Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1941. ON THE BRENNER AGAIN.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 June 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1941. ON THE BRENNER AGAIN.

have been at one time and another quite a number of

meetings between Hitler and Mussolini. Their meeting on the Brenner Pass, of which reports spoke yesterday, may be supposed to have stood out clearly from all the rest as marking a, decisive change in their relationship. When the two gangsters last met on the Brenner Pass, .Mussolini had already sunk, to the level of a suppliant, but he has now made a further descent. Having accepted Nazi aid. at a price, be must now pay the price. As part of that price, he was undoubtedly called to the latest meeting on the Brenner Pass, not as one ruler to confer with another, but as a dependant and subordinate to receive the instructions of his master.

It is strange now to recall that there was a time in which Mussolini definitely was able to look down on Hiller and did so. Although Fascism was established in Italy by brute force and coercion, not stopping short always of the murder of opponents, these evil methods were not extended by any means to the diabolical lengths to which they have been carried in Germany. Mussolini relied always upon the support and the stage-management of the Fascist Party, but over a period of years he gained the more or less willing and spontaneous support of a considerable proportion of the Italian people. Only a little over half a dozen years ago, he was able to defy and threaten Hiller and to prevent, for the moment, the Nazi seizure of Austria.

From that position of power, Mussolini has fallen to the ultimate depths and it is the opinion of well-informed observers that in his fall he has dragged down with him the Fascist Party and the national policy and outlook for which it stands. Some of. these observers find an explanation of Hie ignominious defeats Italy has suffered in Africa, Greece, and Albania—on land and sea and in the air—not in a hick of courage in the Italian fighting forces, but in the fact that the Italian soldiers have not, believed in the things they were ordered to fight for and to do. In an article in “Current History and Forum,” a well-known American foreign correspondent, Mr Leland Stowe, observes that Italians of all classes have an extreme dislike and frequently an outright hatred for Nazi Germany and the Nazis and that intelligent Fascist representatives in various parts oil Europe feel certain there will be no tolerable future for Italy in a Hitler-dominated Europe.

I believe it is true to say (Mr Stowe adds) that nine months of costly and inglorious war have cost Fascism —and also Mussolini in varying degree—the support of the Italian people, the confidence of the Italian army, and the unity and much of the confidence of the Fascist party itself. If Mussolini and his regime could restore this support and confidence, alone and by their own efforts, they might put Fascism, back on its feet. If Hitler is the only man who can do this—as happens to be true—then Italian Fascism will be for ever tainted in the eyes of the Italian people. At heart Fascism was . a fiercely nationalistic movement from the start. It is impossible for a regime to remain the champion of national aspirations while being a prisoner of foreign dictatorship . and nationalism.

Even ill the unrelieved stress of a war of which the end is still far from being in sight-, the essential facts of the situation that exists in Italy are worth keeping in sight and in mind. As a nation, Italy of course still moves in apparent unison with Germany, for the sufficient reason that she is completely under Nazi domination and control. She is none the less in great part a dead weight on Germany’s hands, and there is every reason to hope and believe that the Nazi dictatorship ■ will be weakened and not strengthened, as the fury of conflict is intensified, by the necessity of upholding Mussolini as a puppet, ruler and maintaining the pretence that Italy is still a willing and active member of the Axis.

At a longer view, there are other possibilities not less important. Mr Stowe, for instance, observes that:—

After all the miseries of Greece, Albania and Libya, Mussolini has given the Italian people something to fight for—to fight some day when the time is ripe—and throw the Germans out. It would be strange if this does not happen before the present war is over. Fascism and Mussolini will then be linked inseparably to the fate of the Nazi troops of occupation. By that time the watching world will recognise that Fascism has become a corpse, and has been so for some time, with public obsequies merely deferred so that they could be held on an appropriately large scale, in the best Italian fashion.

Whether these expectations are ever realised in full measure or not, it is already entirely clear that Mussolini has become the discredited puppet of his Nazi fellow-gangsters. It is as well established that the Italian people were herded against their will into the war in the first place and that they are likely to give poor service Io Nazi Germany in any further part they may be compelled to take in it.