TIME

July 8, 1946 12:00 AM GMT-4

The first harmony achieved by the Luxembourg quartet—when the Big Four at last agreed on something and awarded the tiny Italian communities of Briga and Tenda to France—sounded off-key to a man who had a perfect ear for music, but who was politically a little tone deaf.

In Milan, 79-year-old Arturo Toscanini, Wagnerian and symphonic conductor and renowned antiFascist, reacted to the news by canceling a benefit concert he was scheduled to give this week in Paris. Later he canceled a London engagement, offered to reimburse the Music, Art and Drama Society for its losses on 2,800 tickets. In protesting against “Italy’s humiliation,” he echoed the frenzied lamentations of Italian politicians and editors, one of whom wrote with rare unconscious humor: “Now the stab in the back has been repaid.”

In Paris, the newspaper Combat gave a Gallic shrug: “The Ministry of Finance will lose a few million francs [in amusement taxes], much more than the state can hope to collect [for years] from the entire population of Tenda and Briga.”

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