INTERNATIONAL: Anniversaries

Other European nations planned to forego Armistice Day exercises this week. Italy last week celebrated her World War victory over Austria-Hungary in her own Armistice Day (Nov. 4) ceremonies. The Prince of Piedmont, heir to the throne, representing the House of Savoy, and Premier Benito Mussolini, representing the Fascist Party, saluted and knelt together before the tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the foot of the huge Vittorio Emanuele II monument in Rome.

Another date which official Italy chose to forget was the second anniversary (Nov. 6) of the now defunct anti-Comintern Pact. The Government exchanged no congratulatory notes with Co-signers Japan, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Manchukuo.

Meanwhile, in the U. S. S. R. Bolshevists staged a bang-up three-day celebration of the 22nd anniversary of the Communist revolution. The Communist Third International blasted forth with a strident manifesto which called upon workers of the world to unite and "go against those who favor continuation of imperialistic war." Nothing wrong was found with Nazi Germany, but the manifesto singled out for special tongue-lashings the U. S., which "repeals the embargo on the export of arms to secure huge profits to the kings of the munitions industry"; Britain and France, for "keeping half the world in the chains of colonial slavery"; the Italian bourgeois, which "waits only for a convenient moment to throw himself on the oppressed and have his share of the spoils"; the international bankers, who "will preserve the worst reactionary regimes in Europe."

As if this were not enough wordage for one day, Premier-Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov elaborated on the same theses in an address in the Moscow opera house. He specially re-emphasized Russian neutrality, U. S. S. R.'s "policy of peace." Meantime, Finland, further tightening her defenses, clapped on mail censorship, cut off foreign telephones, waited to see if peaceful Russia would be as good as her protestations (see below).