Northern France during the War of 1914-18, had afterwards been prosecuted in his absence before a French Court Martial, sitting at Lille, for alleged thefts of private property belonging to French civilians in the Occupied Territory, and had been condemned in contumaciam to five years' imprisonment. This trial and sentence, however, had remained unknown to General von Nathusius himself, and, in his ignorance, he applied to the French authorities at Strasbourg for permission to visit, on All Saints' Day, 1924, the grave of his father-in-law at Forbach, in the former German Reichsland, now reunited with France. The permission was granted, but when the General stepped out of the railway carriage at Forbach with his wife on the 1st November, 1924, he was immediately arrested; and while Frau von Nathusius was allowed to return home to Cassel, the General himself was imprisoned in the fortress at Metz, whence he was transferred on the 5th November to Lille,1 in order that he might appear before the court martial in person. Here a member of the German Embassy in Paris was allowed to visit him, though only in the presence of a French interpreter. On the 8th the German Government lodged a formal diplomatic protest in Paris against the arrest; but the French Government maintained that this was in order, since, although General von Nathusius's name had not been included in the list of war criminals' submitted to the German Government by the Allies, the latter had taken the right under the Versailles Treaty (Art. 228) to prosecute any persons accused of having committed acts in violation of the laws and customs of war'.4 Meanwhile, the General challenged the previous verdict of the court, on the ground that he had never received notice of the trial, but welcomed a re-trial (without prejudice to the technical question whether the court possessed jurisdiction or not) as the most expeditious means of clearing his character.5 When the court met on the 20th November it agreed to a re-hearing; and on this occasion it was admitted that the prisoner's conduct had been exemplary in every other respect and also that none of the property which he was alleged to have stolen had been found in his house at Coblenz, although the house had been searched for it after the Armistice, when Coblenz had come under Allied occupation."

6

3

1 The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 7th November, 1924.

2 Le Temps, 7th and 9th November, 1924.

3 See Survey, 1920-3, p. 98, n.

4 Le Temps and The Times, 10th November, 1924.

5 The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 14th November, 1924.

6

Le Temps, 21st November, 1924. 7 The Times, 21st November, 1924.

Nevertheless, the Court (by six votes to one) 1 sentenced the General to one year's imprisonment and costs. Considering that the prosecution had failed to make its case, that the General was in his seventieth year, and that he had been allowed by the French authorities to place himself in their power without warning of the proceedings which they proposed to take against him, this verdict was indefensible from the standpoint of justice, while from the political standpoint it was delivered at a particularly unfortunate moment, when a general election campaign was in progress in Germany and when negotiations were on foot between the German and French Governments for a commercial treaty.2 Happily, the verdict of the military court was not supported by French public opinion; and, on the proposition of the Minister of War, a pardon was signed on the 25th by the President of the Republic and General von Nathusius was released from prison next morning 3-though not before he had protested against the pardon and demanded, instead, the reversal of the sentence. When he arrived home at Cassel on the 27th, the General received a great ovation from his fellow-countrymen; but, in spite of this comparatively happy ending, the incident left much bitterness behind it.5

4

1 Le Temps, 26th November, 1924.

2 These negotiations will be dealt with in the Survey for 1925.

3 The Times, 27th November, 1924.

4 The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 29th November, 1924. The appeal was based on certain technical irregularities in the procedure, the defence objecting in particular to the composition of the Military Court which tried General von Nathusius, and alleging that it should, under French law, have consisted entirely of Generals. The appeal was finally rejected by the Court of Cassation early in 1925, on the ground that General von Nathusius was accused of an offence against the common law and was therefore tried not as a soldier but as a civilian (ibid., 7th February, 1925).

5 For the General's own account of his experiences, see ibid., 30th November, 1924.

PART II

EUROPE

B. CENTRAL, EASTERN, AND NORTHERN EUROPE

(i) The Position of Italy.

It does not fall within the scope of this work to give an account of the internal affairs of each country, but in dealing with the South-East of Europe and with the Mediterranean it would be impossible to ignore the influence of the remarkable events which took place in Italy during 1922. On the 30th October of that year Signor Mussolini, the leader of the Fascist Movement, as the result of a congress and demonstration held a few days before which had led to the resignation of the Facta Government, was summoned by the King and undertook the formation of a ministry. The change was something other than the normal transference of power from the leader of one parliamentary group or bloc to the leader of another. It meant the establishment of a régime akin to a dictatorship and the temporary eclipse of parliamentary government.

