(Published in Il Popolo d'Italia, May 8, 1936)
On the morning of May 4th, in Rome, at Palazzo Venezia, Benito Mussolini made the following statements to Ward Price, the editor of the Daily Mail of London:
The necessity of reorganizing the League of Nations is now universally admitted. Italy had already taken an initiative on the matter. Recent events have made this reform even more urgent, and Italy will lend its cooperation.
My thesis is that the League of Nations can and should exist, but with tasks that are not superior to its strengths and with a different spirit in regards to the needs of the peoples and the positions of the European peoples.
In light of the sanctions, Italy could only have an attitude extreme reserve after the events of March 7th, but Italy is always ready to collaborate for the realization of a frank and concrete rapprochement between the great Western countries, which must finally arrive at an understanding, because they cannot fight each other, otherwise all of European civilization will collapse.
Tell your readers in the most formal way that Italy wants peace and has given proof of it and continues to develop its foreign policy with peaceful aims.
I have always been ready and I am and always will be ready to reconfirm, in the most categorical terms, that my policy never intended—nor does it intend—to encroach upon the interests of the British Empire. Only people blinded by bad faith could think otherwise.
Italy has no—not even remote—aspiration towards Egypt, which I consider an independent—not African, but rather a Mediterranean—country, with which Italy has always been and will continue to be on excellent terms.
Italy has no political interest in Sudan and none in Palestine. It is therefore false to attribute to Italy any responsibility for the troubles between Arabs and Jews.
I admit that the Italian press has engaged in polemics with the British press, but this was inevitable given the attitude taken by many English circles which deeply shocked the whole Italian people.
English ambulances were never deliberately bombed by Italian aviators; the missionaries of the various Red Crosses were killed or wounded by the Abyssinians, who are too backward to respect its symbols.
As for the claims of gas, Aloisi spoke very clearly on the subject in Geneva. Dr. Winkler, of the Dutch Red Cross, out of hundreds of wounded, has treated only one person who believed himself to have been struck by gas.
As for the methods of war employed by the Ethiopians, they are always the same and they have horrified the world. If the masses of British people saw the photographs of the workers massacred at the Gondrand construction yard, they would finally get a clear idea of the level of barbarity to which the Ethiopians sink to.
Peace will be dictated in accordance with the spirit of Rome and must not be irresolute, since we intend to solve the Ethiopian problem once and for all, with our own sacrifices, with our own blood, with our own money, without asking anyone for anything.
