Evening Post SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1939. OVER THE BRENNER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 13, 15 July 1939, Page 8

Evening Post SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1939. OVER THE BRENNER

When Herr Hitler, in pursuit of his) favourite policy of "liberating" "oppressed minorities" of Germans by attaching them and the countries they, live in, majorities and all, to the Reich, carried out last year his bloodless anschluss with Austria and advanced the frontier of Germany to meet the frontier of Italy, he over* looked, in a double sense, through the Brenner Pass, another German minority, this time genuinely oppressed, This was the German' speaking population of what was once the southern part of the Aus* trian Tyrol, but is now the Italian province of Alta Adige, given to Italy by the Treaty of St. Germain after the Great War, Racially, Italy had no claim to it, for it was never part of Italia Irridenta, the Trentino country, further south, where Italians are in the great majority. President Wilson, in respect of the Austrian Tyrol, waived his principle of selfdetermination to concede Italy a "strategic frontier" in the Alps, with one important gateway, the famous Brenner Pass, and so consigned a quarter of a million Austrian Tyrolese to the tender mercies of a foreign, and once hostile, nation, the Italians, The Tyrolese protested at Paris, but in vain. At first they were somewhat reassured by the promises of Italian statesmen to give them local autonomy and respect their language, culture, and institutions, Then came Mussolini and Fascism, and—good-bye to all that! The Fascists ever since have tried to render the Tyrolese Italians, but, inetead, have made them Germans, j When the Germans entered Austria last April and their soldiers were seen on the Brenner, a cry was raised on the Italian side: "South Tyrol free! South Tyrol free!" It wag not so and not to be. Herr Hitler, responsive to the political advantages of the Rome-Berlin Axis, managed to forget his former fellow-countrymen. The only historical claim the Italians could have to the South Tyrol is that the Romans passed that way via the Brenner, the lowest and since the earliest times one of the most frequented passes acrops the Alps 5 to and from their provinces to the) north. But it was also through the.! Brenner that the Teutonic tribes swarmed to the conquest and downfall of Ancient Rome, and it was also in the Tyrol that many settled, the forefathers of the Tyrolese of today. Through the Dark and Middle Ages the Brenner was the great gateway of an Italy fallen under sway of Germanic Emperors. It is said that between A.D. 793 and 1402 no fewer than sixty-six Emperors passed that way, peacefully or in panoply of war, to their oft.disputed dominion in Italy. Neither the Italian people nor their leader are likely to forget this, nor that the Brenner was the chief avenue of the Austrian? in the century before they were finally expelled from Italy resurgent. The Tyrolese are Anstrians above all, and it was for Austria that their national patriot, Andreas Hofer, fought against the Bavarians and the great Napoleon, only to be betrayed by the Emperor Francis of Austria, and shot. Napoleon denied that he had ordered the execution and blamed the Italians. The old home of Hofer, an inn between Merano and Vipiteno — Italianised names—still retains, oxdid a year ago, its signs in German. The Romans are remembered in a dialect still spoken in the Tyrolese valleys, Ladinian, from the Latin of the legions who marched that way. This land of the South Tyrol, with its gateway, the Brenner, has been much in the news recently, and more may be heard of it because of the movement of German troops southward in execution of the secret plans of the Axis dictators, Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini. To preserve the secrecy it has been deemed advisable to expel inquisitive foreigners from this popular tourist region, the "Unser SonnenJand" (Our Sunny Land) of the Austro-Germans, and there was some talk of a transfer of inhabitants for labour service in (Ser= many, where the demand exceeds the supply. However that may be, the easy-going Tyrolese, with pleasant memories pf relatively easy-going Austrian rule, and pugnacious only

in defence of their lovely and beloved little country, will hale to be harnessed to either the Nazi or the Fascist war machines, 'or to both in tandem with a common "axis." This is Lhe picture, drawn by an American visitor, of ihe transformation Fascist Italy has wrought in these peaceful valleys:

Instead of museums, art galleries, and academies, they (the Tyrc-lese) found nitrate, powder, and poison-gas factories in close proximity to their historic monuments and beauty spots, menacing their famed health resorts, their safety. , . , Forests were denuded without reforestation. The choicest, most beloved sites were taken iov barrackg and Fascist activities. , . . All this to make a great Roman holiday racecourse.

It was in this Alta Adige that Mussolini—before the birth of the Axis—had constructed formidable fortifications to keep out the barbarians from the north, just as the Romans had tried to do centuries before. And now the same race, the descendants of the conquerors of Rome, is admitted secretly to the freedom of Italy, and, according to the news, is taking up quarters in Italy itself, and even passing through to Africa, as the Vandals did to found a new empire in Africa on the foundations laid by the Carthaginians and extended by the Romans through the centuries, Thus Italy in peacetime is undergoing a new invasion from the north by the same peoples who populated Italy when the Romans decayed and lost their fighting force. What do the Italian people think of it? From all reports they are alarmed and aggrieved. They have long memories of the Austriaci and Austrian" rule in the Valley of the Po, No love is lost between the races, and the Italians fear that the Germans have come to stay, as they are staying in Spain. It would be a high price to pay for a new Roman Empire, to find it fall like the old one into the hands of northern aliens. What would the patriots of Italy resurgent sayGaribaldi, Mazzini, Cavour, and the men who fought the Austrians and Germans in the Trentino and on the Corso and suffered at Caporetto—to a policy that links them with their former foes in a gamble that, if it fails, means ruin, if it succeeds, subordination to a force majeure? That is the question Italy and the Italians roust face. In the meantime the Tyrol, or the Alta Adige, the former playground, at this season of the year, for all the nations of Europe and many from overseas, is closed for ominous and sinister troop movements. And the Tyrolese may well pray for another Andreas Hofer to rise and rid them of tyranny and tyrants! ____________