DUCE’S ‘GOVERNMENT

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 310, 25 September 1943, Page 7

DUCE’S ‘GOVERNMENT

(LONDON, September 23. Berlin radio announced that the composition of the new Italian Fascist Government includes Signor Mussolini as Premier and Foreign Minister, Marshal Graziani as Defence Minister, Signor Buffarini as Minister of the Interior, and Signor Pelegrini as Minister of Finance. Rome radio, now under German control, tonight .broadcast an appeal to Italian workers to go to Germany. The broadcast was in the name of Air Marshal Kesselring. It said that the Germans would protect their interests. The Italians could work in German war factories and would have the honour of working for the salvation of Europe. The addresses of the recruitment centres iu Rome were given, and the radio said: “You will go to Germany as free workers, aud you will be cordially received.” Italian merchant seamen interned in Brazil asked United Nations officials for permission to enter the war to free Italy. Their spokesman in Rio de Janeiro declared that 130 of the 200 seamen were eager to fight Fascism; 60 have not decided on their course and 10 have refused. Italian ships of all descriptions are_still arriving iu Malta. There are now 65, including battleships, and many merchant ships have arrived aud left again for other ports.

MUSSOLINI’S HEALTH (Received September 24, 11.25 p.m.) ' NEW YORK, September 23. Mussolini has just been operated upon at a Vienna clinic for a chronic liver tumour, according to a diplomatic source, says the “New York Times” Stockholm correspondent. Mussolini is extremely run down and only a shadow of his former self, and leading Nazis are reported to be in despair of getting more out of him than the propaganda of his name. The Germans retouched photographs of his recent meeting with Hitler before they were released for publication.