PEACE EFFORTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 February 1940, Page 7

PEACE EFFORTS

U.S.A.—ITALIAN INTERVIEWS

[by CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.J

NEW YORK, February 18. The United States Under-Secretary of State (Mr. Sumner Welles) has left-for Italy on- the Italian liner Rex. With' him is Mr. Myron Taylor, Mr. Roosevelt’s personal envoy to the Vatican. . The correspondent of the United Press of Amefi'ch-'who is accompanying Mr. Welles’Aays in a radio ’message from the liner that. Mr. Welles will see Signor Mussolini and the Foreign Minister (Count Ciano) immediately he arrives in Rome on February 27, and will try to lay a basis for collaboration between Italy and America in a post-war settlement. Italy is represented as being receptive to suggestions because she feels that Washington recognises the importance of Italian arbitration. It is believed that the conversations in Rome may set the tenor of the whole of Mr. Welles’s mission. j The fact that he is not seeing the Pope and the monarchs of Belgium and the Netherlands can be attributed to Mr. Roosevelt not wanting it to be regarded as a peace mission. ■' Mr. Taylor will keep in touch with the Pope’s-peace plans, and will emphasise on 1 his arrival- that his mission is not connected-.with that of Mr. Welles.