ITALIAN PEOPLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1941, Page 3

ITALIAN PEOPLE

EETTER THAN THEIR MENTORS. “The chief reason for the failure of Fascist education, as proved by the disastrous war record of Italy, is this,” said Miss Cicely Hamilton in a recent address. “The Italian people are too intelligent to be moulded by it, as Mussolini hoped to mould them. They are a people with a heritage, handed down through the centuries, of civilisation and culture; a people, moreover, with a noble tradition of learning and literature and art. The great names of Italy in literature and art are names that belong to all the world. However strong the sentiment of loyalty to Fascism, it is impossible to believe that a people inheriting such a tradition would allow itself to sink into a mental subjection which would mean the passing of literature and art and the stifling of intellectual effort. Only among primitive and backward races can thoughts and ideas be forced into a groove and kept there; the Italian is far too intelligent and civilised to resign his brains into the keeping of his Government and think just what he is told to think.”