Italy’s Position

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 2 March 1939, Page 4

Italy’s Position

Notes on the News

It is reported that though Italian hotheads are confident that Italy call embark on a eontiiet against France, •Signor Mussolini has a clearer appreciation of the true position. Italy’s geographical position in the Mediterranean is unique. Apart from the extensive coastline she possesses on the western Mediterranean and Adriatic, she commands the passages between the eastern and western Mediterranean, Blanks to the southward projection of the peninsula and Sicily. Though really placed in the western Mediterranean she lias vital interests in the Levant. Most of her oil supply comes from the East. Colonies of Italian immigrants are established in force in the eastern Mediterranean ports, promoting her trade with Greece, Turkey, Syria and Egypt, and leading her to extend her banks and schools throughout these regions. Her recent conquest of Abyssinia makes it necessary for her, as well as for Britain, to consider the freedom of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea as of primary importance in her naval stratItaly is determined not only to become the principal Mediterranean Power, but to secure the command of the Mediterranean Sea. This aim is unattainable as long as the western Mediterranean is commanded by the British and French fleets. As long as Great. Britain commands the eastern and (with France) the western Mediterranean. Italy does not bold the unchallangeable command of even the middle Mediterranean and of hdr own territorial waters. But if she can, by gaining a foothold in Spain, menace British and French naval power in the western mediterranean, she will menace British and French naval power iu the eastern Mediterranean also, for without the command of the western waters of that sea, the command of its eastern waters becomes untenable. Italy’s intervention in Spain is a stage in her struggle for supremacy over Ihe Mediterranean as a whole—-it represents an effort of far greater ambition and importance than the Abyssinian campaign. German Trade Dr. Wield, Commercial Director of the German Foreign Office, has said that exchange control and clearings and payment agreements had been forced on Germany by her creditors, who had thus created the present difficulties. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, Mr. *K. S. Hudson, disagrees. Commenting on the trade position. “The Times” in a leading article, said: “A growing uneasiness caused by an increasingly unfavourable balance of payments has recently been accentuated by the fact that new forms of competition have appeared in world trade, against which individual firms seeking business in the traditional way cannot be expected to hold their own. “These methods, which were first introduced by Russia, causing at the time a great outcry against Russian dumping have been developed and elaborate!' \ refined by Germanv. and have been forced upon the attention even of the most indifferent by the German drive io establish wlmt would come near a monopoly in the trade ot tue Balkan and Near Eastern countries. Methods ef fective in that part of the world, where our share has not hitherto been considerable, could easily be extended to other parts where Britain is vitally concerned. “British export industries have been urged . ... to decide how they can best maintain their ground in face of a competitor who is not. only able to joggle with several kinds of depreciated currency, but who, controlling •lie productive, the consuming, and the e-edit capacity or 80,000,(KM) people, is able to act as manufacturer, salesman, buyer, and trader in one, and to arrange self-liquidating transactions on - large scale covering a period of years. “Mr Hudson, describing the a ay in which tin’s system worked, com--lained that Germany was establishing an uneconomic stranglehold over part of Eurofie by methods which destroyed the trade of the world.” Cotton's Decline Cuiisiderabl. anxiety is being dismayed iu Bleat Britain over (lie do dim) in tl)u culluu trade, and rul'erriiee ■MIS made to llje industry L.y Mr. Neville <diauiberlaiu iu his speech at Blackpool. “The slump iu cotton goods exports •'rum Great Britain during J'J3B is spectacular, almost incredible,” sajs .n authority. .-•i ts dropped in a single year by ncary 28 per cent., and of yarn exports by , .early 23 per edit. This brought Lnno 1,380, iOO.UOD square yards! the lowest igure for nearly 'JO years. It is oughly the same volume as iu 1830. U its height, in the years before the vnr, the Lancashire industry exported List live times as much. la n cash ire las lost something like four-fifths of worse than it was during the cotton amine or during the slump or ID.*;I. To British countries exports 'd ottou goods have dropped by 22 jut ecut., to foreign countries by nearly ifi per cent. Before the war the hat i nee between British and foreign markets was roughly equal with a 'light preponderance ou the side of the foreign. In 11)37 Empire markets •ook nearly two-thirds (63 per cent.) India entering largely into the picture. Exports in 1038 were less than an •ighth of their average in Hie five .ears before the war. and less Ilian half of wbat they were as recently a' 1932. In the endeavour to retrieve* the position the Government has brought forward a Cotton BUL. i