INTERNATIONAL: Toasted Entente

Secret diplomacy as practiced by Benito Mussolini led in Rome last week to an Italo-French entente of first importance for the peace of Europe. Everything was done, from first to last, in a fashion exactly opposite to that favored by the League of Nations and such optimistic conferencophiles as silver-haired, silver-tongued James Ramsay MacDonald.

To Rome went that swarthy, thick-lipped, beady-eyed onetime butcher boy, His Excellency Pierre Laval, French Foreign Minister. There was nothing democratic about his reception. In Il Duce’s opinion the sloppiness of Democracies leads to tragedies like the assassination of French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou at Marseille (TIME, Oct. 15). It was with Barthou that Mussolini began the secret negotiations which came to a climax last week. The two men never met, dickered through ambassadors. To ensure that nobody should be able to assassinate Pierre Laval on Italian soil last week, his train clicked over tracks guarded every 50 feet by a trim Fascist militiaman who snapped to salute at sight of Excellency Laval and his vivacious daughter José—”Josette” to her adoring papa. As usual Mama Laval remained at home.

There were roses for José as she stepped off the train in Rome—roses from the Dictator. Excellency Mussolini later kissed Mile Laval’s hand, but first he kissed Excellency Laval on both cheeks. Outside the station a mob of Romans, accustomed for years to shout “Abbasso la Francia! Down with France!” when they mentioned that country at all roared “Evviva Mussolini! Evviva la Francia! Evviva Laval!” With 5,000 trim Italian police and militia blocking off the station, the Frenchman’s hotel and an intervening strip of Rome, II Duce gave a pointed exhibition of how to guarantee the safety of a foreign visitor.

“Italy Has No Future.” Since the vein of Benito Mussolini’s policy lies deep,. Pierre Laval’s visit was best viewed after a flashback to last March, when Il Duce unfolded before the Fascist Quinquennial Assembly of 4,000 prominent Blackshirts his 60-year plan (TIME. March 26). After making his favorite ironical remark “Our relations with Switzerland continue to be friendly.” the Dictator challenged Frenchmen thus: “Reality demands that I state that none of the problems which have existed between France and ourselves for 15 years has been solved. Not one!”

Il Duce then indicated that his policy does not run counter to the interests of France. “Italy has no future in the west and north!” he cried. “Her future lies to the east and south, in Asia and Africa. The vast resources of Asia must be valorized, and Africa must be brought within the orbit of civilization. . . . We demand that the nations which have already arrived in Africa do not block at every step Italian expansion!”

Nations with African colonies adjoining Italy’s are Britain and France, but friction has been chiefly with France. Because other parts of the Dictator’s speech breathed bombast, most commentators dismissed it as all bombast. In Paris clear-headed old Louis Barthou saw things differently. Secret pourparlers began. II Duce told nearly half a million Italians, pack-jamming Cathedral Square in Milan’ that he was up to something (TIME, Oct. 15)-“Our relations with France have very greatly improved in recent times,” he cried. “We hope soon to reach an accord which will be very fruitful.” When hubbub greeted this announcement Mussolini said in a fatherly way to his blackshirts, “Your reactions to this speech of mine are so intelligent that they prove to me that, while it is true that diplomatic action must be secret, it is possible to speak frankly on foreign affairs to a great people!”

So accustomed were correspondents to thinking of Mussolini as anti-French at this time that one great U. S. news service put a dispatch on the wire which caused editors to headline: ITALY HA-HA’S FRENCH AMITY. Half Million Fascists Roar at Mussolini’s “Joke.”

Since U. S. radio listeners also thought the crowd laughed, scant attention was paid when Il Duce’s son-in-law and press chief Excellency Count Ciano protested: “If Americans heard Mussolini on the radio they heard no laughter, much less ‘gales of laughter.’ When the Duce mentioned France they heard an expectant hush among the people—a hush awaiting what he had to say—and after he said it they heard unanimous applause.”

Last week Count Ciano emphatically could laugh last, as Excellency Mussolini and Excellency Laval negotiated their entente in frowning Palazzo Venezia.

“Great Hopes! Great Hopes!” Multipower conferences convene late. Last week promptly at 9 a. m. Mussolini and Laval faced each other across the Dictator ‘s long, black-oak worktable. Their first job was to “close” on the agreements already secretly arrived at. These were:

1) A mutual pledge for concerted Franco-Italian action to guarantee permanently the integrity of Austria and keep her out of Nazi clutches.

