London, Apr. 26.
HE fact that there is no news of the date of the expected visit of the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, to Berlin is taken by the Foreign Affairs correspondent of the "Daily Express" to mean that the reported negotiations to convert the anti-Comintern Pact into a military alliance have broken down.
The correspondent, who asserts that Count Ciano has cancelled his plan to attend Herr Hitler's speech to the Reichstag, says this is an authoritative explanation he had received from Rome.
According to his report, Japan hesitated, her naval authorities being impressed by President Roosevelt's order to concentrate the American Fleet in the Pacific, but German diplomacy is still making eleventh-hour efforts to change the Japanese Government's decision.
Describing the deliberations going on "without intermission" in the inner circles of the Japanese Gov minent as "momentous," the Tokyo correspondent of "The Times" says, on balance, it is still permissible to expect that, whatever Herr Hitler may promise his audience on Friday, he will not be able to say that Japan will fight Axis battles in the Pacific.
The situation, and even the future of the Japanese Cabinet, correspondent concludes.—Reuter. are very delicately balanced, the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.