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the Exposition would be held in any event. It would represent his own endeavor to build up the
 
new Italy and the new Rome.  He expressed his hearty concurrence in the view that relations
 
between Italy and the United States should be close and friendly both in the interest of the two
 
peoples as well as in the interest of the reestablishment of world peace. He said there was nothing
 
he would welcome more than increased trade relations with the United States, since Italy's trade
 
was increasingly prejudiced due to war conditions, and to British war policies. He said he trusted
 
a commercial treaty could be negotiated to mutual advantage, and that now that every other
 
nation of the world, including the Soviet, had recognized the Ethiopian conquest, that technical
 
point would no longer be an impediment to the United States.
 
          I said that I was specifically authorized by the President to speak very frankly to him in
 
that regard. The President felt that recognition of the Empire by the United States would not be
 
an obstacle, provided that question were a part of a whole general and permanent peace
 
settlement and readjustment, especially if it were accompanied by some utilization by Italy of
 
some portion of Ethiopia for the settlement of European minorities.  But the President wished me
 
also to remind Mussolini very frankly that we could not regard the matter as an isolated question,
 
because of its inevitable relation to our whole problem in the Far East. Mussolini smiled and said
 
if he had to wait until we