HAPPY PRISONERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 March 1941, Page 5

HAPPY PRISONERS

GLAD WAR IS OVER FOR THEM MOST THINK ITALY BEATEN. SOME DEPENDING ON GERMANY. RUGBY. March 19.. Italians taken prisoner in the victorious British campaign in East Africa seem heartily glad that for them at least the war is over. Most of them, says a Nairobi cable, are convinced that Italy is beaten and many predict the fall of Mussolini this year. Few, however, appreciate the extent of German infiltration into Italy, and some still retain, confidence that Germany’s power will save them. Officials who recently left Italian Somaliland paid four months’ salary to those remaining, saying they would be back at the end of that period, showing that the fairy tale of a short war is still not entirely discounted. The bestinformed Italians, however, frankly admit that Italy backed the wrong horse last June in the belief that the war was then all but over. There are many stories of the' effectiveness of the British blockade, the results of which are seen in Somaliland in the denuded shops. Many pri-

soners talk of the loneliness of their exile in remote districts in the years since Italy seized Abyssinia. Their attitude may be summed up in the remark made by one of them: “Our politicians made the war and left us to fight it.”