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Nations with African colonies adjoining Italy's are Britain and France, but friction has been chiefly with France. Because other parts of the Dictator's speech breathed bombast, most commentators dismissed it as all bombast. In Paris clear-headed old Louis Barthou saw things differently. Secret pourparlers began. II Duce told nearly half a million Italians, pack-jamming Cathedral Square in Milan' that he was up to something (TIME, Oct. 15)-"Our relations with France have very greatly improved in recent times," he cried. "We hope soon to reach an accord which will be very fruitful." When hubbub greeted this announcement Mussolini said in a fatherly way to his blackshirts, "Your reactions to this speech of mine are so intelligent that they prove to me that, while it is true that diplomatic action must be secret, it is possible to speak frankly on foreign affairs to a great people!"
So accustomed were correspondents to thinking of Mussolini as anti-French at this time that one great U. S. news service put a dispatch on the wire which caused editors to headline: ITALY HA-HA'S FRENCH AMITY. Half Million Fascists Roar at Mussolini's "Joke."
Since U. S. radio listeners also thought the crowd laughed, scant attention was paid when Il Duce's son-in-law and press chief Excellency Count Ciano protested: "If Americans heard Mussolini on the radio they heard no laughter, much less 'gales of laughter.' When the Duce mentioned France they heard an expectant hush among the people—a hush awaiting what he had to say—and after he said it they heard unanimous applause."
Last week Count Ciano emphatically could laugh last, as Excellency Mussolini and Excellency Laval negotiated their entente in frowning Palazzo Venezia.
"Great Hopes! Great Hopes!" Multipower conferences convene late. Last week promptly at 9 a. m. Mussolini and Laval faced each other across the Dictator 's long, black-oak worktable. Their first job was to "close" on the agreements already secretly arrived at. These were:
1) A mutual pledge for concerted Franco-Italian action to guarantee permanently the integrity of Austria and keep her out of Nazi clutches.
2) Mutual agreement upon final demarcation of the long-disputed African frontier between Italian Libya and French West Africa.
To square off these matters took 90 minutes. At that point the two statesmen had achieved much, plenty to warrant the "high spirits" in which they were observed to sit down to lunch in Palazzo Quirinale with massive Queen Elena between them and minute King Vittorio Emanuele on the Frenchman's left.