The Evening Star TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1941. ITALY TO-DAY.

Evening Star, Issue 24081, 30 December 1941, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1941. ITALY TO-DAY.

Among the “ six outstanding military problems ” which it was assumed by “ well-informed quarters ” in Washington would bo discussed by Mr (Roosevelt and Mr Churchill Number 5 read as follows: “Consolidating the 'British gains in Libya with a view to a threat to the Italian mainland.” Such a throat seems a long way in the future, but the chances of an eventual Allied advance on Germany through Italy, also tho chances of an Italian revolt against the Axis, have been discussed from tho beginning of the war. Some light is thrown on the conditions in which Mussolini has involved his unfortunate countrymen by a book published this year by Signor C. M. Eranzero, a Libera] Italian, who had lived eighteen years in Britain when Rome entered the war. Married to an Englishwoman, he produced for some years, apparently in England, a small independent Italian newspaper, which did not please his compatriots in authority, and, later, became the correspondent of tho ‘Giornale d’italia,’ at the cost of joining the Fascist Party. The party had its lively agencies in Britain, spying ami intriguing among

themselves. A few weeks before II Duce made his plunge Scnor’ Franzoro paid a visit to Italy, where nobody, except officialdom, wanted war. Germans were hated everywhere. But the impression one gains from this writer’s pages is that, though a majority of Italians might desire a revolt against the Axis, they were in the weakest possible position for making it. hi Ihc main, they wore even unconscious of the desire, though they wore disillusioned of Fascism and loathed everything associated with it. The thing had been an imposture from the first. There was no “ march on Home ” when it began. “ When the march on Koine took place Mussolini was in Milan, sitting in the small editorial office of his newspaper, comforted by a few friends and by his afterwards discarded mistress, Signora Marghcrita Savfatti. who had quite a job to prevent him from running away to Switzerland.” “ Tile essence of Fascism is heroism.” wrote this exalted one. “Who. could to-day in Italy,” Signor Franzcro writes, “ mention without shame the ‘ heroic spirit ’ that Fascism lias displayed in stabbing Franco in the back when Franco was already on her knees.” To-day Germans dominate the country, and tho winning of the war by the Axis Powers would bo more disastrous to Italy than their defeat. But her people are under tho whip. “ The Italians are not, by instinct, revolutionary.”. An Italian revolt, at this stage, seems like wishful thinking.