Waiting to See

Italy declared herself in the war on Japan last week. The announcement was made by aging Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Giovanni Visconti-Venosta. The declaration meant little in a military way.

But it did mean that to resurrect their standing in the world, Italians would do anything -- even commit themselves to a war which they are not prepared to wage, militarily, financially or humanly.

The Roosevelt-Churchill declaration re admitting Italy to international high society had given Italians new hope. News of it flashed through Government offices, streets and homes. The declaration salved Italian pride. It also offset the effect of the Russian armistice terms to Rumania, which were much more liberal than the Allied terms to Italy. Even the lowest Italian laborer or peasant knew about the Rumanian-armistice terms. The prestige of the U.S. and Britain went down. The prestige of the Italian Communists and the Socialists, with whom they currently enjoy a united front, went up.

Later Italians had second thoughts about the Churchill-Roosevelt declaration. And they were cool, too, to the news that General Giovanni di Raimondo had been invited to London for transportation talks, Banker Enrico Scaretti to Washington for Red Cross consultations. A common remark was: "Yes, that's very nice. Now let's wait and see what really happens."

This week the Italian Government tried to make something happen. If reports were true, they had taken the Churchill-Roosevelt declaration as a cue to ask officially for participation in the European peace conference as a full-fledged United Nation.

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