MUSSOLINI'S AIMS
By CECIL JACKSON
SIGNOR MUSSOLINI has led his dazed and reluctant people to the very edge of war against us. His programme is war or unresisting collapse of what stands between him and his desire. Under the fascination of the Axis he has renounced the Italian national programme by which Italy was to advance to an increasingly important and independent position as a Great Power among Great Powers, in favour of a programme of junior partnership in a European revolutionary Empire. Like Germany, Italy seeks to get loose of the trammels of nationhood as such. It is a dream on the grand scale that Mussolini has conceived, but one which in quality falls short of the standards of European history. It is within those stan- dards that we shall be ready to consider Italy's claims for greater privileges as a growing nation, when the pagan renais- sance seeking incarnation in the revolutionary Empire of the Axis Powers has been shown up in its vital and human inferiority.
We may have reason to expect that the illusion of its superiority will fade out sooner in Italy than in Germany: Italy has rooted in her history a Cavour and a Mazzini, whose tradi- tions of liberty cannot be extirpated in a few years. Under the duress of war Italy may more quickly come to distinguish the rational elements in her aspirations from those which, being irrational, can only be fought about. We may have some hopes of finding a sane national patriotism arising in Italy under the impact of hard blows and capable of entering into negotiations. But in the meanwhile we must prepare to give and to receive hard blows.
In September, 1939, Italy was generally held to present numerous vulnerable points to the enemy. Abyssinia with its large white garrison lay beyond Egypt and Suez, its sole possible routes of communication with the homeland thus lying along the Suez Canal or across the Sudan and the deserts of Libya. It is unthinkable that Suez should be available to an Italy at war. It would seem, then, that an invasion of the Sudan from Abyssinia, and of Egypt from Libya, to break a passage across Africa from Rome to Addis Ababa and to the Indian Ocean, would be the sole alternative to condemning Italian Abyssinia and its garrison to beleaguerment.
Such schemes, audacious in any event, were rendered much more hazardous by the pressure in Tunis of a French army supposedly capable of a rapid settlement of accounts with the Italian armies in Libya, by the presence of the great French naval station of Bizerta and of the British station of Alexandria with the fleets based on these, to interfere with the communica- tions between Italy and Libya. In the new circumstances, with Germany at the gates of Paris, the troops which France can spare for North African work are reduced, with a correspond- ing strengthening of Italian striking power whether towards Tunis (perhaps the one objective against which Italian troops would march today with satisfaction) or towards Egypt. Against that is the unfavourable summer season for desert campaigning.
A large Italian colony in Egypt, holding many of the key positions in the country, would render difficult the task which the Egyptian Government, doubtless with a zeal kindled by Italy's scorn for the cause of the self-government of growing peoples, would undertake in co-operation with the Allies. Approaches have apparently been made in recent days to Japan to gain assurances of Japanese supplies to Abyssinia from the Indian Ocean in case of war. Whatever the possi- bilities of such supplies, it seems that Italy must either start a war with the disaster of severance of communications with Abyssinia, or must risk the forces of Abyssinia in a supposed lightning move across Egypt.
It may still be doubted whether Mussolini if he intervenes in the war will attempt a direct assault upon France. To combine with Hitler in subduing France, and to break the French tie with Great Britain, may no doubt be his purpose, implicit in his aspirations for a unique grandeur in the Mediterranean. He would, however, by opening the war in that manner, at once focus upon it the full resentment of all who instinctively feel that this war is in contrast with the very spirit of Italian nationhood. Save by a grave weakening of the French defensive forces on the Alps through the paramount need for reinforcements to the North, the Italians have been thought to have no chance of a successful invasion of French metropolitan territory ; the frontiers are on the line chosen by Napoleon III for the advantage of France. A stroke in Corsica would be more popular, but not easy and in any case not decisive.
A few months ago Mussolini appeared likely to intervene in the war only from one motive and in one type of eventuality. That was before, in his vexation at the contraband control's interference with Italy's coal supplies, he had turned his hostility in full force against Britain's sea power ; before, also, the grave events in Flanders had retarded the hour of decisive Allied victories. At that time it seemed that only a German intervention in the Balkans, threatening a whole zone of Mediterranean territory with German overlordship, could bring Mussolini into the war. His purpose would then have been to share in a local triumph which could otherwise have been completely German and gained at the expense of Italy no less than of Great Britain.
Italian diplomatists and propagandists went round quietly assuring the Allies that such an Italian action in the Balkans would in reality have a character the very opposite of their apparent character of aiding the Germans in fulfilment of the halo-German alliance. They pressingly urged, these Italian informants, that the tragedy of Allied intervention which would throw the weight of Weygand's army (as the near Eastern army of the Allies was then known) against an Italy which was not at heart unfriendly should be avoided.
The aid rendered by Mussolini to Hitler since the Brenner meeting has been far too complete for any such oblique and as it were non-bellicose entry of Mussolini into the war to be now worth considering. At the same time Germany, having broken loose over Scandinavia and the Low Countries, can hardly be still in the same degree ready or eager to break out also over the Balkans. For Italy to initiate the fight on the Balkan front would presumably mean the junction of Turkey with the Allies and the conciliation of the Balkan countries in a single sentiment of determined resistance against Italy, backed up by such forces as the Allies have in the offing. The outcome of such a Balkan war could hardly in any case be decisive. Balkan episodes, however, such as a struggle for Crete, might well be involved at some stage of a conflict centred elsewhere.
Of the possible modes of intervention here considered, an immediate attack upon Tunis seems that which would at once most seriously affect the main theatre of war to Germany's advantage, and also be capable of presentation to the Italian people as an act of justice. Egypt and the Red Sea would, of course, catch the flame. To command communications through Suez for the supplies of the Allied army in Syria, while denying Suez and Red Sea communications to Italy, would be the task of the Allied Fleet based upon Alexandria ; to blockade Italy would be the task of the Allied fleet to the West. Armed with a formidable fleet of submarines and a large and powerful, if not up-to-date, air force, the Italians would set out to challenge this grip. Not without reason do Mussolini and his followers study in anxious detail the experiences of our navy elsewhere in conflict with submarine craft and with aircraft.
In view of Italy's dependence for fuel and material on the outside world—that is, today either on the countries she thinks of attacking or on transoceanic and not too friendly neutrals, or lastly, not much better, on exhausted Germany—it can be assumed that Italy intends to fight only for the short period in which Hitler can stake his all on gaining victory in the West. The Axis is an association of gamblers. The way out of it is the way back to politics based on seriousness of intention.
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