FASCIST CHIEFS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 79, 30 September 1941, Page 6

FASCIST CHIEFS

CONFERENCE IN ROME

NAZIS DEMAND MORE

POWER

ITALY WEAKENING?

(By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright.)

LONDON, September 29

The "Daily Express" correspondent on the Italian frontier says that Mussolini has summoned an immediate conference of the Fascist Party leaders in Rome. He is faced with a German demand to extend martial law throughout Italy and to allow German military advisers to sit on all courtsmartial.

Already there have been mass arrests in Milan and Trieste, where martial law has been introduced, the correspondent says. The Germans fear that the Italian people want to make a separate peace. The Nazis threaten to occupy Italy completely if the Gestapo and S.S. are not enabled to take control.

END OF MUSSOLINI?^

•Another correspondent on the Italian frontier says that the reports of an Italian break-up should not be converted by wishful thinking into a belief that this will hasten the end of the war.

Hitler, for instance, has his own candidate for leadership in Italy, namely, the Italian Minister of State, Farinacci, who has been to Berlin three times for talks with yon Ribbentrop and Goebbels.

There is also evidence that German agents are actually fostering a crisis in the party and betraying Mussolini.

The newspaper "Popolo di Roma" says that the recent rationing of basic foods is an unpopular measure, but that there does not exist a fairer arrangement.

Moscow radio stated that Italian troops have been moved from Paris because of numerous restaurant brawls between German and Italian soldiers.

NAZIS DO NOT UNDERSTAND,

The German newspaper "Frankfurter Zeitung," discussing , Italy's difficulties,, states: "Most Germans. do not understand Italy's way of fighting, because of their lack of knowledge of the real.strategic position in the Mediterranean.

"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, and 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 is tied up there. Germany wants to keep Italy as a war partner, and we assure Italy that the fighting in Russia is not making us forget Italy's worries in Africa."