PRAISE FOR MR CHAMBERLAIN

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22419, 4 June 1938, Page 22

PRAISE FOR MR CHAMBERLAIN

ro THE EDITOR OF THB PRESS. Sir, —I must confess that the sickly mellifluous praise of Sir John Simon, of his chief, Mr Chamberlain, has filled me with disgust. It is just as well that your readers should know that we, the Italian anti-Fascists, held Britain responsible for our misfortunes, miseries, and humiliations. We only fight for a constitutional government, for the same freedom as is enjoyed here, for a universal peace, for the sacredness of human life, for the right t 9 shape a glorious destiny for our nation. Without the support of the British press, without the financial and diplomatic support Mussolini received from Britain, Italy to-day would be free, happy, and prosperous, and not the victim of a Mediterranean pirate, the breaker of every treaty, the tyrant of Abyssinia, the torturer of poor Spain. After the awful murder of Mattcotti. when the Italian people were horrified and Europe indignant, when Mussolini’s power was almost gone, Sir Austen Chamberlain, followed by Winston Churchill, went post haste to Rome to shake hands with the rrian who took on himself the responsibility of such an - atrocious deed; Mussolini was saved! After 15 years of criminalities against the whole world, while- Mr Eden worked day and night in order to save . Europe through the League of Nations, Mrs Neville Chamberlain was paying daily visits to the Palazzo Venezia, to discuss British and Italian relations with her personal friend, Benito Mussolini. What a humiliation

for Lord Perth, who was jeered at by the Fascists. What about poor Mr Eden supplanted by an amateur ladydiplomat! When I read Sir John Simon’s praise of Mr Chamberlain, before my mind’s eye passed the tens of thousands of names of those victims of Fascism who died in Abyssinia, in Spain, in the Italian prisons and the Italian Devil Island, and from that macabre assembly issued a most heart-rending cry, a protest against such sickly talk, and that cry is still dinning in my ear—British hypocrisy!— Yours, etc, UMBERTO COLONNAi. .June 1. 1938,