Press Statement at Brindisi, December 8, 1932

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I'm very sorry but I don't have a great deal to tell you. My trip is of an absolutely private character. All the rumors to the contrary are nothing but false hypotheses and extravagant inventions. Are my wife and I happy to get away from everything for a few weeks? Yes, we are glad to see once again the countries and cities we knew from long stays and frequent trips before the war. Many things have changed. Some for the better; others, more numerous, for the worse. But this is too complicated a theme, one better suited for a book than a brief interview.

The incident at Marseilles has already been widely reported, and not always very accurately, in the European press. I can give you a few words of explanation about this disagreeable incident, which I feel in no way responsible for. When I arrived at Dunkirk, the police informed me that the next ship from Marseilles would not be leaving for nine days and that we would have to spend a week in France. I was told that our friends had already rented a small villa outside Marseilles with the permission of the French authorities. We accepted this unforeseen episode in our voyage as stemming from absolute necessity, that is, shipping schedules and the French police We changed our travel plans in accordance with the circumstances, and two of my collaborators remained in Paris to buy some books, etc. I arranged with my German editor for an interview in Marseilles. Our son came from Berlin with his wife to spend the week with us. When we got off the train at Marseilles we learned from the police that all the arrangements made for us twelve hours previously had been declared null and void, and that we had to board the Italian ship Campidiglio immediately in order to leave the following day. We yielded quietly and, as you can well believe, unenthusiastically to these new orders from the police. We went on board, and it was only once we were in our cabin that we learned the ship was a freighter, that it would take two weeks to arrive in Istanbul, and that it was in no way adapted to the elementary needs of passengers. I climbed down from the bridge, and at the bottom of the gangplank I met the special commissioner from Marseilles. I told him that the situation was not a case of necessity but of caprice, that the visa we had been granted could not have been intended as a trap, and that we could not, especially with my wife suffering from seasickness, make use of a ship so unsuited to our voyage. The special commissioner told me he had orders to use force. "You think then that you have the right to use the power of the French police to put me on an Italian ship?" He answered me with a categorical "Yes." I refused to submit no less categorically. My wife and the young friends who accompanied us disembarked from the ship. Surrounded by the French police, we stayed in a somewhat inhospitable corner of the port from midnight until three thirty in the morning. My wife's cold remains as a souvenir of this episode of our trip. Telephoned orders and counter-orders succeeded one another. It was not until dawn that they drove us to the hotel. I sent telegrams of protest to the president of the Council, M. Herriot; to the minister of the interior; and to several deputies. I formed a new plan: to immediately ask the Italian government for authorization for passage from Marseilles to Venice. A response from Rome, positive, arrived in time to relieve the French authorities of a very disagreeable problem: whether to retreat or use force.

My trip across Italy took place under the most normal conditions. We gazed in constant admiration at this superb Po Valley, which I know very little and my wife, not at all. This is the first time we have visited Venice, and we hope it will not be the last.

Postscript, December 9, 1932

Ship schedules have once again intervened in our destiny, but this time in a much friendlier fashion. The ship from Venice left before we arrived. We spent five hours in Venice, rambling in every direction in this unique city. We were compelled to cross a great part of Italy, from Venice to Brindisi, by rail. Unfortunately half of this trip took place at night, which meant we were not able to see the diverse and always superb scenes of Italy.