More Munich?

The "little crisis" which agitated the western end of the Mediterranean last month, when Italians "spontaneously" demanded Tunisia and Corsica from France, popped up again last week in the southern end of the Red Sea.

With Premier Edouard Daladier about to make a swing around France's North African possessions to promote "empire solidarity," France's East African colonists in French Somaliland were suddenly thrown into a panic by reports that 80,000 Italian troops were about to march over the border from Italian East Africa (Eritrea, Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia) and seize the country. As long as 18 months ago, Paris colonial officials noted that detachments of Il Duce's troops had occupied areas on what was probably the French side of the ill-defined French Somaliland-Italian East African border. For weeks the fascist radio station at Addis Ababa had broadcasted predictions that the French would be pushed out of Somaliland into the sea.

After 9,000 alarmed Somalis, Arabs and Indians paraded the streets of sweltering Djibouti with banners declaring We Don't Want to Suffer the Same Fate as Ethiopia the French Navy Ministry dispatched two warships to the scene. The Colonial Ministry sent a detachment of 650 Senegalese sharpshooters from Marseille to strengthen the little Somaliland garrison of 1,500 colonials.

If the Italians have the makings of a just claim to Tunisia--out of which they were rather crudely muscled by the French in 1881--they have a juster claim to a foothold on the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, the 15-mile-wide channel between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden now dominated by French Somaliland on one side and British Aden on the other (see map). Those who control Bab-el-Mandeb control the southeastern vestibule to the Mediterranean.

In 1935, Italian Premier Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval signed a treaty ceding to Italy not only a piece of desert south of Libya but a strip between French Somaliland and Italian Eritrea which would have given Italy a position on the Gulf of Aden, the island of Dumeria in the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb and a share in the French-owned Addis Ababa-Djibouti railroad.

These territorial readjustments had been promised Italy 20 years before in return for Italy's joining the Allies. But the concessions were never made because Foreign Minister Laval was booted out and Parliament refused to ratify his dealings with II Duce. Last week II Duce took occasion to renounce publicly his end of the pact, hoping that a new African settlement, based on the Wartime promises, can be wrung from France and Britain. He wants most the Addis Ababa-Djibouti rail line of which all but the easternmost 50 miles runs through what is now Italian territory, on which practically all the traffic is Italian. The only way the colony can get to the sea without using the line is by way of the new but much longer highway from Addis Ababa to Assawa (not to be confused with the dead-end military road from Assab south to the Somaliland border).

In her reply to Premier Mussolini last week, France left the door open for further discussion, but announced firmly that: 1) she would not cede one inch of French territory; 2) that she wished no third party to "mediate."

The third party France fears most is Britain's Prime Minister, scheduled to pursue "appeasement" to Rome during the second week in January. France fears that II Duce will attempt to turn Mr. Chamberlain's visit into another Munich deal at France's expense. Although Mr. Chamberlain announced as his New Year's resolution that "Great Britain will not make any further concessions to force," many a Frenchman chortled over a disquieting burlesque. Shrewd Henri de Kerillis, independent Rightist Deputy and one of the most influential Rightists opposed to Premier Daladier, wrote for his newspaper, L'Epoque, an imaginary telephone conversation between the Axial partners:

Mussolini--"Hello, is that you Adolf? This is Benito and I am happy to have you on the end of the line. ... I need some advice on the eve of Chamberlain's arrival. . . . How would you operate?"

Hitler--"What's most important is your first contact with the old man. . . . You begin by awaiting him at the end of your famous office in the Palazzo Venezia. You let him walk 100 meters on a floor more polished than ever. It would be best if he fell down and let his umbrella fall two or three times before reaching you."

Mussolini--"Hi, Hi, you're a scream Adolf. . . . Then I'll ask him for Tunisia, Corsica and Savoy."

Hitler--"Never. You speak of your passionate love for peace. . . . Then suddenly you stiffen, you tighten your fists, you stick out your chin and you speak of Italian force."

Mussolini--"And of German force."

Hitler--"No, only Italian force."

Mussolini--"Really, Adolf, do you think I can go that strong?"

Hitler--"Ah, my friend, if you had seen me at Berchtesgaden. I took him by the lapels. I shook him like a plum tree. I spoke coldly of destroying London and Paris."

Mussolini interrupts several times to suggest that he ask for Tunisia and Corsica but Hitler suggests that he be content for the moment with demanding "Djibouti and some advantages in the Suez Canal."

Hitler--"Then end the meeting and in shaking his hand you tell him nicely: 'You are old and I am young. To get your answer, I will meet you part way. It will be at Milan.' "

Mussolini--"Then when I get Djibouti and the Suez stock, you take the Ukraine."

Hitler--"You said it, Benito!"

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