ITALY (see cover)
The bullfrog has protruding eyes and makes a loud, guttural noise, as if he owned the frog pond. He feeds on any living animal matter which he can swallow, and is in turn devoured by creatures stronger than he, such as snakes, fishes, herons, alligators, etc.—Encyclopaedia Britannica and other sources.
This week Benito Mussolini of the protruding eyes and loud, guttural noise went to Brennero to confer with Adolf Hitler. It was the sixth time the two dictators had met since World War II began. To this conference they brought not only their Foreign Ministers, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Count Galeazzo Ciano, but also the chiefs of their high command, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and General Ugo Cavallero. WThat they planned the world would soon know, for each previous meeting has marked a new stage of the war. For the present all that Berlin and Rome announced was "complete agreement."
Much had happened since they last met, January 20. Mussolini's legions had miserably failed to conquer Greece. Hitler had rescued them. Mussolini's legions had been chased out of Egypt and westward across half of Italian Libya. Hitler had rescued them. The France that Mussolini declared war against had become a friend of Hitler's. Hitler's Air Force had taken Crete, astride the eastern Mediterranean.
Hitler may present Crete to Mussolini, as he has presented him with the puppetries of Croatia and Montenegro and with a bit of Dalmatia, but such generosity costs Hitler nothing because Mussolini is a puppet of Hitler's. Well might the two dictators reach complete agreement; Mussolini can no longer say No.
One year ago this week Benito Mussolini entered the war crying: "Our conscience is absolutely clear!" So saying, he staked his country's independence in a game of war for Empire. He lost the game. For although the Bullfrog of the Mediterranean might devour lesser organisms (except those, like Greece, that stuck in his throat), he was firmly locked in the alligator-jaws of Nazi conquest. Were he a man to be amused by his own misfortune, he might laugh gutturally at the paradox of his position: If his ally wins the war, Italy may rule an empire of sorts, but Germany will rule Italy. If his enemy wins the war, Italy may at least rule Italy.
No Imperialists. The Italian people followed Mussolini to war reluctantly. Their reluctance arose from their centuries-old indifference to imperialism. Through the Renaissance they had a deep-rooted and passionate love for their own paese. It took another 300 years to extend this local patriotism to love of their country, their peninsula. In the 72 years since Italy began acquiring an empire the Italian people have usually remained stolidly bored by the process.
Fascist cries of "Nice!, Savoy!" in the Senate in 1938 derived from a deal made by Napoleon III and King Vittorio Emanuele I of Sardinia in 1859, when Napoleon promised to help liberate northern Italy from Austria in return for Nice and Savoy. The war aroused such enthusiasm throughout Italy that Napoleon ducked out of it, taking his prize, while Garibaldi and his Red Shirts conquered Sicily and Naples for Vittorio Emanuele.