Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 1935. ITALY AND ABYSSINIA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 246, 31 July 1935, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 1935. ITALY AND ABYSSINIA.

Amid the disquieting news of feverish preparation for hostilities between Italy and Abyssinia there are items that keep alive the hope that peace may be preserved. It was reported yesterday that Signor Mussolini does not desire to leave the League and that a compromise is expected. This allegiance to the League may have been strengthened by the reflections of the Duce during his recent retirement into seclusion. If that is so, his decision will be the more fixed by reason of the financial difficulty with which Italy is confronted, the economic aspect of the venture in Abyssinia leading, according to the Paris correspondent of “The Times,” to the belief that Signor Mussolini s warlike designs may be checked. His policies involved heavy borrowing for public works and military expenditure, and the trade balance was generally unfavourable. The latest Budget forecast a huge deficit, without including the mounting cost of the Abyssinian expedition. It is not surprising, therefore, that the strain on the gold reserves has proved insupportable. War preparations have involved heavy imports, to pay for which the foreign credits earned by a dwindling export trade were insufficient. Even before the Abyssinian affair developed, Italy was feeling the financial pinch, and the trouble was intensified last March when Signor Mussolini placed the country on a war footing and required the dispatch of large forces to East Africa. Now his financial advisers, noting the depreciation of Italian currency as a reaction imperilling commercial stability, are counselling discretion. Moreover, his General Staff is understood to be anxious about the projected campaign; already a large number of the Italian troops dispatched to the scene of intended action have succumbed to the onslaught of the climate and others have been invalided home. On the other nan , Italian determination to control Abyssinia is a policy cherished for over fifty years. Signor Mussolini has a war-fevered Italian population at his back and a gathering array of encircling opposition to encounter. ® pending meeting of the League o Nations Council will be fraught with grave issues. Though at the moment the scales appear to be weighted slightly in favour of a pacific outcome, the trouble is that Mussolini has created a personal prestige as Italy s "strong man” and he may merely postpone and not abandon his announced object of dominating Abyssinia.