Sick Men of Europe

Mussolini's admiring gaze already turned towards the Third
Reich; and soon the goose-step, called Passo Romano, would be
seen in Rome—little dark Italians spiritedly kicking their legs
into the air, like a flute playing Wagner. When Hitler did give
the order for his troops to march into Austria, the other end of
the Axis remained quiescent, rewarded by a telegram—'Musso-
lini, I shall never forget this.'

Through the jungle of international affairs, Mr. Eden con-
tinued to push his earnest, but somewhat indecisive, way. Since
his advocacy of the abandonment of sanctions and acceptance of
the policy of Non-Intervention in Spain, his popularity had
declined; as Mr. Baldwin sagely remarked, it had been roses,
roses all the way for him, but the brickbats had to come, as any
old parliamentary hand well knew. Those who had looked to
him to lead them to collective security, did not conceal their
disappointment; still the wicked triumphed and the weak were
downtrodden, as when Sir John Simon was Foreign Secretary,
and, what was even more distressing, the danger of the strong
having to choose between also being downtrodden and offering
resistance, grew ever more imminent. That Abyssinia should
have been abandoned, was disgraceful, but that England might
be similarly threatened, appalling. Love of peace was, it seemed,
like patriotism, not enough; and to implement it, rearmament
had become necessary, and was actively, though not very
effectually, undertaken.

When a law-abiding citizen, returning home with money in
his pocket, meets with robbers, it is natural that he should try to
ingratiate himself with the least villainous looking among them,
in the hope of thereby making resistance unnecessary.1 Mussolini

1 An alternative tactic is to persuade himself that the robbers have other
victims in view, and will never bother about him; whistling the while to
keep up his spirits. This is Splendid Isolation, for long the policy of Lord
Beaverbrook's organs, which persistently put forward the view that Europe's
difficulties were no concern of the British Government's, and that there
would be no war. Let everyone, they urged their readers, quietly proceed
with his own affairs, and sleep quietly at nights, because (often in capitals)

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