A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ALONDON business man who has just been travelling in Germany and Italy and other European countries has given me an interesting résumé of his impressions. One was the general disbelief in those two countries in the likelihood of war this year. Moderate Germans think not only that the anti- Axis forces have grown too strong for Hitler to challenge them, but that Hitler realises that himself. In Italy the same view was held, though some extreme Fascists argued that even war was preferable to Italy's present economic straits, or, as they choose to put it, to a continuance of the present inequitable distribution of economic wealth between States. One other conviction, gleaned from a good source, was that whether a formal Anglo-Russian -treaty was con- cluded or not, Russia would unquestionably join in any, general war to stop German aggression. Needless to say, I give these quotations for what they are worth, which may be little. They can be put in the general balance and weighed with other reports confirmatory or conflicting. And there is no lack of reports of distinctly more pessimistic tone.
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