"IMPERIAL ITALY"

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12456, 26 May 1926, Page 6

"IMPERIAL ITALY"

MALTA AND NICE COVETED VATICAN SUPPORTING MUSSOLINI? SECRET NEGOTIATIONS By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Sydney "Sun" Cable.) LOinIXJjN, May 24. The ‘‘.Westminster (Gazette's' political correspondent states tnat Signor Mussolini js seccetly negotiating lor the support ot tne Vatican in his policy ot Italian expansion on the lines ol the Holy Roman Empire. The bargain includes the settlement of the question of the Papacy’s temporal power by giving the Pope actual territory on the Vatican side of the Tiber. Mussolini hopes to protit by the Vatican’s t.oubles with Prance and Jugo-Slavia, and to gain the Pope’s blessing in the interest of fascist internal policy and external expansion. Italian officers are already wearing wristlet watches which are miniature maps of Imper’tl Italy, including Nice ■ and Malta. ihe prime mover at the Vatican is not the Pope, who is acutely worried and anxious, but a powerful personage behind the Papal throne, who threatens to resign whenever the Pope expresses h.s misgivings too forcibly. Nice was formerly in the Italian Kingdom of Savoy, the Royal House of Italy, and was ceded to Franco in 1860 by the founders of modern Italy in return for the assistance of Napoleon 111. against the Austrians. Garibaldi was torn in Nice. Mussolini has always bad an eye on Malta, and movements have been encouraged in that British possession in favour of annexation to Italy.