2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 143also bring to an end the relation between the International Institute for
the Unification of Private Law and the LON. According to the record of
the conference’s proceedings, Baldoni made no contribution to the dis-
cussions. Catastini, by contrast, did: he gently insisted on two occasions,
that even if ‘the throwing open of colonial territories to white immi-
gration only constituted a partial and minor solution to the population
problem,’ it was not without importance in relieving demographic stress.
Further to this, Catastini told the conference that it should not ‘be for-
gotten that the possession of colonies greatly stimulated the economic
development of the mother country.’^194
That the Italian observers at the 1937 session of the ISC emit-
ted no spurts of contempt during the proceedings as had, to cite just
one instance, the Italian delegates to its general conference on collec-
tive security two years earlier, may be partly explained by the fact that
Italy, as Frederick Sherwood Dunn put it, had declared ‘while digest-
ing her new African Empire’ that it was ‘a “satiated” state for the time
being.’^195 In an interview published on May 6, 1936, in the Daily Mail,
Mussolini told the journalist G. (George) Ward Price the following:
‘I give you my word that Italy has no further colonial ambition. Believe
me, this victory in East Africa now puts Italy in the category of the sat-
isfied Powers.’^196 In an interview conducted by the same journalist in
March 1937, Mussolini reiterated his claim of May 6, 1936, that Italy
was now a satiated state and with no less emphasis.^197 Later however,
feeling emboldened by the Munich Agreement, Rome would launch a
campaign demanding the cession to it of French territory. At its most
bombastic, this campaign saw Rome demand the cession to Italy of Nice
and Corsica, a demand which most considered to be an ‘exaggerated
bluff ’. Indeed, Rome quickly withdrew this demand, confining itself to
making rather confused claims in relation to Tunis and Djibouti based on
allegations of French ‘ill-treatment’ of Italians in Tunisia and of French
(^194) International Studies Conference, Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw
Materials, Colonies, 508, 622.
(^195) Frederick Sherwood Dunn, Peaceful Change: A Study of International Procedures
(New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1937), 3.
(^196) Benito Mussolini, 1936, quoted in Emanuel Moresco, Colonial Questions and Peace,
A Survey Prepared under the Direction of Emanuel Moresco (Paris: International Institute of
Intellectual Co-operation, 1939), 65.
(^197) Moresco, Colonial Questions and Peace, 65.