DEEP UNREST IN ITALY

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23447, 30 September 1941, Page 7

DEEP UNREST IN ITALY

GERMAN CONTROL OF KEY POSTS EARLY REVOLT BELIEVED UNLIKELY (Received September 29, 9.10 p.m.) (U.P.A.) LONDON, September 29. The correspondent of the “Daily Express” on the Italian frontier says that Mussolini has summoned an immediate conference of Fascist Party leaders in Rome. He is faced with a German demand that he extend martial law throughout Italy and allow German military advisers to sit on all courts-martial. Already there have been mass arrests in Milan and Trieste, where martial law has been introduced. The Germans fear the Italian people want a separate peace, and the Nazis threaten completely to occupy Italy if the Gestapo is not allowed to carry out control duty While many reports continue to reach London illustrating the great wave of resistance and sabotaee which is .sweeping the German-occupied countries of Europe, messages describing conditions in Italy indicate that she is hardly less under the control of Germany than the nations conquered (by the Nazi forces, and hardly less restless. The introduction of bread rationing throughout the country is taken to confirm a report of the seriousness of the food position in Italy. The Ankara correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting Company says: “The Germans are active in Italy, not only as a military, but also as a bureaucratic force, and their presence is openly resented by the people and by high Fascist Party members. German officials now occupy the key posts in all Italian Ministries.” Suggestions, however, that the deep unrest which undoubtedly does exist, that Italy's dislike for war and for the Germans, and that waning faith in the Fascist system may soon result in a break-up of the country and the overthrow of its Government, are considered by competent observers to be, to say the least, premature. The very fact that an authoritarian Fascist system has been in control of the country for so many years means that every important position in the country is held by members of the party, and every likely leader of an anti-Fascist rising has been either eliminated or is under close surveil--1 lance. The virtual control which the Nazis have taken of the country will also considerably hamper any practical or organised expression of this growing unrest. ITALY’S PART IN AVAR GERMAN COMMENT ON DIFFICULTIES (Received September 29, 10.30 p.m.) ZURICH, September 28. “Most Germans do not understand Italy’s way of fighting because of a lack of knowledge of the real stragetic positions in the Mediterranean," says the newspaper “Frankfurter Zeitung,” discussing Italy’s difficulties. The newspaper adds; “The Luftwaffe, after much hard fighting, knows why Malta is still in English hands. Our pilots know that only by constant attack can Malta’s strategic value be reduced. The same applies to the Mediterranean bases from which the British fleet is constantly menacing the Italian merchant fleet. "Our advantage in the Middle East lies in the fact that a great part of the British forces arc tied up there. Germany wants to keep Italy as a war partner. We assure Italy that the fighting in Russia is not making us forget Italy’s worries in Africa.” FUTURE WORLD PEACE Mr H. G. Wells Outlines Plan TASK FOR SCIENTIFIC MEN (Received September 29, 7 p.m.) LONDON, September 28. A three-point plan for future world peace was outlined by Mr H. G. Wells at the conference in London of International Scientists. Mr Wells proposed: (1) Federal control of the air, international transport and the world’s resources. (2) A declaration of human rights to the means of livelihood. (3j A common language for all s peoples. “There is no orderly world mind at present, but only world dementia,” said Mr Wells. "It is the business of scientific men to pull together in this confusion and prepare a working conception of an organised will and knowledge upon which mankind can go. It has to be done, and if this great international meeting of men of science cannot do it. nobody will do it. "Only our sort of people can do it. If you will not, in the dwindling time that remains to us, do your utmost to realise this, dreaming then instead of going out to make the dream come real, fresh nightmares will overtake you, you and yours and all you care for. “I do not know how it feels to belong to the species that is failing to adapt. I have lived my 75 years in an ascendant phase, but I should imagine our children and children’s children, and any and all young life about us will pay pretty bitterly in ignominy, privations, straitened lives and general brutalisation as Nature, without haste and without delay after her manner. wipes them out.” Mr Julian Huxley said that many people might take the attitude that it was not much use discussing post-war plans until after the war was won, but his opinion, on the other hand, was that it was not much use winning the \yar without any plan to solve post-war problems. MORE ITALIANS SURRENDER BRITISH ADVANCE IN ABYSSINIA (Received September 29, 7 p.m.) LONDON, September 28. The last vestiges of Italian resistance in Abyssinia are disappearing. British General Headquarters in East Africa announces that the Italian garrison at Wolchefit, north of Gondar has surrendered to British forces. Gondar is now the only place of any size left in Italian hands. Wolchefit lies in a mountain pass 60 miles from the Gondar road, and its strategic importance lies in its being the northern outpost of the area. The garrison was estimated some time ago at 3000 white soldiers and 10.000 natives. The figures represent nearly half the remaining white soldiers, and about one-third of the total of the Italian forces still holding out. The surrender is likely to be very disheartening to the remaining troops in the Gondar area. . j