ITALIAN PEOPLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1943, Page 4

ITALIAN PEOPLE

UNEVEN WAR PERFORMANCE

TRAITS ANALYSED.

REASONS FOR .INCONSISTENCY,

One of the puzzling things about the Italians in .this war, as in the last, has been their uneven performance as lighting men. The name of Garibaldi and the exploits of his “Thousand” still have an almost legendary glamour. It is not forgotten, too, that after the Austrian break-through at Caporetto in 1917 the Italian armies stood firm on the Piave River without front-line stiffening by the British and French, and held out tenaciously until the final victory of Vittorio Veneto.

In the present war Italy’s record has been completely inglorious at sea and predominantly so on land and in the air, but British soldiers in Africa freely acknowledge that on occasions Italian units have fought with the greatest tenacity and courage. It is only necessary to cite the defence of Gondar, the mountain stronghold whose fall ended the Abyssinian campaign. MIXED ANCESTRY. Several reasons for this inconsistency can be given. Foremost is the diversity of character and temperament between the peoples of Northern and Southern Italy, and among the inhabitants of various provinces, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Patriotism and politics, as effecting the will to fight, also enter into the matter. This has been demonstrated by very recent happenings in Sicily, no less than by the downfall of Mussolini’s regime.

Ethnological research has done much to disentangle the ancestry of the modern Italians. It shows that they arc made up of the most varied elements and that the main “Mediterranean” stock has been affected by infusions of other blood at fairly frequent intervals since prehistoric times, and during the period of the Roman Republic and Empire. This process was much less marked southward of the Tiber than in the north, where many waves of peoples from Central Europe, the Danube area, Switzerland and France came in,, particularly to the Plain of 1 Lombardy. LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. The present inhabitants of Northern Italy are on an average the blondest and tallest in the kingdom but only relatively so, and their physique is “Alpine” rather than “Nordic." The southerners are definitely ‘’Mediterranean,” rather short of stature, with dark .hair and eyes and brown skin. In Sicily there is a considerable mixture of strains, including the Semitic, and the same is true of Sardinia, where ’(he people are notably short and show some very old and distinctive elements in their make-up. i

Linguistic and cultural influences, even more than racial, have tended to divide the peoples of Italy. A Piedmontese can hardly understand the dialect of a Neapolitan, or a Neapolitan that of a Sicilian. The elegant Tuscan speech, which is the nation's literary language, becomes sadly degraded in Naples, and Sicilian has a rich vocabulary of words that are not used in writing. As regards cultural differences, 700 years of disruption and foreign tutelage before the nation was unified in the 19th century have created strong local patriotisms in provinces or even communes. This tendency is particularly strong in Naples, Calabria and Sicily. Fertile plain country and latterly hydro-electric power for industries have made the north industrious, while the south is still retarded by recent feudalism, land ownership monopolies, illiteracy and the influence of a torrid summer climate.

GERMAN’S ACUTE CRITICISM. The military qualities of southern and northern Italians were shrewdly summed up by a German writer. Professor Ewald Banse, in a book published in 1932 and entitled in its English translation, “Germany, Prepare for War.” His conclusions, which were uncomplimentary to the Italian people, have been fully borne out in the past three years. “The southern Italian,” wrote the professor, “is entirely the slave of his emotions; his mood will suddenly change from indolent ease to violent tension and excitement. The tension, however, does not signify an unremitting pursuit of any gaol, for he has no fixity of purpose. He is all compact of unreliability and specious appearance, and everywhere a vast and in most cases unbridgeable gulf yawns between intention and achievement. He is very fond of maturing plans in his head, but has neither the wish nor the perseverance to carry them out. The agile mind cloaks the infirm purpose.

ESSENTIALLLY UNMILITARY. “The military value of a nation with these moral qualities is more than questionable. The Italian is essentially unmilitary, and when he is dressed in uniform he struts about, flashing his eyes and rattling his sabre, hoping that everyone will look at him. Faced, however, with the serious prospect of real* soldiering or warfare, the common Italian complains loudly and shrinks at the thought of exertion, wounds and death, while his officers fail to grasp the necessary measures and lose time. Is it to be wondered at-that Italian strategy exhibits the hesitation, indecision, timidity and doubt characteristic of the Mediterranean race, and an undeveloped sense of responsibility leads to inefficiency in the organisation of supplies and reinforcements?” LAURELS WITHOUT RISK. Professor Banse acknowledged that the northern Italians possessed something of the toughness, industry, creative energy and enterprise of the central European peoples to whom they were allied in blood, but he considered them sufficiently infected with the qualities of the southerners to make them inferior to Germans and Frenchmen from the military point of view. Of the Italian people as a whole, the professor made this observation: “The Italian is eager for the fruits of victory and the victor’s laurels, but at a minimum risk. He is very clever at snatching the chestnuts which he has allowed others to pull out of the fire for him. On this account he always takes the side of the stronger, and is unreliable both as an ally and as a companion in arms.”