ITALY BELIEVES THERE’S A BASIS FOR PEACE. Radio reports last night and this morning on the surprise Hitler-Mussolini conference at the Brenner Pass indicate the Italians are trying to get the Nazis to modify their conditions for peace. A Vatican source says that the Allies have rejected an eleven-point German peace plan, but Italy wants to persuade Hitler to modify his terms. The Italians claim Mussolini’s persuasive powers have delayed a Nazi “great offensive” against the Allies that would put a negotiated settlement beyond reach. Reportedly, the Duce was in “good humor” after the meeting, which some correspondents believe means that a basis for further peace discussions was found.
Prior to this meeting of the Axis partners, the first in eighteen months, reporters seemed to think it portended especially dramatic news. Guido Enderis writes in Monday’s New York Times that it was “expected to be a momentous consultation” and “opinion in neutral diplomatic quarters inclines to attach extraordinary importance to it.” Sigrid Schultz uses “momentous” in her Chicago Tribune story as well. It’s said that the conference was intended to clarify the conditions under which Italy would declare war on Britain and France, as well as to help cement the Axis into more of a Berlin-Rome-Moscow alliance. The New York Herald Tribune quotes a German propaganda outlet as explaining that the “young nations” are building a “new Europe” in preparation for the coming victory over Britain.
WHY IS WELLES STILL IN ROME? The “peace mission” or “fact-gathering mission” (take your pick) of Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles was wiped from the front pages over the last week by (1) the Finnish capitulation, and (2) reports that Hitler strongly rebuffed any peace possibility during the Secretary’s visit to Berlin. The Welles visits to London and Paris got little notice in the press. But since then Secretary Welles has returned to Rome for a second time and spoken at length with Pope Pius, who is said to be a strong advocate of U.S. mediation to end the war. And as of yesterday, the Secretary was waiting to meet with Mussolini for a second time.
This is once again feeding British fears, as described in a Sunday New York Herald Tribune article by Frank R. Kelly, that “a gigantic ‘peace offensive’ is about to be launched by Germany and...Mr. Welles, and ultimately Mr. Roosevelt, will be taken in by it.” The influential British journal Time & Tide paints Secretary Welles as a rube -- “Those who have seen most of him are a little disturbed. They expected to find a man of the world. They have met a completely true-to-type American and there is nothing more typically American than the United States citizen who comes here with a neatly-made framework of ideas into which all the facts he gathers when over here slot slickly into place.”
MORE PEACE PORTENTS? The Chicago Tribune’s Walter Trohan sees the Hitler-Mussolini conference as one of a number of developments which might portend a major effort to end the war soon. “Peace advocates argued that the timing of a peace move is perfect,” he writes in Monday’s editions. “They pointed to the opening of Holy Week on St. Patrick’s Day, the pope’s anticipated Easter week plea and the second visit of...Welles to Rome.”
But Mr. Trohan adds, “There is no indication that Great Britain and France would be willing to accept any program in which Germany has a dictatorial hand.” That’s putting it mildly. The Anglo-French allies have been inconstant in any number of ways, but not about this. If Chamberlain and Daladier were to suddenly turn around and even consider a peace deal that would leave Hitler in power and in possession of even some of his conquests, it would be the story of the century -- not to mention a disaster for civilized Europe. Could it happen? Almost surely not. The Allies have lately been so insistent on this point that it can’t be imagined how they could go back on their word. But then, given the way Chamberlain has behaved in the past, one has to retain the word “almost.”
BUT SIGNS OF A SPRING OFFENSIVE, TOO. Sunday’s Washington Post contains a piece by Associated Press correspondent Louis Lochner listing eight points pointing to an “early spring offensive” by the Germans. Among them --
“On all sides, one hears from German friends and acquaintances that men on furlough have been drafted again; that new classes are being called up; that new recruits are being put through the paces with all the evidence of hurry to ship them westward...Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels early in February summoned to Berlin all officials in charge of the propaganda sub-offices....It seemed obvious to neutral observers that Goebbels, who had just completed an extended visit to the Western front, was using the lull before the real storm breaks to instruct his young men as to how to handle the propaganda during the months ahead.”
Mr. Lochner also says an A.P. man got an interesting reply during a discussion with a member of the German high command’s press department staff. To the A.P.’s complaints of delays in the servicing of military news, due to the various public relations offices involved, the German replied, “All this will stop automatically in a few weeks. Then arms alone will speak, and the press department of the supreme high command alone will have anything to say.”
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