By a happy chance a settlement of the Jubaland dispute
has coincided with the Italian royal visit. The dispute has attracted much more attention in Italy than here, and it may be necessary to remind our readers of the facts. Italy, when she came into the War, was promised, together with other things, an enlargement of Italian Somaliland. This meant handing over to her a portion of Kenya, and when the War was over negotiations began -for the purpose of settling the new boundary. These negotiations have continued with a good deal of trouble and heart-bunting ever since. There were two great difficulties ; the mapping of a desert frontier is an extremely complicated and arduous business in any case, and we think that some of the Italian newspapers did not make sufficient excuses for the inevitable causes of delay. The other difficulty was that successive British Governments tried to make the Jubaland negotiations an occasion for settling the Dodecanese problem. Mr. MacDonald has followed a different policy. He has separated the two questions, and in that we are sure he has been wise.
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