ITALY TERRORISED ?

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 December 1929, Page 7

ITALY TERRORISED ?

ANTI-FASCIST CHARGES priso’ns over-crowded (By Cable—Press Assn.-Copyright.) (Recd. December 5, 9.30 a.m.) LONDON, December 4. The general situation in Italy is going from bad to worse declares . Rosselli (escaped from an island prison), at present visiting London; The best proof, he says, that the Fascist regime has not got the country’s support is that Mussolini can-" not govern without the terrible exceptional laws passed in 1926. Rosselli asserts that prisons throughout Italy, especially in the South, are. full of people, their only , crime being that they are not in sympathy with the regime. They are subjected to the most shocking tortures,; the latest being to tie a prisoner to a chair, and strike him. heavily and repeatedly over the heart with a rub-ber-covered hammer. Reprisals against families of aritiFacists now become part of Italy’s legal system. Thousands of Italian homes have been ransacked and furniture destroyed in front of . helpless women. EXHIBITION. OF ART TREASURES. ' (British Official Wireless.) RUGfeY, December 2. Active preparations are being made for the shipment to England of works of art of an inestimable value, which will be on view at the Italian Art Exhibition, Burlington House, London, which opens on January 1. Italy is making a superb and generous contribution to the exhibition, and in a. few days the steamer' Leonardo da Vinci, escorted by warships, will leave Genoa fox' England packed with priceless pic- I tures. Over 300 important paintings, of the 700 which will be. included in the exhibition, are coming either from the Italian • galleries or Italian private owners. They have been collected from every corner of the country, and represent every period of Italian art from Cimabue, “before whom there was no art,” to* Segatin. Included among them are Raphael’s “Sacred and Profane Love,” Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” Tintorretto’s “Adam and Eve,” and several Giorgiones. The immense value of these treasures can be gathered from the fact that one picture alone was insured for £50Q,000. The Academy Brera al Milan has been made the collection centre for the art works, and also for the immense insurance operations which have been necessary. Apart from the works sent from, Italy and froin England and other collections, pictures of unique importance will come from the Louvre in,Paris, the Kaiser Friederich Museum in Berlin, the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam, and other famous Continental and American collections.