ITALY PLAYS AT WAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22694, 5 April 1937, Page 10

ITALY PLAYS AT WAR

ATTITUDE OF MUSSOLINI FRIENDSHIP WITH ENGLAND LONDON, March 27 'ltaly is playing at soldiers, and Signer Mussolini is determined to keep her playing; that is why he has abandoned his attitude of friendliness towards the Hapsburg restoration, which he is now convinced would plunge Europe into war." So writes Mr. Robert Bernays, M.P., in the Spectator, after hia return from Italy. "Support of the Hapsburgs would entail antagonism from Jugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, threatening war. "Signor Mussolini is certainly not under-rating Britain, and when he said that the cornerstone of Italian policy was friendship with England he meant it. "The Coronation question is orre of those rare cases, under a dictatorship, of the spontaneous uprising of indignation on the part of the Italian people, who really felt it an intolerable insult that the Crown Prince should be expected to be in the same room with the official independent representative of a country of which his father has declared himself Emperor. "Signor Mussolini does not share these feelings. As an astute and experienced politician, he realised that the matter would probably never come before Cabinet, and he did not dare ignore popular resentment."