The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1943. HAPLESS ITALY.

Evening Star, Issue 24482, 17 April 1943, Page 4

The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1943. HAPLESS ITALY.

The complaint of Italians for twenty years after the last war was that they did not get the rewards that were due to them. Their complaint of to-day is that they are getting them. Not even to France has the war been such a miserable experience. Even when she was struck down France could envisage the time when she would rise again. Italy's defeats began almost as soon as she entered the war, believing it to be over. Frenchmen made their own choice, in the beginning at least, but Italians were sold to Germany for a prospect of receiving Nice, Corsica, Tunis, and other trifles besides which will not be fulfilled. Instead they have lost an empire, acquired by blood and sweat, and temporarily they have lost Italy, slave to the German boot. Their soldiers have been used as cannon fodder to take the first attacks and be deserted when the battle has gone awry. On the (Russian front they have, had heavy losses as well as on the African. The Germans have never concealed their contempt of them, although Germany has had good value from their navy, without which her African campaign, now delaying the invasion of the Fatherland, would have been impossible. Now their cities are being shattered by bombardments; there has been talk of evacuating Naples; and all Italy lives in terror of an invasion .which she knows she is powerless to resist apart from the assistance of allies who will put their own interests first every time. A week ago Mussolini and Hitler met in the Brenner Pass, Mussolini obeying orders. The world was told briefly that full accord on all questions of joint warfare was reached. Now -it is .being told more, though not officially. As a safeguard against Italy's making a separate peace, Mussolini agreed that there should be full exchange of diplomatic information between the two countries, and that Admiral Doenitz should command the Italian, fleet. The Fuhrer for his part engaged to give full aid in the defence of Italy. Italy knows .what that promise will be worth if it suits Hitler to cut his losses. A British commander who has been a war prisoner in Italy states that the common Italian greeting to-day is: "We don't care who wins, but let us hope the war will be over soon." The Italians, he declares, definitely hate and fear the Germans, and seem still to respect and .like the British. Other observers have reported to the same effect, though the liking for Britain has also been doubted.- " Fascist propaganda," another British officer has said, "has rather successfully exploited the theme of the AngloSaxon's contempt for the_ Italian," whose " sense of personal dignity is a much more tender thing than the AngloSaxon's." A great deal depends on what British ideas may be of the place to be held by Italy after the peace treaty, and these have not been revealed ; though her position will be a better one, without doubt, than it would be after a German victory. Fascism does its best to inculcate a different belief, but Fascism has little credit to-day in Italy.