ITALY: Ciano on Crisis

When terse, provocative Benito Mussolini feels that someone in authority should ramble on to the Italian people in soothing, fireside-chat fashion, IlDuce is apt to set his Foreign Minister and son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, a-chatting. In Rome last week the Chamber of Fasci & Corporations convened, Mussolini sitting quietly amid his newly revamped Cabinet (TIME, Nov. 13), and the Count talked for an hour and 53 minutes, mainly about how World War II began and why Italy is jolly well staying out of it.

Count Ciano was in frequent, close and friendly personal contact last spring and summer with Adolf Hitler and his diplomatic generalissimo, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. His speech last week explained why Italy, after signing a “pact of steel” with Nazi Germany in the spring, chose a state of “nonbelligerency” in the autumn.

Three, Four, Five. If the Count is to be believed, the German-Italian pact was signed on expectations that Italy would have three peaceful years and the Reich would have four or five. Meanwhile it was hoped that the Reich would get Danzig, and possibly the Polish Corridor, without provoking a European war.

This amounted to confirmation that the much-touted “Military Alliance” was simply a false front by which Herr Ribbentrop hoped to scare the British and French into making further concessions a la Munich.

Game Spoiled. According to the Ciano version, what really spoiled this Axis game was the overture of Neville Chamberlain to Joseph Stalin and the consequent alarm of Adolf Hitler lest he have to face an Anglo-Franco-Russian lineup. The action of the democracies, said Count Ciano, so bolstered the prestige of the Soviet Government that the Nazis had to do something about it. “If the great democracies had ignored Russia,” feelingly continued Ciano, “Germany would have had well-founded motives for doing the same.” Thus Britain and France were officially blamed for starting the war.

But much as he criticized the Allies, the Foreign Minister also raised an eyebrow at the Nazis. Mussolini, he said, “was the first to denounce the peril of Bolshevism,” and the Count’s speech reassured Italians that while Il Duce remains friendly with the Führer, the Rome-Berlin Axis is not going to be extended to Moscow. This was a plain intimation that Italy thought Germany had run out on the Anti-Comintern Pact. Moreover, the Italians were warned of the Russian-German treaty only two days before it was signed. “At 10 o’clock in the evening of Aug. 21, Ribbentrop telephoned me that he was going to Moscow on the 23rd to sign the pact of non-aggression between the Reich and the U. S. S. R.,” recounted Count Ciano.

Repudiating rumors that King Vittorio Emanuele and Crown Prince Umberto opposed the Axis policy which might have carried Italy into war, the Foreign Minister said that on the contrary His Majesty and His Royal Highness, foreseeing this possibility, had “asked the privilege and honor of serving the country in arms.” He warned Britain and France that “real peace” will be impossible to get if they insist on Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Poland regaining their independence. Nor will Italy, declared Ciano, attempt to create a Balkan Bloc. In a slap at the Allied blockade control he concluded: “Italy continues to follow the conflict, ready to contribute to world peace, but also to defend her shipping and her air lines.”

Year ago in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, “spontaneous” demands for “Tunisia! Corsica! Djibouti!” all French protectorates, were vociferously raised. Last week Fascist Editor Virginio Gayda, lamented that the two outlets to Italy’s mare nostrum, the Mediterranean, were “closed,” suggested it would be nice for Italy if British-owned Gibraltar and British-protected Suez changed hands.

After spending 15 days in Rome waiting to be presented to the King of Italy and instead listening to the anti-Soviet demonstrations of Fascist youths, Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Gorelchin suddenly departed for home, leaving the impression that he is not likely to return to such a hostile capital very soon.