"Speedy Death?"

All of a pother were the Balkans last week because Premier Benito Mussolini was said to be forcing upon Albania's King Zog a customs union with Italy, threatening that unless His Majesty does as directed he will lose his fat subsidy from the Italian treasury.

In Paris all customs unions are viewed with alarm because the French Government is strenuously exerting itself to keep Germany and Austria from forming one and wants no bad examples set elsewhere. "Let us hope and trust," frowned Parisian Pundit Andre Geraud ("Pertinax"), "that Mussolini and his councillors will refrain from posing a problem so dangerous to the peace of the Adriatic and to Europe!"

Since Jugoslavia is France's Man Friday in Balkan politics and since Jugoslavia adjoins Albania it was the Jugoslav Minister in London who rushed around to the British Foreign Office last week, filed excited warning that "the Jugoslavian Royal Government views with gravest concern the situation now arising in the Balkans due to Italian policy."

Next day Britain quietly lined up with France. At the Foreign Office, abashed Italian newshawks were told by suave minions of not-so-suave British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon that "Premier Mussolini, it is hoped and believed, will abandon this project, with the result that the proposed Italo-Albanian customs union will die a speedy death."

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