LIBERATED COUNTRIES' PROBLEMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 134, 4 December 1944, Page 4

LIBERATED COUNTRIES' PROBLEMS

That Cotint Sforza should have the! direction of Italian foreign policy, as Foreign Secretary of the Government' of Italy, is, says Mr. Eden, against British policy. Mr. Eden, as British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, tells the House of Commons that "the British Government does not like Count Sforza as [Italian] Foreign Secretary, and has said so." Some weeks ago Count Sforza had been speech-making on the subject of the future status of Adriatic ports and territories, including Fiume, Zara, and Trieste—names that caused trouble in the last peace-making (after World War I) and at frequent intervals since. What to do with Italy, Yugoslavia, and the Adriatic islands and coastline is an ethnographic-strategic headache. Warned by bitter experience, :the British Government must be careful in its approach to Adriatic questions, and Eden says that his Government does not like Sforza's approach. The differences may be even wider than the Adriatic Sea. "Count Sforza," says the British Foreign Secretary, "has been working against Premier Bonomi, who has given the Allies warm support." Italian critics in America—for instance, G. A. Borgese— readily twist such utterances into such statements as "there is no such thing as an Italian Government except in its capacity as a blotter for British edicts, more or less automatically countersigned by the great Allies." By such ineani the Bonomi. Government

is made to appear un-Italian, it meets with obstruction, Bonomi resigns, is half-called back, and Britain has' to express non-approval' of Sforza, and to remind some Italians that "Italy had been accepted as a co-belligerent, but not al'; an ally, and Allied armies are still based in Italy,"

Those Italians who object to the armistice conditions "Jthat Bonomi is trying to observe, and who desire a final peace, much ,more liberal to Italy than the armistice conditions are believed to indicate, should ask themselves whether the time is. ripe for self-assertion when German armies are still in Italy, and when nearly all the prerequisites for a finalised peace are absent. Can—and should—the British Government be forced into premature territorial decisions when war is waging in nortfr Italy, when the election of an Italian Parliament by j popular vote is impossible, and when the non-elected Government is charged with the task of governing in accord with armistice terms and of preparing for an- eventual general (election? The.British Government is [pledged to popular decision; it is mainly a question of time. "What we try to do," the British Foreign Secretary tells the House of Commons, "is to give countries the best chance we can of expressing their own will and in their own way, freely, and whether that expression of will is in the end for the Right or for the Left makes no matter.'" This .was in reply to suggestions by Labour members ■ that Britain, in her handling of the affairs of liberated States in the transition period from war to peace, "leaned more to the Right -than to the Left." If Right politicians are prepared to execute armistices, and Lefts are not, then obviously Rights must govern or armistices must become scraps of paper. Buf a mere willingness to comply with an armistice does not make a transition Government reactionary.

In a list of aims, Eden .mentions <1) victory, (2J> "order behind the lines of our armies," (3) "fair and untrammelled election of Governments, dynasties, and Parliaments alike." The word "dynasties" apparently, includeskings like the King of Italy* But in Italy the first two requisites are .incomplete, because victory' over the Germans in Italy is still to be won, and "order behind the lines of our armies" is' necessary to their safety. Sptiaking of the Government -of Belgium, which also has its difficulties, Eden says that this (P'ierlot) Government "is a legally-elected Government, representative of the Belgian people, and it still has the sup-, port of all the Belgian 'parties except the Communists." Looking over Europe generally, it may seem that the oppressors of occupied countries . had less headaches than the liberators of the same countries now have. But the opprassor^ had troubles of a different kind, rooted less in argument and agitation than in lethal action. Britain's firm promise of popular self-determina-tion of domestic issues invites, and deserves, the patience of liberated peoples. .