HIGH-HANDED ACTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19969, 10 December 1926, Page 11

HIGH-HANDED ACTION

FRANCE AND ITALY. ANOTHER FRONTIER EPISODE. (Pre>» Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.) PARIS, December 8, Consequent upon a further incident at Ventimiglia (Italy), the,French railwaymen have declared that they will not drive across the frontier. Troops suddenly invaded the dormitor yand exhaustively examined the sleeping passengers. —A. and N.Z. Cable. CREATING A DIVERSION. ITALIAN JOURNAL’S INSINUATION. ROME, December 8. (Received Dec. 9, at 9 p.m.) The Giornale dTtalia, alleging that France is supplying Jugo-Slavia with munitions, asserts that the League ought to concern itself with the understandings reached between Paris and Belgrade rather than with the peaceable agreement between Italy and Albania.—A. and N.Z. Cable. An article bearing on the strained relations between Italians and the French ■was written by the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph on November o. H esaid; Vintimille is not the only place where there have been anti-French demonstrations by Italian Fascists. At Tripoli and Bengazi, in Italian North Africa, the French Consulates were invaded by Fascists on Sunday evening, the demonstrators in the first case actually breaking into the building and turning the offices upside down. At Bengavi the French Consul was forced to hoist au Italian flag side by side with the French flag. These incidents, of which the French Ambassador in Rome was informed directly by the French Consul concerned, led M, Besnard to make immediate representations to the Italian Government which, through the Under-Sec-retary for Foreign Affairs, Signor Gracdi, expressed its regrets and presented its excuses to -the Ambassador, promising that those responsible would be severely punished. Simultaneously the Ambassa dor protested against the anti-French demonstration at Vintimille. Yesterday at Beausoleil, a little place near Monte Carlo, there was a scuffle between parth-s of French and Italians, who were each on their way to visit the graves of soldiers killed in the war. It appears that for some time past the French officials at the international railway station of Vintimille have complained of vexatious treatment by f be Italians. Vintimille is in Italian territory, but the station, like that of Modane, on the Franco-Italian frontier on the Mont Cenis line, is extraterritorial. While the, police and similar services are carried out by Italians, the French officials and railwaymen have the same rights as in France, and in protesting to the local Italian authorities for what took place on Monday the Tfrench Consul at Vintimille called attention to the annoyances to which the French railway officials had been subjected. The Italian authorities have expressed their regret for the incidents, and it seems that the Italian who got into the French Consulate and talked to the crowd from the balcony managed to do s °i not by breaking in, but by pretending that he had an appointment with the Consul, who was in reality absent. There was a certain continuation of the excitement during yesterday, when Fascist! paraded the streets of Vintimille, claiming Nice as au Italian town. Both in North Africa and on the Franco-Italian frontier the demonstrations seem to have been the result of an excited state of mind among the Fascists, induced by the news of the attempt on Signor Mussolini; but the French not unnaturally find it somewhat trying that the expression of such excitement should take the form of demonstrations against Frenchmen and French representatives. The probability that anti-French incidents would take place at Vintimille appears to have been reckoned with by the Italian Government, inasmuch as the latter had telegraphed special orders to the police on the spot to protect French persons and buildings. The conclusion drawn is, therefore, that the local Italian authorities were not- up to their work, though at the same time the meaning of the reports that demonstrations were carried out by Fascists, who had come from other towns in Italy, and that a couple of thousand or so have arrived in various places near the Franco-Italian frontier is not clearly understood. Paris newspapers of the Right, which, in principle, are ‘ distinctly friendly to the Fascist regime, do not to-day attempt to conceal their belief that Italians—as apart from the Italian Government—are now hostile to France. Without protending that Monday’s demonstrations are unimportant, the press, however, is quite calm about them. But they are furnishing the occasion for a demand that Paris and Rome should set to work to remove misunderstandings between the two countries, since, as time goes on, the repetition of incidents such as those at Vintimille and in Northern Africa must tend to make the task increasingly difficult.