Evening Post. TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1930. FAITH, HOPE, AND THE BIG STICK

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 117, 20 May 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1930. FAITH, HOPE, AND THE BIG STICK

Passing through Paris on his way to Geneva at the beginning of last week, Mr. Henderson had conversations with M. Briand and Signor Grandi, told the Press correspondents afterwards that "he would be delighted if he could contribute to a material understanding between France and Italy," and expressed his complete agreement with. Signor Grandi's statement that disarmament could only be settled through the League of Nations. On the very same day Signor Mussolini was making his own characteristic contribution to peace, goodwill, and disarmament. ' Addressing a gathering of 30,000 Blackshirts at Leghorn, and obviously with special reference to France, though no name was mentioned, he said:

We are not seeking hasty adventures, but whoever thinks he can halt us does not know to what pitch I might take, the Italian people. The day we are attacked I shall launch them ilike a thunderbolt against our aggressors.

It-was not surprising that in Paris this remarkable deliverance "aroused a storm of resentment in the Press, which emphasises its impropriety on llie eve of the Geneva conversations." We were nevertheless told on Friday that these conversations between M. Briand and Signor Grandi were proceeding. -Saturday brought the very welcome news from Paris that

conditional on Germany's fulfilling promises and conditions, Cabinet has decided that the last French soldier will quit Gorman territory on,the 30th Juner. Eleven years after the signing of peace at Versailles, Germany will feel that peace has really begun if this decision has been carried out, and one of the fundamental causes, of European unrest will, have disappeared. But, as though,to show that there will still be room for trouble, and that France may by that time, have, more need for her troops on another frontier, Signor Mussolini celebrated the decision of the French Cabinet and sped the peaceful mission of his Foreign Minister at Geneva with a second speech even more outrageously full of figh^ than the other.

A Fascist meeting at Florence was the immediate audience to which the Italian Dictator addressed a message expressly intended for the enlightenment of the ignorant foreigner. .

Italy's friendship ia precio|is, but her enmity is hard) ho said. Thero is great ignorance about us abroad. They think we ara a minor people, but we aro v nation of forty millions. They think wo' are governed by tyranny, but it is Italian pooplo who govern. The Italian people are capable of great sacrifices. Moro important than my speech to-day arc tho big "guns and machine-guns. Tho new naval programme shall be carried out exactly as laid clown. The Fascist will is a will of iron. ,

What good Signor Grandi can be expected to do with :his peace talk at Geneva • when his master interrupts it with two. such defiant and arrogant incitements to war is not easy to understand. At the Naval Conference Signor Grandi made a happy debut with "faith, hope, and parity" as the Italian slogan. But faith, hope, and the big stick is the primitive and clumsy substitute which the Duce prefers. We do not know what the Italian for "big stick" may be, but it is certain that Signor Mussolini knows, and also that in domestic affairs, at any rate, he knows how to use it. In an Article which he wrote for the British United Press Agency in January, 1927,; he claimed that he was carrying on the Roosevelt tradition.

Eoosevelt, he wrote, was the wielder of the big stick, which is a Fascist trait. There must be unity of policy and responsibility of direction, otherwise Government becomes a : slipshod, hit-or-miss business.

It cannot be denied that on his own countrymen Signor/ Mussolini has used the big stick. with great effect. There has, been nothing "slipshod" or "hit-or-miss" about him. He has very rarely missed, and those whom he has hit he has mostly . smashed. But'whether he'can possibly '.-live up to this appallingly tall talk' of his about foreign policy has yet to be seen. • ■

What we have quoted, however, does not include the climax of Signor Mussolini's Jehad at Florence. He went on to point out that the iron will of his Blackshirts might be needed at any time to resist the designs of a Power which was contemplating the invasion of Italy from the North. .

There ;are people who think they can isolate Italy, ho said, and who would not be averso to starting war against the Italian people, even through the territory, of a third Po'wcr. We await them at the crossing. (Wild cheers.) Though words arc beautiful things, machine-guns, ships, and aeroplanes are still moro beautiful. Eight is n vain word unless accompanied by might. . . .

The Blackshirts, will await the invaders at the crossing, and then, as he has said at Leghorn, he will "launch them like a thunderbolt against our aggressors." It is to be hoped that the Blackshirts will not launch themselves until he says the word, for that would be to put Italy in the wrong, to frustrate the peaceful purposes of her Dictator, and to violate her obligations under a document of which Signor Grandi has heard, even if his master has not. But even after making due allowance for the fact that it is only against aggressors —who, of course,

will have had no provocation—that Signer Mussolini will v launch his Blackshirted thunderbolt and the ships and the aeroplanes. that arc even more beautiful than his beautiful speeches,-it is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between the spirit of these speeches and the spirit of Italian policy as represented on his behalf by Signor Grandi at the Naval Conference on Lhe 19th February:—

The Conference should aim not only at limitation, but at an effective reduction; of naval forces. Italy- advocated reduction, which she regarded as "the natural outcomo" of the League Covenant a\id tho Kellogg Pact. "The idea of armed conflict with any Power, whether represented or not at tho London Conference, is totally foreign to the established policy of Italy."

The "Journal dcs Debats," which is reputed to be.one of the most levelheaded of French papers, is reported to-day to have described Signor Mussolini's speech as

the most bellicose harangue hoai'd timing peace time in the present century.

We should have thought some of the ex-Kaiser's speeches—"the friend in shining armour" speech, the "mailed fist" speech, and those in which he set the nerves of Europe tingling at the time of the Morocco trouble—might have been entitled to dispute the palm. Mussolini is undoubtedly the more eloquent of the .two, but it is just because of his greater eloquence that one is apt to discount the effect of his speeches. With fewer words but hundreds of thousands more soldiers behind him, the Kaiser used to scare not only France but the whole of Europe in a way that Signor Mussolini has never equalled. And is it quite. clear that Mussolini himself has not done better in some previous speeches?

There has novci* been, ho said on the ninth anniversary of. the end of the War, such a formidable roview of a nation in .arms, signifying the unity of Government and people. I could feel and hear breathing infinite' multitudes whilo the forest of rifles obscured the sunlight. ....-..'■..'

The Kaiser had more rifles at his command, but he never pretended to have enough to make a total .eclipse of the sun, and the man who did should not be taken too literally, even when he is less exuberant. Three years ago, for instance, when there was trouble brewing in the Balkans, Mussolini said:—

Italy of thcßlaekshirts regards with eomploto calm the frantic agitation of tho clique at Belgrade. ... Wo no longer indulge in vain words. Our slogan is "Act in silence."

It was highly offensive talk, but no harm came of it, and the same may be said of all his other extravagant displays. He had cfie4 "Wolf!" too often.