Any Day, Any Hour

Fifth-column alarms sounded all over the Western Hemisphere last week--in the U. S., in South America (see p. 20). in Mexico, in Canada (see p. 38). So widespread were they that it was plausible to suspect that Adolf Hitler had planned it that way. For if U. S. attention could be focused on the Western Hemisphere, there was less chance of any useful aid being sent to the European democracies, which were at last to bear the full brunt of Axis attack.

Whether Mussolini's Italy could be induced to stay out of the war was no longer the question. Flushed with somebody else's success, Il Duce had upped his demands to include not only Tunisia, Djibouti, French and British Somaliland. Corsica. Malta. Gibraltar and Suez, but also the two French departments of the Maritime Alps (including the Riviera) and the Haute-Savoie. On hearing this news. France called off a trade pact awaiting signature, got ready for war with Italy.

Great Britain, appeaser to the end, kept on offering concessions in contraband control until Mussolini brusquely broke off negotiations. He was too busy preparing for action.

II Duce was too busy even to receive another peace plea from President Roosevelt. His Army was already in the field, under its two commanders, Crown Prince Umberto and General Rodolfo Graziani.

Ten thousand more noncommissioned officers were called to their regiments, soldiers in full equipment marched through border towns, railroad stations clanged with freight cars moving artillery and munitions northwest toward the frontier of France. At week's end Editor Giovanni Ansaldo of Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano's Leghorn newspaper Il Telegrafo broadcast word to the troops that the quiet mobilization that had been going on for several weeks was mobilization for war. As to Italy's reasons for going to war, Editor Ansaldo, in addition to those of territorial aggrandizement, put forth a unique reason. "How could a people like ours, with all our energy, remain outside of a great contest like the present one, in which all the great peoples of Europe are participating? Italy must enter the conflict to keep abreast of the changing times. One of the most important reasons that is leading Italy into the war is the moral reason."

When Italy would march was still an open question. In London odds were 3-to-1 on war with Italy this week. Rome gossip was that Mussolini was waiting for the melting of a light snowfall in the Alps between Italy and France. The snow melts quickly there in June.

Both London and Paris put their propaganda machines to work, broadcast appeals to the Italian people not to fight, but warned them that if they wanted war they would get it. Now that war was certain, it no longer mattered much when it began.

Where? was the question of the hour (see p. 29). Great Britain and France took precautions all around the Mediterranean. In Malta, Enrico Mizzi, Nationalist leader of the Council of Government, and a Catholic Actionist named Herbert Ganado were interned. In Cairo and Alexandria 700 fifth-columnist suspects were clapped into internment camps. An evacuation caravan took civilians away from Menton on the French-Italian frontier, prepared to evacuate Monte Carlo next.

Spain's Part. If Italy and Germany forced revolution-torn Spain into this war, it would mean a new low in respect for the Allies by the totalitarians. Yet the Allies would be too busy on other fronts to spare men for a useless invasion of a devastated country. As Sir Samuel Hoare arrived at his post in Madrid last week, the Government's journalistic mouthpiece, Manuel Aznar, demanded the return of Gibraltar, and Falangist students shouted "Gibraltar!" before the British Embassy. "Yes, yes, yes," muttered Europe's most disliked diplomat when he was told what was going on.

A Spanish military mission visited Rome, went on to Berlin and the Western Front to be impressed. Meanwhile reports that thousands of German "tourists" had flocked into Andalusia pointed to one way Gibraltar might be seized without direct action by the Spaniards.

The Balkan Cake was already cut. Hungary was in Germany's plate, and last week Rumania began demobilizing some of her soldiers. Then suddenly Bucharest announced that pro-Ally Grigore Gafencu had resigned as Foreign Minister "for reasons of health," that he had been replaced by Ion Gigurtu, a strong pro-German whom King Carol made Minister of Communications last October to appease the Nazis (TIME, Jan. 29). Thus was Rumania lost to the Allies.

In Greece, tracts distributed by the thousands told Greece not to worry about becoming involved in the war because "Greece was already under the protection of the Italian Empire." Indignant Greeks were soothed by Dictator John Metaxas, who saw no threat against his country. Correspondents had no trouble cabling from Athens the speculation that Dictator Metaxas had already made a deal with Mussolini, under which Italy would be allowed to occupy Crete and other islands under a mild protest.

The Allies' ally, Turkey, was scared. At week's end Premier Retik Saydam broadcast an assurance to the nation that the Turkish Army was ready to "repel aggression from any side."

Thus, from one end of Europe to the other, signs multiplied that Axis plans to overwhelm Great Britain and France from all sides were mature. If the attempt failed, even if it did not succeed in record time, then the already strained resources of the planners might crack, the debacle might be reversed.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.