BRITISH REARMAMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 101, 31 March 1937, Page 5

BRITISH REARMAMENT

ITALIAN DISPLEASURE. Britain’s great rearmament plan appears to have exasperated Italy. Signor Virginio Gayda, Mussolini’s journalistic mouthpiece, writes in Giornale d’ltalia a Jong criticism of Britain’s plans, and makes a series of remarkable statements, says the Rome correspondent of the London Times. One complaint is that Britain is acting as if imminently menaced. This is characterised as “a deliberate fiction.” Signor Gayda is particularly irritated by statements that Britain is determined to defend Democracy against dictatorships. He declares: “No Fascist country dreams of attacking Democracy, which is digging its own grave by identifying itself with Communism.”

The Italian writer surpasses himself when he says: “The armaments race begun by England, France, and the United States will be responsible for a fresh rift in international relations, but will draw an adequate military reply from other great nations, which have no illusions regarding its significance.”

The correspondent of the Times adds: “Thus Signor Mussolini’s references to olive branches sprouting from a forest of bayonets, and his eulogies of the beauty of armaments were clearly not intended for Democracies.”