"B" for Balkans

Three tentacles of Italian statecraft linked Rome, last week, with the three "B" capitals of Eastern Europe. P: "B" stood for Belgrade. There the Jugoslavian Government was reminded of Italian enmity, last week, by tidings that the newspapers of Rome, ever subservient to Dictator Benito Mussolini, were por-tentiously in frenzy over a Jugoslavian pamphlet entitled, What Every Jugoslavian Soldier Ought To Know.

II Giornale d' Italia, blatant Fascist organ, charged that the pamphlet is of "almost official" character and is being distributed to all Jugoslav soldiers and sailors. Pamphlet excerpts:

"Our external enemies are the Italians, Germans, Hungarians, Bulgarians and Rumanians. . . .

"A soldier enters the army to learn the use of arms in order that he may use them successfully in case an enemy should attack our country, or when we ourselves will attack an enemy to free our brothers still under the foreign yoke. . . .

"Not all our territories are united under our flag. The whole of Istria, with Gorizia, Gradisca and Trieste as far as the River Isonzo, the city and Province of Zara, the island of Cherso, Lussin Grande and Lus-sin Piccolo, Lagosta and Pelagosa, as well as southeastern Slavonia, are now in Italian hands. Northern Corinthia and Styria are now Austrian. Northern Belanja and the Province of Mur are now Hungarian. The Eastern Banat is now Rumanian. The Provinces of Vidin and Stredac are now Bulgarian. Scutari in Northern Albania is now Albanian."

Such a pamphlet, authentic or spurious, vexed Italians, as U. S. citizens would be vexed by an "almost official" intimation that Britannia proposed to repossess herself of Boston.

P: "B" stood for Budapest. Last week the Hungarian Government was seriously compromised when five freight cars from Verona, Italy, which had been intercepted as they crossed from Austria into Hungary, were proved to be loaded with ma-chine guns although invoiced as "agricul- tural instruments."

The Hungarian Government's lame explanation was that the guns were con- signed to Poland. The Italian Government, bolder, sought to forestall possible investigation by the League of Nations, postulating through the Fascist press the "unalterable opposition'' of Signer Benito Mussolini to such procedure.

Both Italy and Hungary, now quasi-allies (TIME, April 18), are placed in a difficult legal position, since Hungary stands officially disarmed by the Allies under the Treaty of Trianon, to which Italy was a signatory. P: "B" stood for Bucharest. Thence Foreign Minister Nicholas Titulescu of Rumania sped, last week, to Rome. Emerging from a lengthy conversation with // Duce he said: "We thoroughly discussed every single problem interesting our two countries and found a perfect identity of view. This is not an idle phrase. I mean it literally. I think I have said plenty."

If in these words there was an atom of meaning, they implied that Signer Mussolini is meeting, at last, with some success in his ambitious scheme to draw Rumania out of the orbit of her time-honored ally, France. An Italian-Albanian-Bulgarian-Rumanian rapprochement spanning the lower Balkans and linked up with Hungary, thus encircling Italy's enemy Jugoslavia, has long been a favorite pipe dream for correspondents. Lest it crystallize into a rumor, M. Titulescu prepared, last week, to visit Paris for a friendly chat with Foreign Minister Aristide Briand of France.

--ln 1914.