DICTATORS' ORATIONS
WE are experiencing a moment of quiescence between _ deliverances by dictators. Signor Mussolini sur- veyed the whole field of foreign politics at Palermo last Friday and Herr Hitler is no doubt already meditating the speech he is to address to the forthcoming congress of the National Socialist Party at Nuremberg. These utterances are always awaited with some apprehension. The partial supersession of the old diplomacy by the round- table methods made familiar at Geneva is sometimes criticised, but both are relegated to a discredited obsoles- cence by the defiant clarion-calls which have long since been accepted as the sole vehicle by which a dictator can give expression to his views. The democracies fortunately react less violently to challenge than the dictators themselves, or a war of words would soon bring us to the verge of physical conflict. But Signor Mussolini's Palermo speech is described in some quarters as an olive branch, and it may perhaps be legitimate, in comparison with some of the Duce's earlier addresses, so to describe it.
How is Italian policy defined in the second year of the Spanish conflict, the second of the occupation of Abyssinia and the fifteenth of the Fascist era ? Italy, says Signor Mussolini, is, as everyone must see, pur- suing a policy of peace. She is in the happiest relations with all her neighbours—Austria, Hungary, Jugoslavia, Switzerland — France alone excepted. France, most lamentably, is an idolater at the shrine of Geneva and contains elements congenitally hostile to Fascist con- ceptions. Great Britain Italy meets with—not clashes with—at sea ; there have been misunderstandings with Great Britain, due largely to Britain's ignorance ; she has not learned to know this young, virile Italy ; but there is no reason why misunderstandings should not be cleared away provided certain realities are recognised, chief among them Italy's new Empire. On that, however, the Duce appears ready for compromise. He does not ask the League of Nations to recognise Italy's possession of Abyssinia, but simply to decide that no independent Abyssinia qualified to retain a seat in the Assembly survives. That decision in fact is one which the Assembly can hardly avoid taking, regardless altogether of Italian pressure. Finally Signor Mussolini points to the Rome-Berlin axis as something fixed for all eternity, and declares categorically that Italy will never tolerate Bolshevism in the Mediterranean.
As a whole the speech was not intentionally provo- cative. It may have been genuinely meant to be conciliatory. On one point only need exception be taken to it, but that point is of considerable importance. Signor Mussolini referred twice to the Mediterranean. He repeated that to Italy it was vita, her life, to Britain merely via, a highway. So long as the highway is left free to all ships of all nations on.their lawful occasions Italy is welcome to the distinction between vita and via, but there can be no countenance for any claim to superior rights to our own in Mediterranean waters. The larger claim that Italy has the right to ban Bol- shevism in any Mediterranean State—meaning, of course, Spain—must be rejected in toto. She has just as much and as little right as Britain or France has to ban Fascism in Spain. The only right re'gime for Spain, , as Mr. Eden said at the beginning of the struggle and has frequently repeated since, is the re'gime the Spanish people themselves want. It may be long before the will of a clear majority of the people can be ascertained or enforced, but in the meantime there can be no justifica- tion for external interference, whether from Rome or Berlin or Moscow or London, directed towards imposing any particular form of government on Spain. On that point there can be no rapprochement between Rome and London so long as Signor Mussolini insists on his right to interfere. If, as accumulating evidence suggests, Italy is carrying interference to the point of assisting, Or actually engaging in, armed attack on Spanish and other vessels in the Mediterranean, then so far, from the rapprochement with Britain which Signor Mussolini appears to desire there can only be sharp and, very dangerous tension. It is not in his interest to invite that.
Of Herr Hitler's Nuremberg speech it will be time to speak when the speech has been delivered. It will be of substantially more importance than Signor Mussolini's, for no one would claim thai the two partners in the Rome-Berlin axis were of equal weight. Herr Hitler, too, is credited with a desire for good relations with this country. That is certainly recipro- cated here, but it depends on Germany, not on us, whether such relations are possible or not. BetWeen the internal re'gime here and the internal regime there a gulf that widens rather than narrows is fixed. The methods of the Nazi Party, as disclosed in normal , daily messages from Berlin, are increasingly repugnant to anyone who cares for democracy or freedom. Take a sample crop—that of the week immediately. past. Mr. Ebbutt, The Times correspondent in Berlin, tis finally expelled, obviously because he has sent to his paper accurate reports, such as no German paper is allowed to print, of the Church dispute ; an order is issued whereby Jews may only sit on special labelled seats in parks ; Jewish booksellers are forbidden to sell to non-Jews ; a Judge non-suits a Jew who claims payment of a. debt, on the ground that no German ought to deal with a Jew, and therefore a Jew cannot claim money from him ; membership of Rotary. Clubs by National Socialists is declared illegal, partly because' the Rotary movement believes in, and preaches, inter- nationalism, partly because it is not anti-Semite ; it is announced that the number of pastors imprisoned for putting God above the State is now over a hundred'.
This, it may be said, is Germany's own affair, and we have no more right to interfere than Italy has in Spain. That is perfectly true. But it is difficult to contemplate what is happening inside Germany and believe that the men responsible for a policy of force and repression and persecution within will make con- ciliation and co-operation their guiding motives in foreign policy. Power-politics is supreme internally. Is or is not Herr' Hitler thinking in terms of power- politics externally ? His speeches, like Signor Musso- lini's, habitually dwell on his country's might. (It is a contagious habit ; our own Ministers have taken to the same language.) How is that might to be used in relation, for example, to Czechoslovakia ? What is the goal. Germany ,aims a reaching, whether by force or by agreement ? That Herr Hitler should desire to make Germany as strong as any nation in Europe is intelligible enough. No one was threatening her, but she is as entitled to be strong as France or Russia. And she is strong. No one has any illusions about that. But honour being satisfied—or, if Herr Hitler prefers, security achieved—in that field, what next ? With whom is Germany ready to co-operate, and on what terms ? Through a reformed League of Nations ? Through a new pact between the old Locarno Powers ? Is Herr Hitler; now that his country has achieved armed equality, ready for armed equality at a lower level all round, to the immense economic and moral advantage of all concerned ?. These are questions to which we may reasonably expect some answer at Nuremberg. We may, know then whether Herr Hitler has a con- structive foreign policy to outline or prefers to snatch what profit may come of fishing in troubled waters.
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