NEWS OF THE WEEK
Air DALADIER'S broadcast speech on Wednesday IVI • evening was admirable in tone and substance. He was entitled to speak with confidence of France's recovery and her present unity and strength, but the essential passages of the speech dealt inevitably with Italy. The quarrel between Italy and France is wholly of Italy's making. Her Press, in- tent on inflaming public opinion, has insisted in ungoverned and menacing language and with a complete lack of all pre- cision on Italy's title to certain undefined concessions by France in various areas. The King's speech in Rome last week and Signor Mussolini's speech last Sunday contained suggestions that the Italian claims had been clearly set out in a Note of last December. M. Daladier, by publishing the Note, exposes the complete inaccuracy of that. Nothing more definite has been said by any responsible person in Italy than was said by the Duce on Sunday, when he declared the questions at issue to be Tunisia, Jibuti, the Suez Canal—that and no more. M. Daladier's reply was admirable. He asserted that France would yield not an inch of her soil; he made the obvious point that an illicit act—the seizure of Abyssinia—could give no possible basis to claims arising out of it; but he added most properly that France was perfectly ready to examine any proposals that might be submitted to her. Since all Franco-Italian differences were supposed to have been settled by the agreement of 1935, which France ratified and Italy did not, it is clearly for Italy to indicate what form of settlement she now proposes to take its place.
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