MARSHAL BADOGLIO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1943, Page 4

MARSHAL BADOGLIO

NEW ITALIAN LEADER ROYALIST & SOLDIER. NATIONAL HERO IN LAST WAR. The new Prime Minister of Italy, 72-year-old Field-Marshal Pietro Badoglio, is pre-eminently a Royalist and a soldier. His loyalty to his King has always been emphatic, and his military ability has been sufficiently high to make him internationally respected in the last war, and to earn him much attention in the various campaigns in which he has figured since then. Badoglio the Royalist was keen to stop Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922. He urged King Victor Emmanuel to give him a few battalions, to scatter the Blackshirt rabble, but it is a matter of history that King Victor rejected the offer and invited Mussolini to become Prime Minister. Badoglio since then has on many occasions administered the policy of the Fascist Government, but it has been generally averred that he has been no supporter or sympathiser of Fascism, and twice he has been reported to have taken overt steps toward overthrowing Mussolini. SERVICES IN LAST WAR. Badoglio the soldier first made his mark after the Caporetto disaster in 1917. Although he was in command at a point where the Austrians broke through the Italian lines, he was chosen as one of the few men who could save the Italian cause from collapse. He did much to restore the morale for the Italian counter-attack on the Piave in 1918, and for the later victory of Vitorio Veneto, regarded by the Italians as their supreme military achievements of the war. Thus did Badoglio become a national hero, and he has done nothing in the intervening years to cloud the prestige he apparently enjoys in popular opinion. For some time he was variously a Senator,. Ambassador to Brazil, Chief of the General Staff, and President of the Army Council. In 1927 he was reported to have forestalled a Fascist plot, apparently instigated without Mussolini's knowledge, to depose the King, but it was not until Italy decided to attack Abyssinia that he again riveted public attention. CONQUEST OF ABYSSINIA. From 1929 to 1932 he had mildly, added to his popular standing by a successful administration as Governor of Tripoli, during which he was given the difficult task of “pacifying” the rebellious tribes of Tripoli and Cyrenaica, but it was in 1936 that his hour again struck. De Bono had led the Italian legions into Abyssinia, but had achieved only moderate success against Haile Selassie’s ilNarmed tribesmen. Badoglio succeeded De Bono, kept Italy fuming with impatience while he cstnnily consolidated his position and improved his supply lines, and then made an end of the Abyssinian empire by the use of mobility, aircraft, tanks and poison gas. Badoglio was rewarded with the resounding title of Duke of Addis Ababa and was made Viceroy of Ethiopia, a task he relinquished as soon as he could to take up again the appointment of Chief of the General Staff. Mussolini plunged him not long after into the unhappy invasion of Albania and then of Greece. Badoglio soon dissociated himself from the handling of the war, and in December, 1940, resigned his post as Chief of the General Staff. Since then he has appeared only occasionally in the world’s news. In April, 1941, he was reported to have attempted the overthrow of Mussolini, and earlier this year it was claimed that he had approached the British Government with an offer to stage a coup d’etat in Italy coinciding with an Allied invasion. It is for the future to prove or disprove this suggestion.