ITALY: Forewarned, Forearmed

In chastened mood the Italian Ambassador to France, Count Gaetano Manzoni, delivered last week to the French Foreign Office the Italian Government’s official ”regrets” that Italian cadets and students recently shied stones at the French Consulate at Bari—a direct result of Signor Benito Mussolini’s inflammatory speaking tour (TIME, May 26, et seq.).

Next day in Milan that intense person, Editor Arnaldo Mussolini (brother) clarioned in the family newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia:

“The words of our Duce were opportune and justified. … He had foreknowledge of the military preparations of France [i.e. the inclusion of $40,000,000 for military expenditures in the current French budget]. . . . Nobody in the world can have the colossal impudence to believe (hat the gigantic program of French armaments are in consequence of Signor Mussolini’s speeches! . . .

“We can now understand why, although the Duce never talked of foreign peoples and governments, but alluded solely to men, parties and sects, his speeches created such a great impression in France.

“It was because in France alone live, prosper and organize the men, parties, groups and sects which regard sympathetically the eventuality of war against Fascist Italy.”

Less responsible organs of Fascist opinion than Il Popolo egged on the current Italo-French war scare by charging that sums voted by the French Parliament will be “diverted eastward” and spent as a “secret subsidy” on the Army of Jugo-slavia’s Dictator-King Alexander, staunch, bantam ally of France.

At a cabinet session some days later Il Duce announced that Italy will spend $26,000,000 extra this year on armaments, an “answer to France” which Le Temps of Paris, semi-official organ of the French Government, “answered back” with an editorial furiously flaying the Mussolini brothers but concluding “war against Italy would be . . most absurd.”