MEDITERRANEAN RUMBLINGS

That volcano of unrest in European politics, the Mediterranean district, has recently displayed unmistakable signs of increasing activity. To the three great Western countries, England, France, and Italy, who hold large stakes in the lands surrounding this inland sea, have been added the two Balkan states, Roumania and Jugo Slavia, who emerged into the Class B Power class after the World War and to a certain extent replaced in the politics of the Near East dismembered Austria and red Russia.

England and France, given former Turk lands in Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Syria, have pushed the frontiers of empires further around the Southeastern shores of the Mediterranean. Italy, intent on the Trentino and Trieste in 1919, received little in addition to disappointing Tripoli except the control of Fuime on the Adriatic. Furthermore the appearance of Roumania and Jugo-Slavia as something more than the petty Balkan princedoms of Moldavia--Wallachia and Serbia gave her rivals more serious in many ways than Austria-Hungary had been. So the Peace of Versailles brought no peace to the Near East. Italy's interests traditionally demand her further expansion in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean; England and France with new interests and possessions, are naturally less ready than ever to permit the growth of a common rival, or to allow their own possessions to slip from their grasp in the name of any such principle as "self-determination," a principle to which lip service is considered sufficient.

News dispatches yesterday from Cairo, Bucharest, and Belgrade contain enlightening sidelights upon this undiminished war of empires. England, rather free with promises, about Egyptian independence during the war, is once more closing fast her grip on the country of the Nile. She claims special interest, and intends to enforce it, in the Egyptian army and frontiers. Egypt's hesitation about acceding to this demand will avail her nothing. More logically than ever Egypt is an essential link in Britain's Empire. Not only the Suez and the sea passage to India, but the protectorates in Traz and Palestine, the virtual protectorate in Persia, all these make control over Egypt doubly important to Great Britain.

But there is still another reason, and one more cogent still. Mussolini holds sway in Rome, and Mussolini is an expansionist. He has already made Albania an Italian province in all but name, and he has cast longing eyes southward. Should England step out in the interests of the rights of nationality, Mussolini could best ride the Mediterranean as easily as he has the Adriatic and plant the Italian colors over the forts of Alexandria and perhaps worse yet over the Red Sea towns beside the Suez. The mere conception of such a possibility would be enough to send Winston Churchill stark mad. So England is taking every step toward making Egypt a safe and strong imperial second line of defense.

Once the policy of imperialism is admitted right, the wisdom of England's latest move is thrown into sharp relief by the new obstacles strewn in Mussolini's path in the Aegean and Adriatic by Roumania and Jugo-Slavia, obstacles well calculated to turn the attention of the Quirinal toward Egypt. The hand of France opposes Italy here no less infallibly than England elsewhere for its being hidden behind the foreign offices of Bucharest and Belgrade. Co-incident yesterday with the return to power of the Bratiano, French controlled, anti-Italian government, after a month's exile, comes news of a break in relations between Albania and Jugo-Slavia forced on by the latter because of the arrest of a Serb interpreter. The flimsy pretext discloses the immovability of Jugo-Slav opposition to Italy in Albania or anywhere else in the Balkan peninsula. There will be no war this time certainly, but unless imperialistic policy changes its color in the near future there will come sooner or later an explosion. Near Eastern rivalries no more intense set the world aflame on the murder of an Archduke. Interpreters are only a little less serviceable.