Monday, Nov. 25, 1935

Slabs, Suttan & Schemers

''The Grand Council of Fascism, united on the eve of the application of so-called sanctions, regards the date Nov. 18, 1935 as a day of ignominy and iniquity in the history of the world. . . . The Grand Council orders each city and town council of Italy to erect a slab to record the Economic Siege, so that it will remain throughout the centuries as a documentation of the enormous injustice perpetrated against Italy, which has contributed so much to the civilization of all continents. . . . The Grand Council acclaims its enthusiasm in Il Duce, who realizes the supreme right of the nation to win security in Africa."

This motion was adopted at massive Palazzo Venezia last week in a tumultuous closing of ranks around the Dictator by Italians who were saying in their own way, "We hold these truths to be self-evident. . . ." With Mussolini stood Grand Councilmen whose names the world knows: Marconi, Volpi, Balbo, Grandi and others, scarcely one of whom has not been the butt of anti-Fascist insinuations that he had "quarreled with Mussolini" at one time or another. Air Marshal Italo Balbo, once rumored "banished'' to the post of Governor of Libya by the "jealous" Dictator, has been in Rome repeatedly since the outset of the war and on warplane shopping trips to France to strengthen Italy's air arm. As sanctions applied by the League of Nations (with Britain applying the spurs and France tugging on the check rein) came into effect this week, Italy was so far from irresolute or bluffing that the greatest of her surviving World War commanders. Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio, was being sent to Africa to redouble the offensive on all fronts (see col. 1).

Sultan & Tactics. At the numerous palaces of His Sherifian Majesty the Sultan of Morocco, Sidi Mohammed, Commander of the Faithful, last week a most remarkable independence was manifest. Was the Empire of Morocco, united in cherished friendship with the Kingdom of Italy, to apply sanctions merely because France was applying them and because the Sultan can do nothing without the countersignature of the French Resident General? The answer seemed to be a ringing Moroccan, "No, 1,000 times no!"

In Paris the suave Foreign Ministry professed to be anxiously considering messages from the Moroccan Government couched in terms to melt hearts of stone. The simple Moroccans wished to continue their large trade with Italy. Meanwhile the Egyptians were rioting bloodily against the British and at all costs the Moroccans must not rise against the French. In these circumstances, French Premier Pierre Laval indicated last week: that Morocco must and will be given the greatest latitude in nonobservance of sanctions consistent with French "devotion to the League." All this Paris pother about Morocco and its 24-year-old puppet Sultan was of course M. Laval's high-sign last week to Italians that he is still secretly working his hardest to obtain the "free hand in Ethiopia'' he promised Benito Mussolini at the time of the Franco-Italian Pact (TIME, Jan. 14).

During the week "Honest Broker" Laval scored the point of negotiating out of the picture initial moves by Captain Anthony Eden to have all League States unite in a "joint reply" to Italy, which had asked them individually last week to say what specific sanctionist steps each will take. This tactical move by Dictator Mussolini to confront each country with which Italy trades on the issue of sanctions and perhaps intimidate some, M. Laval facilitated by talking British Ambassador Sir George Clerk into agreement that France should not join Britain in a joint reply and that the little States should shift for themselves.

Just Around the Corner? To most Europeans the situation boiled down to watchful waiting with Pierre Laval flitting behind the scenes and the Ambassadors in Rome of Britain, France and Germany calling with remarkable frequency upon Benito Mussolini and staying long hours. What did this remind one of? It reminded Europeans of the fairly recent but almost forgotten Four-Power Pact under which Britain, France, Germany and Italy pledged each other to consult mutually for the maintenance of peace and by implication not to act at cross purposes (TIME, June 19, 1933).

Among statesmen of Bolshevik Russia the hush-hush Rome activity last week provoked extreme uneasiness lest a four-power Capitalist-cum-Fascist get-together was being hatched with Ethiopia not so ultimately important after all.

Rumor has been insistent for weeks that M. Laval is in negotiation of some sort through intermediaries with Hen-Hitler. For months Moscow has been afraid he would reverse the Franco-Russian entente fostered by his predecessor M. Barthou, who was assassinated with King Alexander of Yugoslavia (TIME, Oct. 15, 1934).

In Paris the domestic situation had grown extremely tense last week with the Left parties who dominate the Chamber Finance Committee threatening to wreck the Premier's keep-the-franc-on-gold setup of more than 100 decree laws. A break might have to come somewhere and if it came might profoundly affect all Europe's problems including the Ethiopian. With the franc weak on international exchange, King George V's well-informed civil servants in Whitehall began conjecturing in a vein which caused cautious New York Times Correspondent Charles A. Selden to cable: "Premier Laval is now considered by Whitehall as only just around the corner from Fascism himself."

Nervous as cats, French business leaders have long been wishing fervently that they could peer around France's corner and see definitely Colonel Franc,ois de La Rocque or some other "Man on Horseback," now long overdue as France wallows amid deflation.

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