TURGID INK

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 153, 25 March 1937, Page 11

TURGID INK

♦ Duce on “Hypocritical Parsons” STORM AGAINST ITALY Campaign by Professional Pacifists REAL ENEMIES OF PEACE By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright. London, March 23. A message from Rome states that the Prime Minister, Signor Mussolini, was in angry mood when addressing 250,000 people from the balcony of the I’alazzo Venezia during the celebration of the eighteenth birthday of the Fascist movement, which he said coincided with one of the usual world storms against Italy. “It is a storm of turgid ink,” he said, “with which are associated certain hypocritical and hysterical Anglican parsons who point out the motes in the eyes of others while their own eyes are blinded by beams that are centuries old. This campaign launched by professional pacifists constitutes complications and friction which reveal these people as the real enemies of that peace in which we sincerely wish to participate.” He concluded by warning the Black Shirts to remember their wrongs and be prepared. Exacerbating Relations. Recent attempts to exacerbate relations between Britain and Italy have become more prevalent, and after the Duce’s outburst to-day they are greatly deprecated in British official quarters, where uneasiness exists.

The political representative of the Australian Associated Press agency gathers that Whitehall, while disagreeing with reports that the tension is more strained than, at any time since the Mediterranean trouble in 1935, nevertheless believes that the position requires the most careful handling. Signor Mussolini’s speech to-day is interpreted as being due I his anger, on his return from Africa, when he discovered the extent of the Italians’ defeat in Spain and the prominence it has been given, in conjunction with his displeasure with the troops, and as an attempt to cover up the rebuff to Italian prestige.

The Italian Press, it was reported from Rome on March 21. is indignant over the Dean of Winchester, Very Rev. E. G. Selwyn, comparing Signor Mussolini, in connection with the Abyssinian campaign, with the Assyrian Emperor Antiochus the Madman. It declares: “The iniquitous and bloodthirsty Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Cosmo Lang, recently put a sacrilegious linger into Italy’s wounds in a way in which no gentleman’s agreement can obliterate, and now the Dean of Winchester lias idiotically trespassed. “As the Anglican Church is a State church, we ask whether these attacks are not made to please the British Government.”

Antiochus the Mad, of Syria, made himself famous by many conquests. He went to Jerusalem to enforce, personally, a decree enjoining uniformity of worship throughout his dominions. This persecuting policy stirred up a successful revolt. While hastening to quell it he fell ill of a loathsome disease and died raving mad at Tabae, in Persia, 164 B.C. His death was thought by the Jews to be an appropriate punishment for his persecution of them.