DANGEROUS GAME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 July 1943, Page 3

DANGEROUS GAME

BEING PLAYED BV ITALIAN GOVERNMENT EVASION OF PEACE ISSUES. SERIOUS INTERNAL TENSION. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.20 p.m.) LONDON, July 30. “Italians are now closely considering, with great understanding, the peace conditions the Allies have put forward,” says the Rome radio. “The whole Italian people are aware of the seriousness of the dilemma the Badoglio Government is faced with —the frightful reality which has the near and far future of Italy at stake.” Referring in another broadcast to General Eisenhower’s message to the Italians, the radio said this appeal was not an invitation to a peace settlement, but an invitation “to continue the war against Germany on our own soil.” The Italian Government is playing a clever, subtle and even dangerous game,” says the “Daily Mail’s’’ correspondent on the Italian frontier. “It deliberately allowed rioting in the north to assume serious proportions because this presented it with excuses for not making immediate peace overtures, and has allowed it to play for time, while it hammers out a policy which would permit Italy to go quietly out of the war without her soil being occupied. Bui the rioting went further than was anticipated and embarrassed Badoglio in his attempt to make the Allies believe that, unless good terms were obtained, Italy would fight on as a united nation. The intrusion of the phrase ‘honourable surrender’ in Allied announcements to Italy need not cause apprehension that the Allies are weakening on their terms. Unconditional surrender is the unchanged Allied demand and preparations are now being made to enforce it." The Press Association’s diplomatic correspondent says the Italian crisis is developing internally and externally. It seems that Badoglio will be unable much longer to postpone fundamental decisions. Members of the Allied governments will be standing by throughout the weekend, watching the march of events. Faced with increasing unrest, Badoglio is continuing to tighten his control. His regime is assuming more and more the role of a military dictatorship, which the people are likely to resent.