A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
TT is rarely, for obvious reasons, that one can get an .1 informed and candid statement on the situation in Italy from an Italian sufficiently innocuous to the present regime to be able to remain in the country. Some opinions which have just reached me from an Italian of this description, whom I have known for many years, and whom it will be sufficient to speak of as X, are rather striking. Both Italy and Great Britain, in X's view, believed each other to be bluffing. Certainly Mussolini never believed that Britain or any other League Power would ever proceed to sanctions. But while Italy's financial situation is such that a crash Must come in the near future in any case it is unlikely that economic .sanctions would make . themselves effec- tively felt in less than ten or twelve weeks. As to more severe pressure, it is said that Mussolini called his admirals together and told them they might have to fight the British fleet.. They said, " You are sending us to our death. We will go, of course, but —." There is, according to' X, no enthusiasm for the Abyssinian 'cam- paign, but on the other hand no serious opPosition, even latent, to the 'Duce, largely for the reason that nb one can conceive of an alternative to him. A growth of anti-foreign feeling is to be feared, and Communism; negligible six months 'ago, is being taken seriously now. X lays stress—with obvious wisdom—on the danger of any external attempt to dislodge Mussolini. He suggests that the best end of the present trouble might be a formula under which Italy accepted the proposals of the Com- mittee of Five after all. But before that is even discussed every Italian soldier ought to be withdrawn from Abys sinian soil.
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