MUSSOLINI’S PAST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1942, Page 4

MUSSOLINI’S PAST

ACTIONS AND UTTERANCES RECALLED. No prizes can be offered to any reader spotting the man whose record included terms of imprisonment for the following offences:—“Stopping the tramways by violence, damaging the telephone lines, causing personal injuries to public servants, placing a telegraph pole across the railway line.” The man was an Italian named Benito Mussolini, and he took part in these and many other crimes in the year 1911 as a protest against the Italian conquest of Libya. In his own words: “Millions of workers are distinctly opposed to African colonial undertakings.’’ These are some of the authentic details about Mussolini’s career given in a documentary feature programme of the 8.8. C. run as a series “The Way of a Dictator.” That well-known Shakespearian actor Robert Atkinson is playing the part of II Duce. How Mussolini’s views have altered in the course of the years is shown by another quotation from his own paper “Popolo d’ltalia” during the period of the last war, when Italy was sitting on the fence: “If tomorrow Prussian reaction triumphs in Europe,” wrote Mussolini, “and lowers the level of human civilisation by annihilating France, all those who have done nothing to prevent such a disaster will have been deserters and apostates.” Again, after the last war, when he was just starting his party, he. wrote: “We are against the imperialism of other peoples at the expense of Italy and the imperialism of Italy at the expense of other peoples. We accept the supreme' principle of the League of Nations which presupposes self-determin-ation for all.”