WAR IN SPAIN: Friends

That Italian aviators, Italian planes, Italian bombs had been destroying British shipping could have been read in Italian newspapers last fortnight. Rome’s La Tribuna openly boasted of Italian planes from Italian-held Majorca sinking 18 ships in 19 days. Rome’s Giornale d’Italia likewise boasted five foreign ships bombed by Italian planes. Regardless of this, Britain’s “realistic” Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is Italy’s most potent English friend. On the Anglo-Italian agreement of last April—an agreement not to be implemented until Italy withdraws her forces from Rightist Spain—is staked Neville Chamberlain’s political life. That life has become closer & closer to jeopardy recently as popular and Parliamentary indignation rose (see p. 21) over the mounting casualties among British seamen sailing supplies to Leftist Spain.

No less anxious for the treaty to come into force is Dictator Mussolini. With a considerably curtailed wheat crop, with Fascist finances in none-too-good shape, Italy is impatient for the day when she can receive a British loan. So in Rome last week British Ambassador Lord Perth and Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano, Dictator Mussolini’s son-in-law, got together. Lord Perth suggested that the Italian Government use its “discreet influence” with Generalissimo Franco to stop the bombings. Realizing that continued attacks might cause his good English friend to lose his job, Italy’s dictator decided to “advise” his Spanish friend to: 1) respect the Union Jack on the high seas; 2) designate three ports in Leftist Spain where “honest traffic in goods under the international flag” will be respected.

Stressed at the Italian Foreign Office was the diplomatic nicety that Rightist Spain was an independent country, also hinted was the idea that Generalissimo Franco might choose to ignore Friend Mussolini’s “advice.” Result last week, however, of Dictator Mussolini’s “discreet influence” was that no more British ships were bombed, no more British lives lost.