Fleets to the East

Black smoke from the funnels of Italian warships smudged the serene blue skies of the eastern Mediterranean last week. Beneath the clear blue waters of Mare Nostrum lurked Italian submarines. The Italian press showed no signs of abating its anti-Ally campaign, and across the Alps in Germany a visiting Fascist Grand Councilman, one Pietro Capoferri, cried to a group of chemical workers: "When Il Duce gives us the command we will march with you, to the triumph of justice and liberty."

That London and Paris thought Il Duce was really on the warpath was too obvious to be concealed. A French Foreign Office spokesman admitted that the Italian attitude toward the Allies had become "definitely alarming," that the Foreign Office was ''frankly uneasy." In London Lloyd's raised war-risk rates for travel in the Mediterranean and Near East and the Admiralty took a step it had taken only once before--on war's eve, last August--ordered all British shipping out of the Mediterranean.

Said the Admiralty's official explanation: "Pronouncements by Italians in responsible positions and the attitude of the Italian press have been recently of such a character as to make it necessary for His Majesty's Government to take certain precautions. . . ." Next day the Admiralty doubled its precautions by sending an Allied fleet steaming eastward to Alexandria, where it could keep a sharp eye on the Italians at the mouth of the Aegean.

At these moves Italy at first pretended unconcern. Then the press began to bridle, pointing out: 1) that Britain was trying to strangle Italian trade, but could not do so because Italy could carry her commerce in her own bottoms; 2) that Britain was trying to make Italy appear to be an aggressor in the Mediterranean. Air Marshal Italo Balbo's newspaper, Corriere Padano, tried to reverse the process. "The Allies have an urgent need to regain prestige they have lost," said Corriere Padano. "Can the Mediterranean supply that need?" Corriere Padano even went so far as to declare that Italy was becoming "ever more impatient ... to throw the intruder out of that sea." The British: "We are ready to meet Italy on land, sea or air."

Ten-Day Truce? All this looked like so serious a threat to peace in the Mediterranean that U. S. Ambassador William Phillips, on orders from Washington, asked for and got a personal interview with Il Duce (see p. 19). They talked for 45 minutes and correspondents guessed that Mr. Phillips had told Mussolini that the U. S. would keep its shipping out of the Mediterranean if Italy went to war. But that would have been no news to Benito Mussolini. That the U. S. Government was putting all possible "pressure" on Italy to keep the peace was made clear next day when Ambassador Phillips had his third meeting of the week with Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano and, in Washington, President Roosevelt received Italian Ambassador Prince Ascanio Colonna. Benito Mussolini was reported to have sent this message to Franklin Roosevelt: "Does the United States understand my position?"

Mussolini's position, as outlined to corporation hierarchs in a speech two weeks ago, is that Britain and France hold a maritime hegemony that makes Italy and the Italians "prisoners between Gibraltar and Suez." Il Duce was reported to have sent word to Paris and London that Italy's price for peace is complete demilitarization of the Mediterranean, including British Malta, Alexandria and Cyprus, French Toulon, Mers-el-Kebir and Bizerte.

If that is Italy's price, nobody expects the present Governments of Great Britain and France to pay it. Most that Messrs. Roosevelt and Phillips were believed to have got for their trouble was a promise that Italy would not declare war immediately. In Washington the State Department pointed out that Americans had not been warned to leave Italy, as they have been told to leave Sweden and Rumania, but the State Department also ordered all its attaches going to posts in the Mediterranean to get there within ten days. Persistent rumor was that Italy's "fateful day" would be May 10. Hotter grew the press campaign. Italian papers predicted a Nazi invasion of England, openly rejoiced at the prospect. British Ambassador Sir Percy Loraine rushed back to Rome from London.

Shaky Allies. One effect of the Allied Fleet movement was to bolster the morale of the Allies' shaky allies. In Egypt, where preparations for defense were woefully inadequate last fall. War Minister Saleh Harb Pasha announced: "The military preparations for defense of the country today reached maximum perfection." In Greece King George planned a visit to the defenses along the Albanian frontier, announced himself as pleased with recent Army maneuvers. The British George's second cousin also announced completion of a new railroad from Salonika to the Bulgarian border, which might be handy to the Allies in case Herr Hitler's next jump is into the Balkans.

Turkey, mainspring of any Allied Eastern offensive, has been far from encouraged by the British showing in Norway (see p. 25). One commentator wrote: "Norway is probably not the last scene of the war, but it may be the next-to-last." Turkish troops massed on the Bulgarian and Greek frontiers as Germany took up Italy's cry of aggression and claimed the Allies were about to land at Salonika. Whenever the Germans holler about aggression, it is a pretty good sign they are getting ready to aggress. Major General Josef Tippelskirch, German Chief of Military Intelligence who toured Denmark and Norway before the Scandinavian invasion, ended a tour of the Balkans.

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