A Time of Change

The huge fact hammers at the mind of Europe: the Axis is losing the war. Allied victory may come soon, or it may come late, but there can no longer be doubt that come it will. And it is a fact, a process which is bound to change many of the assumptions which up to now have governed the Allies' thinking about Nazi Europe.

The Fascists. One of these assumptions, now subject to change has been that all Fascists are pro-Axis. Rats will leave Hitler's ship as they will leave any other. Will Benito Mussolini, or his Fascist Party, stay with Hitler to the last, now that their empire is gone and invasion of Italy is a matter of time? Will Fascist Francisco Franco leave Spain hitched to the failing Axis--or will he try to proceed to the logical end of his recent dealings with the Allies, and declare Fascist Spain in on the victory?

Last week, after the Axis had collapsed in Tunisia, Franco declared that the war had deadlocked. Said he: "Those of us who watch the struggle serenely consider it senseless to delay the peace." Four months ago, Francisco Franco was predicting victory for the Axis.

New Alignments. As yet there could be no positive answers to the questions now arising in Europe. But men can no longer bank without reservation on their old assumptions that Franco and Mussolini and all of their kind were irrevocably committed against the Allies. Instead, the Allies must face the possibility that many a Fascist, many a bad-weather enemy will try to join the winning side--and will offer immediate and temporarily useful aid to that side. In a time of change, new facts and new alignments will have to be recognized and accepted--or rejected.

The Vatican. Another widely held assumption has been variously that the Vatican is: 1) rigidly neutral; 2) pro-Axis; 3) anti-Russian if not anti-Allied. Of all the changing facets of European diplomacy, Vatican policy is still the least known, and therefore the least understood. But the Vatican is invariably realistic, and the news was as plain to its statesmen as to any others last week. A sign of the times: the persistent suggestion that series of recently inaugurated Vatican broadcasts to Russia were pro-peace and pro-Church, but not anti-Soviet in their tone and total effect. A known fact: neither the Soviet Government nor the Russian Orthodox Church has voiced any public objection to the broadcasts.

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