FROM WEEK TO WEEK

Grey River Argus, 17 March 1945, Page 8

FROM WEEK TO WEEK

(Bv

H. Winston Rhodes)

AN ITALIAN PATRIOT. I have just been reading portions of a speech delivered in one of the weekly broadcasts of the Italian Socialist Party. I found it impressive, and because we have so little opportunity to hear what Italian anti-fas-cists are saying I intend to quote it in full, after I have said something about the speaker. Ignazio Shone is well-known to many English readers because his books Fontamara, Bread and Wine, and The S-chool for Dictators have been widely circulated. The first two are semi-autobiographica 1 , and Silone is regarded as one of the most interesting of modern Italian writers, interesting, but also humane, honest and fml of purpose. He was born on May Day, Ih'jO. in the little village of Pescina. His troubles began early. When he was only three months old Pescina was partly destroyed by flood. When he was fif'een it was comp-.mly d--s-

iroyed by earthquake, and nis mother and two brothers perished. Another brother was murdered in prison by the fascists at a lam.,.’ flatSilone knew i.lie life of th-? pea sants, their poverty, their problems, and their hopes. His father was a small landowner, and his mother had been a weaver, but by 1917 S-lonc was identified with the Peasant. League, and became secretary Io the Federation of Land Workers. He became a socialist and the ed ;, or of The Worker, published in Trieste, but he was continually raided by the fascists and finally the building and plant were wrecked. He was forced to leave Italy/ but in 1925 came back and carried on illegal anti-fascist work for three years, hiding in the homes of the peasants. In 1928 he escaped to Switzerland, and, in his absence was denounced to the Fascist police. As writer and as antifascist he has obtained a world-wide reputation. Last year he returned to Italy, and this is what he said: \ “No words can express the intensely sad emotions which moved me when, after fifteen interminably long years in exile, I returned to this unhappy country of ours, which is so near my heart. As I. stepped on to Italian soil and travelled northwards of Rome, the impressions I received were terrifying. An unending scene of utter misery, dereliction and death fills one with a horror far greater than one would ever have allowed oneself to imagine from afar. 5

“To lament or to weep over such a vast tragedy would be a sign of weakness. There is in every man a natural limit To the sorrow he can endure. When sorrow exceeds all normal limits, he resists it by clenching his teeth, shutting his eyes and by becoming deaf. He'fights off madness by retiring into himself and trying to find in the denth of b ! s soul some justification for hope. He repeats to himself some words of consolation; he tries litanies and conjurations; he tries not to think. “But now a supreme effort is necessary to overcome sadness, sorrow and despair. It is essential to defeat this fear of becoming crazy; we must open our eyes, face reality, make efforts to understand our present situation. If we want to survive and resurrect our country, if we want to face the very hard tasks of Ihe present and a menacing- future, if we want to stop being passive objects and become the conscious and responsible artisans of our own destiny, in one word, if we are to create history and not merely suffer it. we have to gather all our strength of conscience.. Only on such an extreme concentration of all the powers of

the spirit, reinforced and held together by our love of the common good, can we lay the foundations of a new order which will.unite the two essential factors of any progress in our time: the unsuppressible aspirations of the people towards justice and the inexorable necessities of history. “In every society, whatever the regime, even in a situation more favourable than our present one, there is no other way to understand the existence of mankind except as one continuous effort, unbending, steady and disinterested. We . must, know and understand without allowing our intelligence to be twisted or obscured by fear or hesitation, we must consolidate this effort in loyalty, courage and fraternity without heed to the threats of those in power or the smiles of the foolish. In every society, whatever the regime, this feeling of personal rseponsibility, this presence of conscience to discover, serve and defend the truth has always distinguished the truly progressive man from the passive conformist herd.

“The only way to avoid betrayal of our dead, to give meaning to our sufferings, to give sense to our mission as builders of the future, is to speak the truth and to serve truth always, on every occasion, in private and in public, .in our literature, ournewspapers, on the radio—wherever this is possible. “If other means fail us, we must even scrawl it on the walls with chalk or coal. If it is necessary in the service of truth, we must again risk jail, the concentration camo or exile. Those who have elected truth as their fatherland live in a country from which no one can banish them. The Italian people to-day heeds truth more even than dollars or pounds. Only truth can lead them to resurrection. The Italian people deserve the truth to build up enduring political and social foundations which must be based not on intrigue, deceit or corruption, but on truth; Our very sufferings are schools for revolution.”