Word: pact
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Government from springing the booby trap of Sanctions, and explained over the long-distance telephone time after time that Benito Mussolini is no booby, last week had the satisfaction of signing with II Duce's son-in-law, Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, a general Anglo-Italian pact of conciliation, appeasement and concord. Having affixed their signatures, the Briton and the Italian clasped and shook hands with particular vigor and warmth. The Eagle of Fascism had made peace with the British Lion...
Particulars of the pact were of minimum importance compared to the maximum import of its having been signed at all. In British and Italian quarters its phrasing was called "deliberately loose," the object of this being to permit the British Cabinet to keep the boiling antiFascism of Laborites in the House of Commons from unduly effervescing. Even so the London Daily Worker came out with a cartoon in which an extremely virile Benito Mussolini peers out over a Roman balcony toward a lawn on which an extremely effeminate Anthony Eden dances toward him in diaphanous costume, finger crooked coyly...
...highest official quarters the pact of Eagle & Lion was said to have been supplemented by a verbal "gentlemen's understanding," not strictly binding, but to the effect that London and Rome anticipate: 1) cessation by the extremely powerful Italian radio station at Bari of its anti-British broadcasts in the languages of the Near East; 2) disintegration of the British ''Mediterranean accords" with France, Yugoslavia. Turkey and Greece, made at the time of Sanctions and considered by II Duce as menacing Italy; 3) easy going by Italy from now on in the Spanish Civil War, and even...
Since Italian diplomacy is particularly adult and the British is too, members of the entourage of Sir Eric and Count Ciano> said with aplomb that of course the pact is a perfectly cold-blooded piece of advantage-seeking on both sides and that if it ever becomes to British or Italian interest to heave it into Europe's dustbin, that is where it will go, with no hard feelings between the diplomatic professionals. They have simply tried to end the insanity of the British Constitutional Democratic Monarchy having ever found itself in a quarrel with the Italian Fascist Corporative...
After some days of "courtesy delay" while the pact was privately circulated to the Mediterranean Powers and won a good press in England before anyone really knew what was in it, the text was made public. On its face Britain and Italy agree that ships of both countries have "freedom of entry to, exit from and transit through the Mediterranean" and they "disclaim any desire to modify, or, so far as they are concerned, to see modified the status quo as regards national sovereignty in the Mediterranean area...