852.00/5016
Memorandum by the Chief of the Office of Arms and Munitions Control (Green)
Marquis Rossi Longhi, Counselor of the Italian Embassy, called at my office this morning to say goodbye. In the course of the conversation, he referred to the attached editorial49 which appeared in the Washington Post yesterday, and said that he supposed that we were busy considering whether or not the President should proclaim that a state of war existed between Italy and Spain.
I affected to consider that remark a pleasantry, laughed at the idea, and turned the conversation into other channels as quickly as possible.
[Page 258]Rossi Longhi then explained at some length Italy’s vital interest in the outcome of the civil war in Spain, predicted that the Rebels would soon be masters of the situation and said that although the Italians were assisting them, they had not more than ten or twelve thousand troops with the Rebel armies. He treated as absurd various newspaper reports printed in this country placing the number of Italians with Franco at very much higher figures.
- Not reprinted.↩