NAPLES BOMBED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 August 1943, Page 3

NAPLES BOMBED

CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE ADMITTED BY ITALIANS. EVACUATION DISORDERS IN MILAN. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, August 2. An Italian communique says Naples, the great port and commercial centre, was bombed yesterday. It admits that considerable damage was done. The Swiss radio says it is reported from the Italian-Swiss border that the anti-aircraft batteries of Milan were due to resume practice yesterday after a lapse of six days. Milan’s air defences are almost exclusively manned by German special troops, the radio added. A zone round the city has been closed to traffic “to avoid casualties from shells and splinters.” The curfew has been extended 2| hours, and it is now from 9.30 p,m. till 4.30 a.m. Sports and entertainments are still prohibited. The Berne correspondent of the “New York Times” says that Marshal Badoglio last night was reported to have reached a modus vivendi with the Germans in northern Italy. less, the military had put down the incipient revolt in Milan before midnight, when a machine-gun patrol fired on a column of evacuees who were obeying General Eisenhower’s injunction to depart from military objectives. The fighting became fierce, as many of the evacuees retaliated, producing hidden weapons. Some were arrested and are reported to have been shot on the spot. Further hysteria was reduced by the evacuation of women and children in special trains at intervals of a quarter of an hour, directed to “somewhere in Italy.” CRITICISM OF DELAY.

The British people will become most impatient, to say no more, if the next few days do not bring marked developments in the Italian situation, declares the “Daily Mail” in a leading article. After detailing points in the speeches of Messrs. Churchill and Roosevelt and General Eisenhower’s offer to Italy, the “Mail” continues: “While we have been chaffering, our enemies have been acting—and let us not forget that the Italians are still our enemies as well as the Germans. In our anxiety to give a breathing space to the Italians the situation has deteriorated to our disadvantage. The Allies have permitted the Germans to recover by allowing Badoglio to temporise.

“He is trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. The bombing of Rome had immediate results, and if last week we had sent heavy attacks against military targets up and down the peninsula the cries for- peace might by now have been translated into unconditional surrender. If Italy gets away with it some of the small Axis States might be encouraged to go on fighting till the time came for them, too, to appeal to the soft-hearted democracies.”