AXIS SETBACKS

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 March 1943, Page 4

AXIS SETBACKS

ITALY’S PEACE MOVE

LONDON, March 4

The Stockholm Tidningen’s Rome correspondent states:— An Italian broadcast from abroad represented the recent meeting of Mussolini and von Ribbentrop as a real peace hint—the first since September, 1939. The announcer said: “Mussolini is acting the same as he was when the Munich Pact was concluded. He invites the European peoples to co-operate on a broad and tolerant basis.”

The correspondent adds: The tone of the broadcast differed from propaganda provided for home consumption concerning Rome talks. The Berlin radio announced that Dr. Spellman, Catholic Archbishop, of New York, after having an audience with the Pope, left Italy yesterday for Seville by plane. HOMEDEFENCE • STOCKHOLM, March 3. The Rome correspondent of the “Dagens Nyeheter” st/ys:—“ltalian troops are in future likely to be exclusively used for defence in the Mediterranean area, but more Italian workers will go to Germany. This is a result of Ribbentrop’s recent visit to Rome. There obviously is a connection between Ribbentrop’s visit and the return of the Italian Eighth Army from Russia. It is impossible to say whether these troops will return to Russia, but Italian newsreels, showing their return, emphasised that they would be used for new tasks and new fronts. Rudolf Kircher, editoi’ of the “Frankfurter Zeitung,” has already indirectly confirmed this with a statement that the Italian front is regarded as more important than any other. GERMAN RECRUITS (Recd. 10.30 a.m.) NEW YORK, March 4. Slackening discipline of German troops, reported almost daily from Norway and Poland, is now becoming apparent in Denmark, says the “New York Times’s” correspondent at Stockholm. A group of recruits in barracks on the Island of Jutland recently refused to sing the Nazi song, “We Sail Against England”