NATION RELEASED

Evening Post, Issue 17, 20 July 1936, Page 8

NATION RELEASED

ITALY AFTER THE WAR

ROSY SCHEMES FOR FUTURE

"RETURN TO NORMAL"

"If you British want to trade with us again you'd better hurry up. Soon we shall be getting in raw materials from Abyssinia, and we shan't need half what we used to take in from outside." An intelligent and travelled law student of Rome University gave this as a motive-for stopping sanctions quickly, wrote a special correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian" at the end of May.

And others added to this that Italy's 1 internal production was being rapidlydeveloped to supersede imports in \ many lines. For example, a huge new cokery at Savona is to furnish coal : by-products previously imported as a separate item. Then the German I. G. i Farbenindustrie is constructing plant ; for the Montecatini (Chemical) Con- , cern which is to supply the substitute for imported fertilisers. Hurry up, anyone who wants ever to trade with Italy again! ! But, above all, Abyssinia is to pros vide new homes and new markets for • Italy's teeming young generations. For- ■ eigners may laugh at this—the same 1 foreigners, of course, who foresaw a • military disaster for Italy in 1936. The Italians will go and see for themselves • whether economic exploitation may ■ not prove as possible as military conquest. Already they are setting forth , (you are told) on the voyage of discovery. Traders are heard of who will ■ venture their reserves in the trip to East Africa—taking Asmara, perhaps, ;as the first objective—to investigate ! trading prospects. One traveller (it was reported) had left Genoa with a sto^k of a hundred and fifty cameras to get which he had sold up his little property m Italy. The smartest of these trading pioneers were already round Massawa and Asmara during the war Anyone who could succeed in getting an ancient motor-lorry on to .Eritrean soil made his fortune as a transport contractor last autumn. In fact, under Marshal de Bono's reign the traders filled the hotels of Asmara to the inconvenience and indignation of military men. EASY TO FIND CAPITAL. Marshal Badoglio pushed out the commercial adventurer from the precincts of the High Command for the duration of the war, but the Italian authorities now seem to favour the enterprising pioneer exploiter of the new empire. A Milanese banker said that however difficult raising capital for farm development in Italy might be ■ the would-be coloniser in East Africa could well expect to raise moderate sums (say, 20,000 to 30,000 lire: sums of up to £500) through companies specialising in giving such facilities. These would probably be trading compan- ■ ies indirectly controlled by the State through the "1.R.1." (i nst i tute of Industrial Reconstruction which finances Enterprises against transference of the whole or part of their share capital). For larger sums more direct State assistance would be required, and would probably be available. The Government has on its part already voted one hundred million lire for public works in Abyssinia. An Official commission set up to plan the method of agricultuarl settlement in Abyssinia not having yet published its report, the traveller could not compare the private citizen's expectations with the probably more moderate official reckonings. He could only hear of people even in informed business quarters believing in the great and not^ distant economic future of Italian Ethiopia. A builder in Rome who^lamented having run- up a block' or flats at the moment-when "everybody was leaving for Abyssinia" was apparently at least half serious! ' THE OFFICIAL END. Meanwhile, the war is officially over and nobody has suffered the conse-' FoV5 CeS- eXP6Cted from sections. Food prices are much as a year ago— except fish, which is. rather dear-dnd everybody can put up with one meatless day and^ one other day without ofiaTft at the end of last November saw the streets almost empty of motor-cars. Now t>rivate people are'bringing out their cars and running them on exceedingly S"f m *,P- etr°, l> °r on **stitute spirit which is of considerable strength but (say the chauffeurs) may be harmful to engines in the long run. The price of petrol is now four lire per litre, or some 6s a gallon All save about 20 centesimi a litre or some 4d.a gallon, is tax. When the tax was first, in the autumn, raised to this figure people shut up their carspartly also because motorists 'then sometimes met with hostile demonstrations as wastrels during a national shortage of supplies. Later on motorists found means to meet the extra cost, and the authorities discouraged anti-motorist agitation. Now people believe that the Government has enormous stocks of petrol in the home country and also in Africa,. enough for the needs of 1936 and 1937, since the war is over and the requirements so reduced. Thus the traveller who crosses the bridge from Venice to Mestre sees on the coast of the lagoon a whole city of silvery spick and span oil tanks demonstratively marked A.G.I.P. (the Italian State, Petrol Concern) or "Societa Petrolifera Italo-Americana." Motorists think, then, that the Government may quite soon be able to reduce the tax considerably. RELAXING RESTRICTIONS. At the beginning of the war the Government ,ceased authorising any more building operations, usually permitting, however, the completion of plans already authorised. In November wellinformed people understood that almost all building had been Called off. But in practice the Government ,seems only to have called off public building. Thus at Bari—the south-eastern Adriatic port, where in recent years Mussolini has caused the construction of a, long sea frontage .of costly and magnificent public buildings—work suspended last autumn on the great new military hospital. , A week or two ago work, was resumed. The stock of iron and steel in the country is believed to be sufficient for the Government to relax the rationing of this material to builders and others applications are said now ts be generally granted. With the beginning of the long Italian summer the Government could also relax fuel and light saving ordinances. The Order to work through the lunch hour and to close the office- or shop before dusk—-which people accustomed to a long family lunch hour and to late evening shopping greatly disliked—was rescinded a few weeks ago. Thus in the first weeks of the "Empire" Italians were looking forward cheerfully some to a new life, or at least to new trading possibilities, in i "A.0." (Africa Orientale); others to ] pnsiei-, more normal times at home, j when one could take out the car i without a guilty conscience, sit down i to lunch witli one's wife and chil- j dren, and run out to buy a flask of - wine or some eggs any time up to a ] late sunset hour.