THE MEDITERRANEAN: No War, No Peace

“Without a navy,” Admiral Jean Fran-gois Darlan once said, quoting Richelieu, “one can neither carry on a war nor profit by a peace.” Last week the British Navy rode the Mediterranean and the Italian Navy was afraid to poke a bowsprit out of port. How nice it would be, Benito Mussolini must have thought wistfully, if the three western Mediterranean powers got together somehow and drove the British out of Mare Nostrum.

Things had not been going so well with II Duce since he chiseled into the war last summer. By last week he was willing to sell Adolf Hitler his equity in the Balkans for the rescue of his Army from the Greeks. Another Army, or what was left of it, was making dust across Libya, and II Duce was willing to sell France part of his equity in Mare Nostrum for the rescue of that Army from the British. To Spain he was willing to sell another bit of the Mediterranean if Spain would help to close the Strait of Gibraltar. Altogether, having been whittled down to the size of his Mediterranean neighbors, Benito (“We Prefer to be Feared Rather Than Loved”) Mussolini was feeling mighty friendly toward them.

And so last week, for the first time, Benito Mussolini took the trouble to meet the man he helped to power in Spain. At II Duce’s invitation Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his Foreign Minister and brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Suñer, sped across southern France to the Italian Riviera town of Bordighera, where II Duce was waiting to shake hands. While an Italian armored train, its guns turned on the Mediterranean, chuffed nervously up & down the Riviera between San Remo and Grimaldi, II Duce, El Caudillo and the man Spaniards derisively call the Big Shot Brother-in-Law (El Cuñadissimo) sat down to talk.

Spain’s Problem. Whatever he may be as a soldier, II Duce is a very good diplomat. He would not have dreamed of going to Franco as a suppliant. Instead, he told El Caudillo some of his friend Adolf Hitler’s plans for the conquest of Britain and for the New Order in Europe after the war. El Caudillo was sympathetic. He had nothing but the warmest wishes for the success of the Axis plans. He would like to participate, but there was a little matter of bread.

Bread is Spain’s great problem, and bread to keep the people from starving is going to Spain through the British blockade, both from the U. S. and from Argentina. Much as General Franco may lean toward Germany and Italy ideologically, for the moment food is as important to him as friendship. He hoped his good friend II Duce understood that. *

II Duce did. After some more conversation, of which no word leaked out, the three men emerged from their conference with faces wreathed in smiles. What they had cooked up was anybody’s guess, but a good one was that Spain would continue to trade neutrality to Britain for bread until Britain looks nearly beaten. Then, if that time ever comes, Spain will step in.

From Bordighera their car took El Caudillo and El Cuñadissimo back across the Riviera and Provence to the hilly old town of Montpellier, where France’s Marshal Henri Philippe Pétainand Admiral Darlan were waiting to greet them. Pétain and Franco are old friends. After lunch at the stately Prefecture Marshal Pétain took General Franco into one room while Don Ramon and Admiral Darlan conferred in another. This made it necessary for II Duce’s observer, Admiral Vincenzo De Feo, to choose which conference he would attend. Admiral De Feo chose Pétain-Franco, and the Foreign Ministers had their room to themselves.

If Franco asked Pétain, on behalf of Mussolini, simply to promise that II Duce’s retreating Army would not be attacked by General Maxime Weygand from Tunisia, the Marshal was doubtless obliging. For neither Pétain nor Weygand has any present intention of helping the British, and France is under the heel of Benito Mussolini’s ally. If, however, both Franco and Mussolini were middlemen in Adolf Hitler’s effort to get French bases in the Mediterranean, then the Marshal was stubborn as always.

France’s Problem is greater than Spain’s, for not only does France need bread (only six weeks’ supply of wheat remains) but she has more to give to the war than Spain, more to lose if she picks the loser as the winner. Last week German-dominated Paris reported that its new National Popular Assembly Party was growing fast. The Paris radio found a new word for Marshal Pétain’s Government, “Vichy vermin,” and insisted that the regime of Vice Premier-Foreign Minister-Navy Minister-Successor Designate Admiral Darlan was only a transition back to Pierre Laval. The German radio echoed this theme.

Admiral Darlan countered by packing Minister of the Interior Marcel Peyrouton off to Argentina as Ambassador and taking the Interior portfolio too. Well he knew, as he and Richelieu had said, that his Navy could help Vichy to profit by peace. But only if the war’s end found Vichy on the side of the winner. Much of Don Ramon Serrano Suñer’s three-hour chat with the Admiral was devoted to an attempt to convince him that the Axis would be the winner. Evidently he had some success, because he left Montpellier beaming and shouting: “Vive la France!” and four days later Admiral Darlan left Vichy apparently for Paris to talk to Pierre Laval.

France, too, may aid the Axis, if & when Britain is staggering. Like the war scares in the Balkans (see col. 3) and in the Far East (see p. 29), last week’s Mediterranean palaver pointed to a widespread offensive against Britain’s naval fortresses. If Britain falls, a Latin bloc of western Mediterranean powers may become an actuality. If the Axis shows it can beat the British Empire, France and Spain will be glad to share Mare Nostrum with Italy. Otherwise, they would rather eat.

-The U. S. was beginning to understand too. This week 150 leading U. S. citizens urged President Roosevelt to feed the Axis’ enemies and former President Herbert Hoover proposed to try feeding Belgium as a test (see p. 18).