CONFUSED PICTURE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 94, 19 March 1940, Page 7

CONFUSED PICTURE

COMMENT IN AMERICA. INTERPRETATION OF EVENTS. WASHINGTON, March IS. The only comment of Administration officials on the Brenner Pass conference of Hitler and Signor Mussolini was a reiteration that the visit of Mr Sumner Welles had no political significance and that he is merely securing information. While there is no inclination to believe he is submitting a peace plan, a puzzled Press and public are now asking if this means he is empowered to receive peace proposals and submit them to the White Hquse. It is felt that Saturday’s broadcast indicates that President Roosevelt has not changed his views on the basis of peace, that he believes England and France are determined to fight as long as necessary to crush totalitarianism, and that he believes they will win eventually. It is felt he would have spoken differently 7 if Mr Welles’s dispatches had revealed a different situation. , Paris dispatches raise the hypothesis that Mr Welles may be inciting Hitler, through Signor Mussolini, to put forward peace terms, calculating that- once they were published they could not fail to produce an anti-cli-max.

The New York Tlerald-Tribune, in an editorial, says: “Confusion on the Allies’ side coinciding with the visit of Mr Welles may have given the totalitarian Powers the opportunity for which they were waiting in the war of nerves. If clamour for action should force the Allies into a hasty, ill-judged action it would represent a cheaper victory for Hitler than that obtainable by an offensive the field. Perhaps Balkan problems will be the only issue at the Brenner Pass. Perhaps a striking peace offer is forthcoming timed to jolt Allied nerves and confuse American opinion.

PARADOX OF OPINION. “Every advantage lies with the dictators in such swift manoeuvring. Only the fundamentals of conscience and strength, coming from freedom oh will and voice, fight on the side of the democracies. May there be no in isconception of the issue in this country. The New York Times, in an editorial. draws attention to the paradox of American opinion. The United States does not want to he drawn into Europe, neither does she want to be left out. Americans must make up their minds whether they are willing to associate with other jarge nations in offering guarantees if they will seek a voice in a future peace settlement. . , , T The Rome correspondent of the i\e\y York Times says that all signs point to a peace effort with the belligerents through the mediation of the United States and Italv. Only American diplomatic circles were not surprised at the news that Hitler and Signor Mussolini were to meet. Apparently Count Ciano intoiwecl JVli Sumner Welles at lunch eon on Satnrday that he felt that Mr Welles, alter his tour of the capitals, must have formulated a concrete plan for piesentation to the Duce. “Mussolini is a realist, and lie was profoundly irritated by the failure or the August peace effort,” says the correspondent. “Tn his conversations witl Hitler he will ask for definite pledges before undertaking a new initiative. Some people, however, believe that the meeting is connected with a German plan to create a bloc comprising Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan to prevent the war spreading to new fronts, in the hope that the Allies will accept a negotiated peace if a stalemate in the West is certain.”