Foreign Policy up to the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

Foreign policy comprised a singularly important part of Fascism, which deplored peace for any length of time and praised imperial expansion. Although about half a million Slovenes and Croats in Istria had fallen to Italy in 1919 Mussolini would scarcely forget the Italian claim to Dalmatia. Nor was East Africa forgotten. In his first speech in the Chamber of Deputies after he had been appointed Premier and Foreign Minister, that is on 16 November 1922, he chose to say:

Foreign policy is the area which especially preoccupies us…. The fundamental guiding-lines of our foreign policy are the following: — treaties of peace, whether good or bad, must be carried out once they have been signed and ratified. A self-respecting state can have no other doctrine. Treaties are not eternal; they are not irreparable. They are chapters of history, not its epilogue. To carry them out means to test them. If, in the course of their application, their absurdity becomes evident, this will constitute the new fact that should lead to a further examination of the [signatories’] respective positions….

Just as Fascist Italy has no intention of tearing up the peace treaties, so for political, economic and moral reasons, she has no intention of abandoning her war-time allies. Rome is on the side of Paris and London.