Word: ciano
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...predecessor. Last week the King bestowed the Supreme Order of Santissima Annunziata upon Luigi Cardinal Maglione, Papal Secretary of State. This decoration, which makes its owner an honorary "cousin of the King," has long been held by Pius XII. Next, the Holy Father gave Foreign Minister Count Ciano a moderately good decoration, the Order of the Golden Spur. The Vatican whispered that this week Il Duce is to pay a formal call on Il Papa (although the Pa lazzo Venezia was not so sure), and that this spring the Pope will again break precedent by making a tour of Italy...
During this hubbub the French Ambassador remained grimly seated in the Diplomatic Gallery, and afterward he strongly remonstrated with Count Ciano; but all the same, secret negotiations began. Last week M. François-Poncet was back from Paris with these reputed offers: 1) Djibouti, the French Red Sea terminus of Italian Ethiopia's only railway, to be leased to Italy for 90 years; 2) Italy to be allowed to purchase an increased share in the closely held stock of the Suez Canal Co. to insure lower rates for Italian shipping through the Canal, main water route to Ethiopia...
Game Spoiled. According to the Ciano version, what really spoiled this Axis game was the overture of Neville Chamberlain to Joseph Stalin and the consequent alarm of Adolf Hitler lest he have to face an Anglo-Franco-Russian lineup. The action of the democracies, said Count Ciano, so bolstered the prestige of the Soviet Government that the Nazis had to do something about it. "If the great democracies had ignored Russia," feelingly continued Ciano, "Germany would have had well-founded motives for doing the same." Thus Britain and France were officially blamed for starting...
...treaty only two days before it was signed. "At 10 o'clock in the evening of Aug. 21, Ribbentrop telephoned me that he was going to Moscow on the 23rd to sign the pact of non-aggression between the Reich and the U. S. S. R.," recounted Count Ciano...
...Majesty and His Royal Highness, foreseeing this possibility, had "asked the privilege and honor of serving the country in arms." He warned Britain and France that "real peace" will be impossible to get if they insist on Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Poland regaining their independence. Nor will Italy, declared Ciano, attempt to create a Balkan Bloc. In a slap at the Allied blockade control he concluded: "Italy continues to follow the conflict, ready to contribute to world peace, but also to defend her shipping and her air lines...