The immediate causes of this striking event were to be found in the internal conditions of the country. For several years the Government had been in the hands of weak administrations, which had depended on shifting coalitions framed from the numerous parliamentary groups. At the same time the Socialists had in some parts of the country resorted to lawless acts which the Government had not been strong enough to suppress. The Fascist Movement was in its essence anti-socialist and also nationalistic. In particular, the party, while in opposition, had taken up a very intransigent attitude in regard to the question of Fiume and had supported the lawless acts which had been committed by Italian nationalists in that city. There was, therefore, considerable apprehension in some quarters that the new Government might embark upon measures which would endanger the peace of Europe, and which would, in particular, make the relations between Italy and Jugoslavia more difficult. Some justification for this apprehension was to be found in the very

1

vigorous measures which Signor Mussolini adopted in 1923 after the murder of an Italian General occupied in the delimitation of the frontier between Greece and Albania; 1 but fears of a similar display of intransigence in other instances were not realized. A meeting which had taken place between Signor Mussolini and Lord Curzon immediately before the opening of the Lausanne Conference in November 1922, when the Fascist Government had only been in power for a few weeks, had prepared the way for harmonious co-operation with other Great Powers, with whom amicable relations were maintained during the two following years in regard to the larger issues of European policy, such as the attitude of the Allies towards Germany and the Reparation Question. The Fascist Government also adopted a conciliatory attitude when frontier incidents threatened in the spring of 1924 to disturb the relations between Italy and Switzerland.2 Above all, as appears from the account given in Section (iii) below, the establishment of a dictatorial Government in Italy helped rather than hindered the final settlement of the long-drawn-out dispute over Fiume.

(ii) Incidents on the Swiss-Italian Frontier (1924).3

On the 6th April, 1924, at Lugano, just inside the Swiss frontier, a Swiss non-commissioned officer and several private soldiers, who were spending their time off duty in a public house, amused themselves by singing' The Red Flag' and in other ways annoying certain Italian subjects who were present, and they declined to leave off when reprimanded by one of their own officers. On the 8th, at Ponte Tresa, again just inside the Swiss frontier, several other Swiss soldiers, in a column which had halted for a rest on the march, shouted some abusive remarks about Signor Mussolini for the benefit of persons standing on the Italian side of the frontier, and these persons unfortunately overheard what was said though the disorderliness was suppressed so quickly by the Swiss non-commissioned officers that it did not come to the notice of the officers in charge of the column. The same evening Swiss soldiers bathing in the Lake at Madonna del Piano bandied abuse with Italian customs officials on the opposite shore. In consequence of the

1 See Survey, 1920-3, pp. 348-56.

2 See Section (ii) below.

3 For the facts, as eventually established, see an official communiqué from the Swiss Federal Government, published in Le Temps, 22nd May, 1924. 4 The Corriere della Sera, 15th April, 1924.

exaggerated reports of these incidents which spread through the neighbouring parts of Italy, Signor Tognetti, the Sindaco (Mayor) of Swiss Ponte Tresa, when he went on personal business to Varese in Italy on the 11th, without even knowing that any incidents had taken place, was kidnapped by the local Fascisti and only released after promising to send them an apology for the Ponte Tresa incident -a promise which he faithfully fulfilled, after his return home, by dispatching a telegram next morning from Italian Ponte Tresa. Signor Tognetti, on his part, sent in an exaggerated report of his experience to the Swiss authorities.

The Swiss Federal Government had already set on foot a military inquiry into the Ponte Tresa incident when, on the 12th April, the Italian Minister at Berne asked for information on the subject, whereupon the Swiss Government promised to communicate the results of its inquiry, with the request that the Italian Government, on its part, would make a similar communication in regard to the Varese incident. Since the Varese Fascisti were reported to have threatened an incursion into Swiss territory, the frontier-guards on both sides were reinforced. Meanwhile the Gruppo Milanese Arditi di Guerra Fascisti telegraphed to Colonel Gansser, the Commandant of the Swiss Battalion in whose ranks the Ponte Tresa incident had originated, a challenge to fight a duel-an invitation which the Colonel transmitted, for information, to the Swiss Federal Council (the Swiss law forbidding soldiers as well as civilians to fight duels); 2 and on the 13th April the Italian officer in charge of the frontier on the Italian shores of the Lake of Lugano ordered the master of a Swiss steamer, which was in the habit of flying both the Swiss and the Italian flag, to strike the Swiss flag when touching at Italian landing-places-a demand to which the master responded by striking both flags simultaneously.3

These incidents were not more childish than many others which had been the seeds of war in Europe in the past; and the mischief was considerably increased by the fact that they had occurred in the Canton Ticino-a salient of Swiss territory projecting into Italian territory southward from the St. Gotthard. In irresponsible quarters in Italy, especially since the Fascisti had come into power, the Ticino had been claimed as a terra irredenta-partly on the academic ground that its Swiss inhabitants spoke the Italian language, and

1 The Corriere della Sera, 13th April; The Times, 14th April, 1924.

2 The Corriere della Sera, 13th and 16th April, 1924.

3 Le Temps and the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 16th April, 1924.