NEWS OF THE WEEK
ALL that can be said, at the moment when these words have to be written, about the Prime Minister's talks in Rome is that they appear to have begun auspiciously. That is as much as could be hoped for, and if Mr. Cham- berlain, in accordance with his pledge to M. Daladier, declines to discuss Tunis, and Signor Mussolini, as some Rome reports have it, refuses to discuss Spain, the prospect of any concrete agreement emerging from the conversations seems remote. But such a result would not mean that the talks had been valueless. Given the creation of a favourable atmosphere, the elaboration of results can be pursued later through ordinary diplomatic machinery. The fact that both Britain and Italy have everything to gain by co-operation and everything to lose by rivalry, particularly in the Mediter- ranean, and equally that for both nations peace is an urgent need—unless, indeed, Italy is near the point at which the impossibility of coping with the economic situation may drive her rulers into some external adventure as distraction— ought, if reason has still any place in international dis- cussions, to provide adequate basis for at least a firm under- standing, if not an agreement in black-and-white. The desire of the Italian people for peace is unconcealed and cannot be completely ignored by the Duce. There is pretty certainly some truth, moreover, in the statement by the Rome correspondent of The Times that Signor Mussolini would find it hard, if not impossible, to take his country into any war in which Great Britain was on the other side.
