Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1943. A TIMELY WARNING.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 June 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1943. A TIMELY WARNING.

■» A STATEMENT addressed by President Roosevelt to the people of Italy and reported in a cablegram at the end of last week stands out as a pertinent and timely warning. It is nowhere more so than in impressing on Italians that they can escape the worst consequences of defeat only by overthrowing the man to whom they owe in a very large degree the terrible misfortune in which they are now involved. If account had to be taken only of the remaining strength of the Fascist Party a popular uprising in Italy in favour of peace on the only terms on which it can now be obtained—the terms of unconditional surrender accepted by the garrisons^ 01. Pantelleria and Lampedusa —might be comparatively easy. Ihe party has not only earned and awakened the hatred of the Italian masses, but is riven by internal dissensions. For a considerable time past Mussolini has been making Cabinet and ofcial changes chiefly on the lines of taking additional authority into his own hands. So far as Italian factors are concerned it may be doubted whether he had done much in this way to institute safeguards against disaffection or to make his position less insecure and perilous. A great deal depends, however, on whether Germany is prepared' to make a large military contribution to the defence of Italy by’ maintaining large air and other forces south of the Alps. If Germany takes this course—a decidedly risky one from her standpoint—Mussolini may be able to make.head for a time, as Hitler’s jackal, against his own countrymen. It is unlikely that he has prospects of doing so in any other conditions. It is onlv crediting the Italian people with normal intelligence to suppose that a large proportion of them are m full, agreement with the declaration of President Roosevelt that Mussolini has betrayed his country and countrymen in his struggle for personal power and aggrandisement. The truth is written large not only in the facts of this sawdust Caesai s career of bombastic and ruthlessly aggressive nationalism, from the bombardment of undefended Corfu onwards, but in what had gone before. For a time Mussolini was credited with having done a great deal to reorganise and reinvigorate the economic life of Italy, but claims of this kind are challenged and denied by his own countrymen. For instance, in a little book published anonymously in London, a group of Italian exiles affirm that behind, the formula of Mussolini’s “Corporative State” there is con-> cealed, and badly concealed, the exploitation of the producing classes by the parasite classes. It is added that, in Italy:— Labour and capital are the victims of the super-capitalists and the Fascist hierarchy allied together. All the political and economic forces of Italy have been concentrated on the subjection of the Italian masses, with the object of imposing this state of things upon them. Distress and insecurity have reached all classes through the agency of Fascism, and have become its most effective ally. . . . In support of these contentions it is pointed out that under the Fascist regime the number of articles pledged to savings banks or pawnshops, which can legitimately 7 be considered a sign of the economic poverty 7 of the working classes, has increased enormously’. Statistics showing a great increase in the number of protested bills of exchange and in bankruptcies are cited also as evidence of the fate suffered by 7 small and medium-sized industries and small businesses, in. Italy, “with the advent to power of a band of irresponsible criminals.” What, if anything, the people of Italy 7 are capable of doing for their own redemption from the slavery 7 to Germany 7 into which they have been betrayed by 7 Mussolini remains to be seen. It is clear, however, that apart from the terrible fate by 7 which they 7 are now threatened in war, they 7 have other excellent reasons for making the most of every 7 opportunity 7 open to them of destroying Mussolini and his gang.