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have not raised them now because the mad-house which is Europe will not stand further
 
excitements. But there can be no peace which is real until Italy has free egress from, and access
 
to, the Mediterranean. You have Just come to Italy on the REX. You were held up at Gibraltar by
 
the British and mails and passengers were taken off. In the western Mediterranean you have seen
 
for yours elf that we are the prisoners of the British. Do you also realize that an Italian cannot
 
send a ship from Trieste, an Italian port, to Massowa, another Italian port, without having the
 
British take off half the cargo? How would you like it if the British did that to your ships plying
 
between New York and New Orleans?"
 
      Mussolini spoke with the greatest bitterness of the British, but he gave no evidence
 
whatever of antagonism towards the French. 
 
          He then same back to the question of peace terms. He said that in his Judgment the Allies
 
gravely underestimated the military strength and the efficiency of the organization of Germany.  
 
     I then asked him the flat question: "Do you consider it possible at this moment for any
 
successful negotiations to be undertaken between Germany and the Allies for a real and lasting
 
peace?"
 
          His answer was an emphatic "Yes". He said that of one thing he was profoundly certain,
 
and that was that none of the peoples now at war desired to fight. The situation now in that
 
regard was utterly different from that which existed in 1914.  He went on, "But I am equally sure
 
that if a  real' war breaks out, with its attendant slaughter