ROME, March 16, 1940.
 
     The King received me this morning at nine o'clock.
 
The Ambassador accompanied me, but, in view of the Klng's
 
expressed desire to talk to me alone, the Ambassador
 
Joined us only Just before my departure.
 
     The King greeted me very cordially. I noticed that
 
his right arm trembled a good deal, and that he seemed
 
to be somewhat nervous. In the course of our conversa-
 
tion he reminded me of the forty years that he had spent
 
on the throne, and that he was now seventy years of age.
 
He seems younger, and his eyes are bright and very search-
 
ing. The conversation commenced with the usual inquiries
 
about my trip, and the usual remark about how difficult
 
it must be, physically, to undertake so rapid a voyage
 
and to have to talk with so many varying kinds of people.
 
     The King asked me for my general impressions. I told
 
him that perhaps the most outstanding impression I had
 
received was the fact that in every country I had visited
 
the word I had heard most often, and the word which I
 
believed had been uttered to me with most emotion and
 
most sincerity, had been the word "security." I said
 
that it seemed to me that what governments and peoples
 
were demanding beyond everything else was a guarantee
 
of their own security, and the assurance that the present 
 
crisis which Europe and, for that matter, the rest of 
 
the world in great part was now undergoing, should not
 
take place again. I said that I often wondered whether
 
there was any other period of twenty years in the history
 
of the modern world when peoples had been offered so many
 
opportunities, to obtain a real peace and real security,
 
                                                  and