JITTERY ITALY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 52, 2 March 1943, Page 4

JITTERY ITALY

THE tragedy of modern Italy is to be seen in the degradation of a bright, sunny-tempered, musical people drawn into the maw of intensified warfare in which they have no heart; yet in which they «,re compelled to remain combatant until the collapse of the coldhearted regime which has 'gripped them for the past twenty years. Rumours of peace overtures, the inevitable forerunners of national non-con-fidence and restlessness are now reaching the Allied Governments,'in spite of the Steele control exercised by the merciless Gestapo. The Italy of to-iiay represents literally a people held in thrall by the Nazi bullies who have already over-run 75 per cent, of the continent. The Axis partner-! ship which so proudly commenced the campaign for world dominance after the French defeat, is now but a hollow mockery of its former boastful self. Italy, with her sons fighting hopelessly in Africa, in Russia and in the turbulant Balkan States, is to-day as much a slave state as any of the other European peoples feeling the weight of the: Swastika. Her people are not made for war in spite of all Mussolini's loud-mouthed boasting and invective. Their highly strung temperament was born of Mediterranean skies, green vinyarded vallies, blue seas, laughter and classical music. Bled of her best blood, pounded and bludgeoned forward in the van of Nazi war machine, she is to-day without that lightness of character which was her most noted feature. Smashed almost mightly by the weight of the R.A.F. bomber raids and facing in the near future the certain prospect of invasion. Such is Italy's dilemma and such conditions undoubtedly lie behind the rumoured advances .of General Badoglio, and the persistent story of the revolution reputedly engineered by the Crown Prince Humberto following the fall of Tripoli. Whatever the state of the slave countries of Europe to-day, Italy probably represents t,he nation suffering from the greatest attack of nerves and the most wholesome dread of developments in the near future.