That is the obvious significance of this recent visit of King Alfonso with his minister to Rome. But more than that one paramount question seems to have been discussed. Both Spain and Italy are still in form constitutional monarchies modelled or remodelled in the nineteenth century on the not very congenial British pattern--which in that time was the political fashion everywhere. Recent events have thrust the monarchs of both countries a little aside in favour of virtual dictators. Except for the persistence of the crown, both Italy and Spain have taken on a new resemblance to the republics of Latin America. Those countries seem to find their natural form of political expression neither in royal rule nor in parliamentary forms, but in some sort of dictator-president. The social and intellectual life and probably the political thought of Latin America may be in as close touch and may even be in closer touch with the European mother countries than is the case between Great Britain and her Dominions. There is a great Italian population in several South American States; and everywhere in Italy and the Spanish Peninsula one comes upon the houses of rich “Americanos”--from the Argentine and Brazil, and so forth. And it is quite easy to believe the rumours that the conversations in Rome went beyond the Mediterranean and considered the possibility of still greater alliances and understandings in support of the Latin idea, from which France, which is neither northern with the British and Germans nor Latin with the Italians, but half and half between them, and incurably and self-centredly France, may be excluded. I will not write here now of how an understanding of that sort might affect the relationship of its participants to the League of Nations, nor will I speculate how the United States and the Monroe doctrine would be touched by such a coalescence of old and new world Latinism. The first, most obvious reaction of this new move towards a higher unity is upon France. I do not know how far the newspaper consortium in France will allow the news of what has happened to reach the white population of France. For long the European French have been kept in profound ignorance of the gathering British distrust of their foreign policy, and in still profounder ignorance of the reasons for that distrust. I believe attempts are now being made in France to represent this coming together of Spain and Italy as an alliance to keep Britain out of the Mediterranean. It is nothing of the sort. It is an alliance to restrain French Africa. But there have been signs since King Alfonso’s visit to Rome of a dim realisation even on the part of M. Poincaré of the circle of dismay and disapproval that is closing in slowly and steadily upon France.