Signor Crispi has replied, in a Nate bearing date August
13th, to M. Goblet's Note of August 3rd, on the question of ihe applicability of the Capitulations to the Italian rule at Massowah, on the Red Sea. The Note is extremely defiant in tone ; and followed, as its publication has been, by Signor Crispi's immediate visit to Prince Bismarck at Friedrichsruh, and his emphatically cordial reception by Prince Bismarck, it Appears to denote a real wish on the part of Italy and Germany to display a kind of alliance which may be threatening to France. Signor Crispi remarks that the occupation took place before the Act of the Berlin Conference which prescribed that when a place belonging to no other Power shall be occupied by a European Power, it shall be notified to all the other Powers that such an occupation has taken place. Massowah had become subject not only to the administration, but to the abso- lute sovereignty of Italy, and the animus dominandi had been formally proclaimed on several occasions in the Italian Parlia- ment. In such a case the Capitulations, says Signor Crispi, cease ipso facto to have any validity. The fiscal taxes had been paid without demur in Massowah till the French agent (who "exercised the consular function at Massowah merely on sufferance ") instigated resistance to them. Farther, it is admitted that he had done so in compliance with formal in- structions from Paris. "The Powers having before them all the details of the discussion, will know which side is in the wrong,—whether it is the Power which enforces respect for the law assuring public order, or whether it is the one which excites
a peaceful population to disregard the law and to defy the authority of the established Government." Signor Crispi declares that he is anxious to regard the controversy as at an end, and to pursue peacefully the line of policy he has laid down; but this is hardly the tone in which a controversy of this kind can be ended, at least where an equal or a superior Power is the one accused of "inciting a peaceful population to disregard the law." There is menace in the Note.
