Looming Rapprochement

Looming Rapprochement

Two great Powers who have Quarreled much over next-to-nothing moved rapidly to adjust their differences last week. At Rome, Signor Benito Mussolini said: "I believe that a full, cordial and lasting understanding between France and Italy is possible and indeed, necessary. . . . When diplomacy has completed the preliminary work, a meeting between the French and Italian Foreign Ministers* will be logical." Thus he replied to Foreign Minister Aristide Briand of France who recently declared: "I would meet him [Mussolini] at any time without displeasure." (TIME, Dec. 12). As an earnest that these sentiments are sincere, the French Government suppressed, last week, the anti-Fascist journal Corriere Degli Italiani published at Paris, after its editor had headlined: "One man [obviously Mussolini] must die for his country!" In future, declared the French Foreign Office last week, all articles tending to incite antiFascists to assassinate Il Duce will be pitilessly suppressed in France. Since Signer Mussolini has tried for months if not years to coerce the French Government into taking .just this stand, his good humor last week was understandable. Said he, however, apropos of a possible treaty of friendship with France: "Such an undertaking . . . could not be based solely on literary and sentimental reasons but must rest on the elimination . . . of reason for friction between the two countries." In the past such friction has been chiefly fomented by journalists on French and Italian soil. There remain, however, certain definite clashes of interest--such as those between the French and Italian spheres in North Africa.

* The Italian Foreign Minister is, of course, Il Duce himself. He is also Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior. Minister of War, Minister of Marine, Minister of Aeronautics, Minister of Corporations.