2) Mutual agreement upon final demarcation of the long-disputed African frontier between Italian Libya and French West Africa.

To square off these matters took 90 minutes. At that point the two statesmen had achieved much, plenty to warrant the “high spirits” in which they were observed to sit down to lunch in Palazzo Quirinale with massive Queen Elena between them and minute King Vittorio Emanuele on the Frenchman’s left.

To all appearances fun was had. Laval is the son of a storekeeper, and Mussolini is the son of a blacksmith, but for that matter Elena is the daughter of a Montenegrin mountain chieftain who made himself King. One of Her Majesty’s ladies-in-waiting has written of Her Majesty’s father thus: “He preferred a thousand times his native dress with knives stuck into the broad belt to any other kind, and preferred cutting with these same knives a cold fowl or a piece of mountain mutton as it hung in the family larder to sitting down to a properly appointed dinner.” At the royal luncheon table, however, His Majesty, a keen, hard aristocrat of the old Italian breed, had no difficulty in keeping up his end with the robust offspring of the storekeeper, the blacksmith and the chieftain.

That night there was a bigger banquet, this time in Palazzo Venezia, with over 1,000 carefully checked guests. After all the real triumph of last week was the fact that Pierre Laval was actually in Rome—the first French Cabinet Minister to take that inevitable road since the War.

Cried the Dictator, raising his frothing glass of Italian champagne first: “We have worked not only to bring about agreement on particular questions concerning our two countries but also to reaffirm the ideals which come from our community of origin! The visit of our distinguished guest is of vast European significance, the first meeting point in the policies of two great Latin states.”

Toasting in reply, Lawyer Laval said that Editor Mussolini has “written the most beautiful page in the history of modern Italy. We have given rise to great hopes, great hopes!” continued Orator Laval. “The world follows our efforts with passionate interest! All who are animated by the ideal of Peace today have their eyes turned toward Rome! We must not deceive them. Peace must be maintained!”

Off the Record. The entente being thus well toasted, Mussolini and Laval again sat down at the big table, this time for three more hours of slugging, off-the-record negotiation. They proceeded to talk turkey about Italy’s ambition to have naval equality with France, about French insistence that Il Duce stop flirting with the idea of ultimate revision of the Treaties of Versailles, Trianon. St. Germain, etc. More especially they talked about Abyssinia.

Into that luckless Afric realm Italians are expanding—with bombing planes, tanks, armored cars (TIME. Dec. 24). Squealing for protection His Imperial Majesty Power of Trinity I. King of Kings, Conquering Lion of Judah and the Elect of God was last week trying to invoke Article XI of the League covenant. To Rome last week Geneva seemed particularly far away. Neither Mussolini nor Laval is squeamish. A definite impression got around that France will not protest too much if Italy makes of Abyssinia what Japan made of Manchuria.

Pacts & Protocols. As the first member of a French Government to call at the Vatican since Napoleon burst in, Pierre Laval was most warmly received by the Supreme Pontiff who invested him with the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX, then bestowed his blessing upon the entire French party, including Josette.

That evening at 7 o’clock the long table in Palazzo Venezia was piled with pacts and protocols. All were signed with celerity by Mussolini and Laval, after which correspondents spent a frantic evening cabling summaries. In sum France and Italy agreed: 1) that Italy will receive some 58,000 sq. mi. of French African territory, also a share in the French-controlled strategic railway which dominates Abyssinia, and an outlet providing Italy with a port on the Gulf of Aden; 2) that Italy will aid France toward bringing Germany to a reasonable stabilization of her armaments and in inducing the Fatherland to return to the League; 3) that Austrian independence shall be guaranteed by a general pact of the Danubian States, plus Italy and France, with Britain invited to adhere; 4) that Il Duce’s pet Four-Power Pact, which the Little Entente once almost succeeded in quashing (TIME, May 29), will be revived and expanded as a general European Pact pledging all signatories to consult with one another when peace is threatened.

As Pierre Laval prepared to board his train for Paris most observers agreed that he and Benito Mussolini had made each other prime candidates for the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize—even if squalling Abyssinia is incidentally butchered.