Ah. warning only, OK. It's precisely because my VE networking doesn't work that I thought it was more than a warning.
How would one go about troubleshooting this issue? The VE is assigned the IP I intend and the virtual NIC within the VE shows it. Just no networking - no ping by IP or name....
I am too stupid to live. After three days of looking at this I suddenly realized that the first octet of my IP range is 66 and not 68.