Word: albania
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...status quo of the Mediterranean. In January Dictator Mussolini had personally promised Mr. Chamberlain that he had no intention of changing that status quo. Last week Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano gravely assured British Ambassador Lord Perth that Italy did not intend to take "drastic action" in Albania. Just three days later Italian warships raced across the Adriatic, Italian legionnaires landed under protective gunfire at four Albanian ports, Italian aviators bombed Albanian towns...
Italian explanations of why it had become "necessary" to take over Albania were more grimly humorous than usual. Mountainous Albania, about the size of Vermont, was already an Italian economic dependency. With its population of only 1,000,000, with few industries, no railroads, precious little natural wealth, Albania could not plausibly be pictured as a menace to powerful Fascist Italy, but some attempt was made to do so. Even more ludicrous were the Fascist press claims that: 1) Italians were showing their undying love for the Albanians; 2) King Zog, heretofore an unusually obliging Italian puppet, had recently shown...
Cheap. For months Dictator Mussolini has eyed well-armed French Tunisia, has made passes at French Somaliland, has shouted for a share in the Suez Canal. He got nowhere while Partner Hitler snatched territory right & left. In Albania he got a cheap victory; he also gave a ringing answer to Britain's anti-aggression moves and served notice that Rome and Berlin were still on the offensive...
...move also served to tighten the Fascist-Nazi pincers on Yugoslavia. That nation is now surrounded on three sides, with Nazi Austria on the north, Fascist Albania on the south, and an Italian sea, the Adriatic, on the west. To make the picture complete, dissatisfied little Bulgaria, most defeated of Germany's World War allies, lies on the east. When Britain hastily suggested that Yugoslavia join the anti-aggression pact there came only stony silence from Belgrade. The Yugoslav Government dared do nothing to offend its powerful neighbors...
With Aggressors Hitler and Mussolini still at large, with the small European countries fearing invasion almost any hour, with France and Britain only lately awake to the perils of the hour, many a man-in-the-street would agree with Albania's exiled King Zog's estimate of European conditions as given to a United Press correspondent in Fiorina, Greece: "There are in Europe two madmen who are disturbing the entire world-Hitler and Mussolini. There are in Europe two damn fools who sleep-Chamberlain and Daladier...