The Italian Visit
There will be widespread regret in this country if, as the result of internal difficulties following the Parliamentary defeat on Wednesday night the visit of the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Italy to London next week should have to be post- poned. Although there is quite a strong current of anglophobia in certain Italian political circles (largely kept alive by a some- what out-of-date colonial jealousy), there is no equivalent senti- ment here. Most English people have probably forgotten that Italy still bears some of the stigma of her enemy status—her . Army, Navy and Air Force are 'limited, by treaty, Trieste h cut off and (though this is no fault of the Western Powers) Italy is not yet a member of the United Nations. In fact one of the purposes of the Italian visit is probably to remind the British people that things do not look quite the same seen from Rome as from 'London. The • Italians have not forgotten Trieste, nor have they forgotten the Italian colonists who face an uncertain fate in the former territories of Libya and Eritrea. In both these questions the British Government has made clear its sympathies with the Italian point of view. It has unequivocally expressed the view that Trieste should be returned to Italy, and there is no reason to suppose that the new position of Yugoslavia • has affected this view. The British delegate at Lake Success has also consistently tried to get adopted more realistic policies for Libya and Entrea than those with which they have now been saddled, and which will leave all their inhabitants, including those of Italian race, to the hazards of independence or Ethiopian rule. At this stage it is hard to see what more can be offered to the Italian except fresh doses of sympathy. It is in the discussions on Western European defence that more useful work is to be done,
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