(3 of 3)
These were not leaders to give Italy merely a negative neutrality. Freshly-manned, Italy turned at once to the Balkans: conversations led to an exchange of warm letters with Greece, notes which had the actual effect of a pact of friendship. Thus Italy took step No. 1 in the widely heralded effort to dominate the Balkans. Next step: talk with Bulgaria. This week Premier Mussolini's conference with his new Under Secretary of War, General Ubaldo Soddu, embraced "certain instructions to prepare and to enlarge" the Army..
All this naturally worried Germany. The official German view: it all means nothing. But nervousness was evident in the war's most roundabout dispatch: Rome's Lavoro Fascista heard from Milan that "it is reported from Amsterdam that The Netherlands press publishes an item dated Berlin, according to which Field Marshal Göring will go to Rome next Tuesday." Berlin denied the report. Perhaps it was not necessary for Marshal Göring to go to Rome to find out that Italy was playing this war every man for himself.