IN THE ITALIAN TYROL

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22769, 22 July 1939, Page 19

IN THE ITALIAN TYROL

(specially written fob the press.) [By ELSIE K. MORTON.]

IT was a sad day when the South Tyrol became a bone to be gnawed by the war dogs. Italy had always wanted a mountain frontier; under the Treaty of Germain she got it 20 years ago as her share of the spoils of the Great War. For 20 years 300,000 Tyroleans have looked back to the rugged peaks of the Brenner Pass, Italy’s new gateway into Europe, the barred door that for two decades has made them exiles in their own land. But they must return now to a land where the new greeting, “Heil Hitler!” has taken the place of their old and gracious salutation, “Gruss Gott!” the “Grace of God.” Just a year ago I travelled down through France and Switzerland to the Brenner, on my way to the ancient town of Brixen, now Bressanone, and the Dolomites. Through the train clanked a procession of soldiers, immigration, customs, and money officers, Nazi on the German side at Steinbach, Fascist at the Brenner itself. % 1 An hour later we were in Bres- , sanone, A thousand years ago

Brixen was the resting-place and haven of wayfarers passing over the ancient highway of the mountains. A strange procession had passed down that old grey road, emperors, pilgrims, minstrels, ' crusaders, armies marching to war, beggars and troubadours roaming from one corner of Europe to the other! As I stood in the doorway of the Hotel Elephante, where centuries ago a Royal elephant was once stabled in Brixen for the night, I heard the rumble of armoured cars, the clank of swords, and tramping of many feet, as column after column of Mussolini’s soldiers went riding and marching by, and the old German peasants by the wayside followed them with smouldering eyes. Later on I drove for a whole day along mountain roads where fierce fighting had taken place between Italian and Austrian armies. We passed the ruins of forts shattered by shell fire, saw great holes in the walls of the mountains, where guns had been hauled up with ropes to defend some narrow pass, and up at Passe Pordoi and Falzarego, where the fighting had been heaviest, we laid wild flowers on the graves. It was up in the Alpine .meadows that I learned what Italian domina-

tion really meant to the highspirited, intensely patriotic Tyroleans and the people of German blood. Here at a little Refugio in the Alpi di Suisi, 1000 feet above the Val Gardena lowlands, I stayed with a family whose roots had struck deep into the soil for uncounted generations. They told of many things that had happened in recent years, the incessant, pinpricking surveillance of Italian officialdom. the harassing restrictions, the prohibition of national customs established through the centuries. No longfer might the maidens wear the dirndl, no longer were the old folk-songs to be sung, and soon even the grownups must learn to speak, the hated Italian language, so that the little ones might no longer hear the sound of their parents’ national tongue. The pathos of it was brought home to me one evening when a party of singers came up from Bolzano, away down at the foot of the mountains. They came up to the meadows, I was told, because they would be arrested if they were to be heard singing their songs in their own native town! They began to sing, and I walked out to the top of the little flowerstarred hill at dusk and listened there. Out over the quiet hillside and valleys floated the echo of the yodelling and the old Tyrolean songs, sung with fervour and pathos that may be heard no more.