Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1943. NEW TURN IN ITALY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 August 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 1943. NEW TURN IN ITALY.

A PROPOSAL bv the Italian Government to declare Rome an open c it v —it ‘can only be a proposal until the Allies are inven proof‘of the establishment of conditions which would justify the declaration—takes added interest front the consequences it involves. These consequences almost certainly include an abandonment of any attempt to defend Southern Italy against Allied entry. There does not seem to be any doubt that if Rome cannot be used as a main communications centre, the whole Axis campaign in the south, as was observed in a cablegram received yesterday, will be hamstiung.

It is not, however, to be assumed on this account that the Badoglio Government is taking a stand against the Germans, or that it is yielding to the demands for peace that are being raised by the Italian people, nowhere more insistently than m Milan and other northern industrial cities which are now being bombed with devastating effect by the Allies.

Simultaneously with the arrival of the report regarding Rome, it is stated that the Germans are planning to establish a Fascist Government in Italy north of the River Po. Phis sng<>ests that Germany contemplates abandoning part of Italy to the Allies, much as she has time and again abandoned her Italian Allies on the field of battle.

For her own sake, Nazi Germany of course would attempt to defend the whole of the Italian peninsula if she felt her resources equal to the task. The withdrawal 01. her forces 10111 Southern Italy means that she will be laid open dangerously to flank attack in the Balkans and that the Allies will, become possessed of bases from which to extend their air offensive al relatively short range against the enemy in Central and SouthEastern Europe.

It now seems likely, however, that Germany has decided to accept these dangers and disadvantages rather than undeita <e a campaign in Southern Italy. The reported decision to ho c Northern Italv evidently implies that it is proposed to subjugate the people of that region by the same brutal methods of terrorism as Germany has used in Poland and in all the other countries that are now her martyred victims. It is not in don that the people of Northern Italy, if «they had their way, would seek immediate peace with the Allies. On the facts disclosed the opinion expressed in London that the proposal to declare Rome an open city is one further, step in Italy’s withdrawal from the war is thus subject to some obvious reservations.

Later messages show that many of the London newspapers are of opinion that the proposal is one to be regarded with extreme suspicion and to be handled, it at all, with great caution.