NEWS OF THE WEEK
AMID much that is obscure in the present relationship between France and Italy one fact stands out crystal- clear, that all the trouble is of Italy's making. At every point she has been at pains to put herself in the wrong, though questions of right and wrong give no great concern to a Government whose faith is in aeroplanes and guns. The original carefully-staged demands for Tunisia, Corsica and Djibuti were intolerable, and so is the technique whereby Italy, having seized Abyssinia by an international crime, now claims Djibuti, which is in French Somaliland, as a matter of justice as outlet for Italian trade from Abyssinia. And on a par with the rest is the Italian denunciation of the Laval agreement of 1935, whereby France fulfilled the pledges given in 1915, followed by the demand that discussion of the execution of those pledges shall begin de novo. So far as Tunisia and Djibuti are concerned, the Italian demands are up to the present confined to Press clamour, which in regard to Tunisia is beginning slightly to abate. France has made it perfectly clear that she will not cede an inch of the soil she holds, and there is no reason in justice or expediency why she should. Italy is pretty clearly employing the blackmail method of putting forward a number of simultaneous demands in the hope that one may be conceded as the price of the withdrawal of the rest. It is of the utmost importance that when Mr. Chamberlain visits Rome he should be as adamant as M. Daladier himself regarding Italy's territorial claims. * * *
