740.0011 European War 1039/1145: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 11—2:08 p.m.]
1065. In the course of a conversation yesterday the Italian Ambassador told me that Italy would probably not take any action or even seriously object if Soviet action against Rumania was confined to the occupation of Bessarabia but that any attempt on the part of the Soviet Union to penetrate further into the Balkans or along the shore of the Black Sea would be opposed by Italy, possibly even by force of arms. In this connection the Ambassador did not exclude the possibility of an Italian-Turkish-French-British combination to resist any serious Soviet penetration in the Balkans. In discussing the general Italian policy the Ambassador said that at the beginning of the war the Italian Government had been concerned lest the French and British endeavor to force Italy out of its neutral position but that this fear appeared now to be groundless and the impression prevailed in Rome that Great Britain and France shared the Italian desire to keep the war out of the Mediterranean which he characterized as the dominant principle of Italian policy at the present time.