Uncomfortable

Italy's position astride the European fence was growing increasingly uncomfortable last week. The story came out that Benito Mussolini, still under pressure from Great Britain and France to come down off the fence and fight in one lot or the other, was making overtures to Britain by sending Count Dino Grandi back to London (where he used to be Ambassador) to talk things over. That the pressure came not only from abroad was indicated by whispered gossip in Rome that Fascist Secretary Achille Starace had formed a cabal backed by the King, the Army and the peasantry, which would oust II Duce from his job if he went to war on Germany's side. What was significant about this tidbit was not so much whether it had a basis of fact, but that it could get around at all.

On the other side of Europe things were getting tough for Italy. In Moscow, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Joseph Stalin divided Poland with not so much as a by-your-leave to Benito Mussolini, who wants an ethnic Polish state where 20,000,000 good Polish Catholics might live with the blessing of the Pope. The Balkans, which Italy thought would turn to her while Germany was at war, turned to Russia instead.

But II Duce still had one good card in his hand. If he could persuade Adolf Hitler to give up a sizable chunk of Poland for a buffer state, and present this offer to Britain and France as Germany's concession for peace, he still had a chance--though a long one--of becoming the Peacemaker of Europe, and of taking as his commission therefor some Mediterranean and African concessions. With some such proposition Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano flew to Berlin to see Adolf Hitler this week. Abruptly--after barely 24 hours and only one talk with Herr Hitler--he went home again, and the German who saw him off was no proponent of peace: Col. General Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces.

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