Confidence in London and Paris on the prospects of putting the patrol system in the Mediterranean for the prevention of submarine piracy is not reflected in Berlin or Rome. It seems unfortunate that Great Britain and France have to carry the burden of Soviet Russian support and in addition a flagrantly provocative flourish from M. Litvinoff whose remarks, under cover of a pretence at frankness, were bound to exasperate Italian opinion. Nor is it surprising that German writers who can see no virtue in Moscow should at once give M. Litvinoff considerable space and attention. Berlin puts its finger on the spot when it points cut that an essential to the success of the agreement is conviction that all parties intend faithfully to carry it into effect. M. Litvinoft's speech, to say the least of it, almost promises in advance that Russia will have no such convietion, However, the pointed manner in which Mr. Anthony Eden avoided reference to M. Litvinoff's pyrotechnics is evidently noted in Rome. There seems to be every indication that Great Britain and France intend to put the scheme into working order and that immediately it be approved, It will be hoped that Italy, with Germany, will find it consistent with their policy to -operate, for by cooperation they really give the most crushing answer to the charges brought by the Russian representative. Whether belief in the scheme is justified cannot be satisfactorily determined at this distance; it has the merit of being in the main a professionally devised plan and should therefore be free from the defects of other cooperative proposals which have split on political rocks.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.