852.00/2490: Telegram
The Chargé in Italy (Kirk) to the Secretary of State
[Received 3 p.m.]
320. My 311, August 4, 6 p.m. The Italian Government has received the formula proposed by the French as a declaration of nonintervention in the Spanish conflict. I was informed at the Foreign [Page 473] Office this morning that a study was being made of this formula but that no decision would be taken until it had been submitted to Mussolini who returns to Rome this afternoon. I understand on good authority that this formula in its present form does not meet the views of the Italian Government as outlined in its reply to the original French proposal (see my 319, August 7, 5 p.m.39).
I was told at the Foreign Office that the Italian Government had taken no decision to land troops in Spain to protect its nationals and the officials with whom I spoke emphasized the extreme danger inherent in any such undertaking as well as its probable inefficacy. It appears that at one time consideration was given to the possibility of evacuating Italians in Spain by aeroplane but that the project was abandoned as it was feared that the planes would be seized in Spain. This project may explain the increased activities in aviation which have been rumored to have taken place near Genoa and in Sardinia. No reports of any special movement of Italian naval vessels in that area have been received. A report however is being circulated here to the effect that practically all the surface units of the German fleet are proceeding to Spanish waters.
The alarm with which the situation in Spain is viewed here is still acute and is manifest throughout the Government. Although Mussolini has been away from Rome for several days he is reported to have shown in conference greater anxiety than at any time during the entire course of the Abyssinian conflict.40 Italian officials continue to add thereto the importance of the Spanish conflict in itself but their chief preoccupation is in relation to the development of Soviet propaganda and the manifest growth of Communism in Europe. They say that insofar as Italy is concerned the Fascist regime is doing everything in its power to improve the condition of the people in the hope that it will be possible to meet their needs and direct their forces into more orderly channels. They profess to see no means available whereby those countries in Europe opposed to the Communistic system might stop once for all the trend toward Communism and declare that the most that can be expected is that the Governments of those countries may be able to satisfy the aspirations of the masses so that they will not resort to force. The actual state of terrorism in Spain and the dangers inherent in the present trend in France prove, they maintain, the momentum which Communism has gained and the direct menace [with?] which the countries opposed to that system are immediately confronted.
- Not printed; but see telegram No. 316, August 6, 5 p.m., from the Chargé in Italy, p. 466.↩
- See vol. iii, pp. 34 ff.↩