NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19889, 7 March 1928, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY. The reactions of Italian policy in the Balkans are discussed in Foreign Affairs by the editor, Mr. H. F. Armstrong. He says that everywhere in the Balkans to-

day is felt the hand, half-hidden, halfdisclosed, of Rome. Every international event is traced, rightly or wrongly, to the supposed will of Mussolini or his servants. If Rome has been seeking prestige she has won it—the prestige of fear. A Serbian general is assassinated by Bulgarian comitadj is outside his headquarters in Macedonia; at once people whisper, do not the Bulgarian revoluntionaries visit Rome regularly to receive their orders and the funds to execute them ? Nor does the jubilation of the Italian press give the lie to such a theory. The Albanian Minister to Belgrade and Prague, the too powerful and popular Cerna Bey, who though the brother-in-law of Italy's mannikin, President Ahmed Zogu, is known to rate the friendship of Yugoslavia above that of Italy, is snot down as he leaves his hotel; had not the assassin been educated in Italy and had he nob come to Prague from Rome only four days before he committed the crime 1 General Averescu attempts to break up the Little Entente and prepares a military coup in Rumania; was it not Italy that by suddenly recognising Rumania's annexation of Bessarabia furrnshed him with the prestige that ho thought would enable him to seize absolute power and add one more dictatorship to the European list 1 Wherever Balkan politics are jumpy and worried—in Albania, in Salonika, in Macedonia, in Bessarabia, on the boraers of Hungary—there is Italy, in reality or in shadow, to aggravate the worries and augment the fears. To-day all Balkan roads lead from Rome.

A GIFT OF MASTERPIECES. The sixty-three pictures bequeathed by Lord Iveagh to the nation have been exhibited in London. "Was ever a great collection formed in such mystery and romance?"- Mr. H. y. Morton writes in the Daily Express. "Few people have seen these great pictures. Lord Iveagh cherished them behind closed doors. He bought them in secret during the past 50 years. Ho allowed no particulars to leak out of the vast sums paid by him for old masters. Photographs of his purchases were rarely circulated. Rival collectors and art students were not permitted to inspect his galleries, and on one occasion the director of a great Continental museum was refused admittance. Even thoste friends who enjoyed his hospitality at Grosvenor Place could form but a bare idea of the splendid treasures in store for the nation, because the collection was divided between the walls of his town house and those of his country seats in England and Ireland. Thus today for the first time the Iveagh pictures are assembled under one roof. The romance of the collection is that of an English millionaire quietly and secretly snapping up art treasures from the American millionaires, and never breathing a word about his victories! Once the doors of Lord Iveagh's houses closed on a newly-acquired picture no one heard of it again. For fifty years some of the greatest pictures of the eighteenth century have 'disappeared' in this way! Now the mystery is ended. The public will go to the half-a-million picture gallery with feelings of gratitude for the man who saved so many magnificent art treasures for the nation. There are 63 of them, including 15 Reynolds, 10 Romneys, eight Gainsboroughs and several canvases by Rembrandt, Cuyp, Van Dyck, Turner, Constable and many other famous painters."