Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JULY 19, 1943. ALTERNATIVES FOR ITALY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 July 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JULY 19, 1943. ALTERNATIVES FOR ITALY.

ALTHOUGH it has been called by the Berlin radio the latest move in the war of nerves, the broadcast message addressed by President Roosevelt and Mr Churchill to the people of Italy is simply a plain and straightforward statement of facts which may be expected to appeal with full force to all Italians. except Mussolini and a comparatively small body of fellow-criminals by whom he has been aided and abetted and who bear, with him, the brand of outlawry. These men, like their Nazi associates and taskmasters, ai;e doomed to pay in one way or another the penalty of their crimes, but the masses of the Italian people have far more to hope from surrendering to the United Nations than from continuing to shed their blood in order only, as the RooseveltChurchill statement puts it, “to give the Fascist leaders a little more time to escape from the consequences of their own crimes.” While it implies the root and branch destruction of the Fascist regime, the demand for unconditional surrender does not imply rhe imposition of drastic penalties on the Italians as a people. On the contrary, it offers them not only an escape front the horrors of war and from enslavement to Nazi and Fascist gangsters, but an opportunity, again to quote the words of the Allied leaders, “to consider their own self-respect, their own interests and their own duties for a reconstruction of national dignity, security and peace.” It should rather please than disappoint the average Italian that surrender to the Allies will set a period to the schemes of international brigandage and rajiine into which the nation was led by Mussolini. On the simple merits of the case only one answer could be made to the Roosevelt-Churchill message. It is plainly in the interests of Italy that its soldiers should refuse any longer to fight against the United Nations and that the whole civil population should courageously support that refusal. The only question open is whether the Italians are cajiable, in existing circumstances, of the united effort that would redeem them from their bondage to Axis gangsterdom. That they have a real opportunity to act in this way on their own behalf is hardly in doubt. Some 60,000 German troojis are reported to be fighting in Sicily, though they are finding it impossible to stem the rapid extension of the Allied occupation of that island, but, as events are shaping in all Avar theatres, it seems wholly improbable that Germany is capable of maintaining any large-scale military effort in Italian territory. Apart from; the mighty blows that ard being struck against her by the Allied air forces and the likelihood that she may presently have to meet attacks in new areas, the tide of Avar shows every sign of turning against her decisively in Russia. Not only has her belated summer offensive broken down in failure, but the indomitable Russian armies are striking with jiower and effect in the Orel-Kursk area and also against the Kuban bridgehead. Full point is thus being given to the declaration of the Allied leaders that: “Today Germany’s hopes of world conquest are being blasted on all fronts.” For the Italians this means that a way of escape is opened if they have but the resolution to take it. A refusal by Italian soldiers to fight and supporting action by the civil population almost certainly would paralyse speedily the whole Axis organisation in Italy. An Italian surrender enforced by the will of the nation would profoundly influence the position in satellite countries like Hungary and Rumania, which have already been putting forth peace feelers, and would do much also to undermine morale in Germany and Jajian. The people of Italy have paid and are paying a bitter price, for having submitted themselves to Mussolini and his gang, but it is still open to them to set limits to the calamities they have thus brought on themselves and in doing so to contribute Jo the establishment of a world organisation from which they, as well as the nations to whom they at present stand opposed, will have much to hojie. ______