FASCISM CONDEMNED

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 March 1936, Page 11

FASCISM CONDEMNED

FACTS AND FIGURES. Romain Rolland, the eminent French writer and critic, is very out-, spoken on the subject of Fascism in Italy in his new book, “I Will Not Rest,” and in support of. his protest he cites the following facts and figures: —' I “Up to 1932 the total number of citizens tried before the Special Tribunal in Italy was 3500. “The number of those, sentenced, 2000. “The number deported since 1926. 3000. /

“The total number of years of confinement distributed, 12,000. ' “In 1932, it has been computed: 27$ suspects were tried before the Special Tribunal; 220 sentenced, two of them to be shot; 700 additional deportees, about 10,000 arrested and released' after a period, of detention. “In 1933:

“Sixty-one additional sentences; about 600 deportees; 500 are waiting the order for their trial, and the number of those arrested and released after detention rose to 13,000. “Thousands of women have been arrested for political reasons, since November, 1926, when the special Fascist laws for the defence- of the State were promulgated. There are some among them sentenced to seventeen oi' eighteen years of cenfinepient. The majority of them'are concentrated in the terrible penitentiary of Trani, or in the island of Ponza. “The sanitary conditions are abominable. Many are dying of pulmonary and other forms of tuberculosis, like Camilla, Ravera, a school mistress of Turin; like Lea Giaccaglia, a school mistress of Bologna, or, subjected to solitary confinement in their cells (which is always applied in Trani, notwithstanding the Fascist Penal Code) many are threatened with the loss of their reason, such as Giorgina Rossetti, a young working woman from a cotton factory of Mongrando, whose principal crime is that of being the fiance of a convicted person. “The children of those sentenced are retained at Perouse, in Rome; Milan, and Trieste. “There is a, whole martyrology to be written of the prisoners and the deportees who have been left _to languish and die in the gloomy Pianosa, or in the gaol at Civita Vecchia.

THE PENALTY. “Imprisoned in the latter are the lawyer Umberto Terracini, sentenced to twenty vears, tuberculosis; Father Girolamo Li Causi, sentenced to twenty years and nine months, who is in a serious condition at Pianosa; the lawyer Sandro Pertin, a friend of Turn ti, sentenced to ten years, ot tuberculosis; the lawyer Rosolino Ferragni, of Cremona, sentenced to twenty-three years of imprisonment is tuberculosis; the stone carver of Carrara Gino Lucetti, sentenced to thirty years, is going blind; Dr. Mauro Scoccimarro, sentenced to twenty years, is suffering from serious eye trouble; the stationmaster, Isidoro Azzario, sentenced to ten years, having gone mad, is at present interned in a lunatic asylum, etc.

“Fascism tends to form ‘itself,” adds Romain Rolland, “through the amalgamation of a small-holding petit-bour-geoisie and the nationalist official class, which has no eyes save for its little board; and an intelligentsia swollen with an arrogant individualism, -which it wields like a rattle, and an army, the general staff of which, almost the whole of it, has for a long time been in the process of being deliberately seeded out, trained and organised with a view to the clerical redaction; and pulling every wire, an oli-

garchy not very numerous, but very powerful, of the big banks aild industrial combines. A Roman Republic of Cras'sus, of Lucullus, and of Sylla of military and. commercial pro-consuls. “That is the danger against which we in France must endeavour to arouse the youth, youth which is but too little experienced. Public hatred has been stimulated against Parliament, the decadent regime, which will crumble at the first touch. But the young people, the popular masses, the army of attack,'have upon their backs, riding them, the tyrant Fascism. That is the real enemy. It is , Fascism which must be smashed.” Many will remember Mr Romain Rolland’s book, “Above the Battle,” translated into English some time ago. In the new- volume, “I Will Not Rest,”

he writes on Russia, peace, and liberty, while other chapters show that he believes passionately in a glorious future for mankind, in spite of piesent-day difficulties.