GREAT ADVENTURE.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13715, 23 November 1937, Page 2

GREAT ADVENTURE.

TRUTH ABOUT MUSSOUMI. AN OUTSPOKEN CRITIC. A notable statesman, wrote a London correspondent recently, remarked to me to-day: ‘The truth about Signor Mussolini’s international policy is that it tests on two cornerstones —bluff and limited action.” It would be hard to secure a fairer or truer epitome of the attitude of the man who is universally regarded as the world’s greatest adventurer and coolest and most audacious calculator. If any underlining was needed ifc is present abundantly in Signor Mussolini’s latest melodramatic act at the Non-Intervention Conference. The fear of causing t, European conflict alone halts Signor Mussolini ft* m over-re aching himself and from overtaxing finally the patience of Brit -in and France. Nothing could destroy as quickly as a world war Jtaly’s chances of achievement in peace by suddenly grabbing (as in the case of Abyssinia) by irritating and disturbing Britain and France (as in the case of Italy’s persistent interferences jn Palestine, Egypt, French Morocco and the Mediterranean, and by attempts to sec »’i a

strategic advantage by establishing General Franco and a Fascist regime in Spain, which Signor Mussolini dreams of making a firm ally so as to 'be able the better to bargain with Britain and France. Then there is no doubt that if Italy was likely unexpectedly to be exposed to the risk of losing what she holds, or even of losing her advantage in the game she is now playing for power, Mussolini would

“about-face*’ and .allow his bluff to be called.

This was shown by the Nvon antipiracy pact and by Italy’s eleventhhour attitude at the Non-Interven-tion Conference, at which the firm resistance of Britain and France against Count Grandi’s sophistries forced the conference to break the d eadiock. _ To a certain extent Signor Mussolini has ‘been greatly helped in his remarkable game of nuisance-making by the fact that Herr Hitler, within narrower limits, is playing a somewhat similar game. This has been revealed in the German march into the Rhineland, by the clamour at every opportunity for colonies, tlie stirring up of mock indignation throughout Germany at the alleged foul treatment of the German citizens of Czechoslovakia, by the periodical prod at the carefully-bal-anced Austrian applecart. The Berlin-Rome axis has been the result.

Nobody in a responsible position seriously believes that the axis could stand any real strain, since neither dictator is equally interested in each other’s ambitions for several reasons.

Not the least of them is geographical. In some quarters it is believed that the real value of the axis to Germany and Italy lies in the affect it produces on small countries and mandates such as .South Africa, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Palestine and Moorish Spain, in which there are always elements ready to flaire up against Britain and France. Towards these, it is believed, the shrewd diplomacy of the axis is directed in the hope of harrying the two great democratic Powers, thus aggravating tlie general unstable European situation and keeping the cauldron simmering, but not boiling over, and hoping to manoeuvre for any opportunity revealed either at a conference or in territories being successfully stirred up to the advantage of Germany and Italy. This policy of guerilla diplomatic tactics is thoroughly appreciated in Britain, where the vulnerability of the same policy is no less known.