The Duce and the World Signor Mussolini's speech on foreign
affairs at Milan on Sunday gives the impression, for all its vehemence, of a consciousness of weakness rather than of strength. It is significant that in the Italo-German rapprochement the running is nearly all being made by the Italians. It was Count Ciano who issued the optimistic accounts of the Hitler-Ciano conversations, and when Signor Mussolini talks of the line between Berlin and Rome as the " axis around which all the European States who want peace may co-operate " he is attaching to the rapprochement a weight and value which Germany never has. Of the other declarations in the speech, the en- couragement of Hungary's revisionist ambitions is calcu- lated to draw the Little Entente Powers closer than ever, though that tendency is meant to be, and may to some extent actually be, counteracted by the Duce's con- ciliatory addresses to Jugoslavia. As to the minatory references to Great Britain, it need only be said, as Lord Halifax said plainly in the House of Lords on Tuesday, that this country entertains no feelings of animosity towards Italy, apart from its condemnation of her viola- tion of the League Covenant, and is conscious of no conflict of interests in the Mediterranean. We certainly have no desire to lay any kind of restriction on Italy in those waters, and we are not yet compelled to believe that she desires to lay any restriction on us.
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