Poem, Treaty

Signor Benito Mussolini signed a peace treaty last week which gravely imperils the peace of the Balkans. In the suave setting of his great office in the Palazzo Chigi he staged the overture by welcoming and delicately flattering a poetess, the Countess Bethlen, wife of Hungarian Premier Count Stephen Bethlen.

Said Il Duce, once a hod-carrier: "Madame, your poems have ravished my eyes, and, as I read them aloud, my ears and my whole being fell likewise under their spell." Soon, with a flourish, Signor Mussolini presented the Countess Bethlen with an Italian translation of one of her poems autographed by himself. Flushed and a little flabbergasted, she withdrew. Premier Count Bethlen remained with Il Duce, and the two statesmen got down to signing their treaty. . . .

Bounding Jugoslavia on three sides are Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania; and on the fourth side lies the Adriatic, with Italy just across its silvery waves. Italian states-craft has always the object of seizing the Adriatic shore of Jugoslavia along which Italians already own 96% of all producer wealth: factories, steamship lines, etc. Therefore, if Il Duce could establish close rapprochement with all the countries bounding Jugoslavia, he would have laid the noose for hog-tying that realm. This, in a vulgar word, was what Il Duce and Count Bethlen did last week.

When they grasped hands in the Palazzo Chigi both knew that Italy has recently signed treaties of "friendship, arbitration and amity" with Austria, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. The one country lacking to complete the ring of treaties encircling Jugoslavia was Hungary. Therefore, last week, when the Italo-Hungarian treaty* was signed, the Fascist press burst into such a eulogy of Il Duce as it has seldom before achieved. But what did Hungary get out of this pen scratching?

Perhaps a quiet word passed between Dictator Mussolini and the Count that Il Duce will strive to bring France and Britain round to permitting the restoration of a Habsburg king in Hungary, something Hungarians ardently desire (TIME, Nov. 29, Jan. 24). Since the time is not ripe for airing that project, however, all that Il Duce gave Count Bethlen last week by way of a "bonus" in black and white was an Italian note announcing that the Government of Italy will take steps to arrange with the Government of Jugoslavia for the reduced duty passage through Jugoslavia of Hungarian goods to and from the Italian port of Flume. With Jugoslavia encircled as she now is this project can scarcely fail of accomplishment. Hungary gained a port last week.

*Of "friendship, arbitration and amity," exactly like the others.