sanctions at defiant Benito Mussolini (TIME, Oct. 21, 1935 et seq). Last week this British loan was just around the corner, according to the most orthodox of London and Rome correspondents. In

Rome Sir Eric Drummond, the British Ambassador who attempted to dissuade His Majesty’s Government from springing the booby trap of Sanctions, and explained over the long-distance telephone time after time that Benito Mussolini is no booby, last week had the satisfaction of signing with II Duce’s son-in-law, Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, a general Anglo-Italian pact of conciliation, appeasement and concord. Having affixed their signatures, the Briton and the Italian clasped and shook hands with particular vigor and warmth. The Eagle of Fascism had made peace with the British Lion.

Particulars of the pact were of minimum importance compared to the maximum import of its having been signed at all. In British and Italian quarters its phrasing was called “deliberately loose,” the object of this being to permit the British Cabinet to keep the boiling antiFascism of Laborites in the House of Commons from unduly effervescing. Even so the London Daily Worker came out with a cartoon in which an extremely virile Benito Mussolini peers out over a Roman balcony toward a lawn on which an extremely effeminate Anthony Eden dances toward him in diaphanous costume, finger crooked coyly in mouth.

Behind the Dictator is the prostrate figure of Ethiopia, and behind Mr. Eden peer coyly from bushes Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain, also in diaphanous costume and with cupid wings. Cries delighted II Duce in the Daily Worker’s caption: “There are fairies at the bottom of my garden!”

In highest official quarters the pact of Eagle & Lion was said to have been supplemented by a verbal “gentlemen’s understanding,” not strictly binding, but to the effect that London and Rome anticipate: 1) cessation by the extremely powerful Italian radio station at Bari of its anti-British broadcasts in the languages of the Near East; 2) disintegration of the British ”Mediterranean accords” with France, Yugoslavia. Turkey and Greece, made at the time of Sanctions and considered by II Duce as menacing Italy; 3) easy going by Italy from now on in the Spanish Civil War, and even easier going as to the Balearic Islands, which Britain has feared Italy might seize any day; 4) virtual abandonment by Britain of her refortification efforts in such Mediterranean bases as Malta, which Italy commands from the air today.

Since Italian diplomacy is particularly adult and the British is too, members of the entourage of Sir Eric and Count Ciano> said with aplomb that of course the pact is a perfectly cold-blooded piece of advantage-seeking on both sides and that if it ever becomes to British or Italian interest to heave it into Europe’s dustbin, that is where it will go, with no hard feelings between the diplomatic professionals. They have simply tried to end the insanity of the British Constitutional Democratic Monarchy having ever found itself in a quarrel with the Italian Fascist Corporative Monarchy—these two being “natural friends,” with endless common interests, few valid points of friction.

After some days of “courtesy delay” while the pact was privately circulated to the Mediterranean Powers and won a good press in England before anyone really knew what was in it, the text was made public. On its face Britain and Italy agree that ships of both countries have “freedom of entry to, exit from and transit through the Mediterranean” and they “disclaim any desire to modify, or, so far as they are concerned, to see modified the status quo as regards national sovereignty in the Mediterranean area.”

These smooth words can mean anything in Spain, for Italy has recognized the Whites as the government of that country, while Britain continues to recognize the government against which the Whites are fighting. In these circumstances II Duce could and did contribute to maintaining the status quo in Spain last week by sending another 10,000 Italian troops to aid the Whites (see p. 23) and this did not seem to shock official Britain. In an annex to the pact, Count Ciano declared, with particular reference to the Balearics, that “so far as Italy is concerned the integrity of present territories of Spain shall in all circumstances remain intact and unmodified.” This said nothing about the large Italian force at present in the Balearics, and Count Ciano may have given his “assurance” in the Pickwickian sense that the Fascists will keep the Reds out of the Balearics and make them safe for the Whites.

British public opinion will now be educated by its press as to the Italy of today and the significance of Fascism as a movement Conservative in the British sense. The claim of Italian social workers that “nowhere in the world is labor so well-protected as in Italy under the Fascist regime” is being comfortably noised this week in England. The Fascist maternity aid, child-training centres, workmen’s sport fields and theatres, public works such as motor roads, reclamation of marsh lands, building of new cities, construction of transatlantic liners, excavations of noble Roman ruins, and colonization of Ethiopia are all positive achievements. The negative catcalls of Communists in the Daily Worker most certainly will not perturb Britain, nor frighten British investors in Glorious Ethiopia Ltd.

Hitherto Italian Fascism has gone easy on Jews, many prominent Italian Jews holding responsible Government posts, but II Duce knew his friend Der Fiihrer would not be exactly pleased by the new Anglo-Italian pact last week. The thing to give simple Adolf, decided deep Benito, was a rousing anti-Jewish article in Dictator Mussolini’s personal newsorgan Popolo d’Italia. This tongue-in-cheek lashing of Jews last week served II Duce the further purpose of permitting him to attack by implication the Premier of France, M. Leon Blum, a Socialist and a Jew. Mussolini considers Blum scum for many reasons, and Popolo d’Italia, after noting that 98% of the French are NOT Jews, roundly declared that if 98% of the French were Jews, the remaining 2% of Frenchmen would have a much tougher time than do the 2% of Jews in France today. Roared Popolo d’ltalia, tongue in cheek, on this absurd proposition: “It is clear, in view of the ferocious exclusiveness of the Jewish tribe, that Christians would be totally banned from public life in France and doomed to be slaves, toiling in order to permit Jews to celebrate their Sabbath in complete rest!” This is the kind of nonsense Adolf Hitler finds profound, and Benito Mussolini sees no reason why Der Führer should not be humored when it costs II Duce nothing.