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Hokitika Guardian, 21 September 1937, Page 4

Am appeal to the world to lace facts instead of persisting in what he considers the disasteroils post-war course of international and national makebelieve is made by Signor Mussolini, writing the newspaper, Popolo d’ Italia. He emphasises the danger of pretending that General Franco is not entitled to belligerent rights, lie issues the warning that the reality of events, if not frankly accepted and ednfronied, will one day overwhelm illusion and resolve truth with the sword. “Will Europe perish in the winding sheet of its fictions?” lie asks, and adds: “Tliat is the truly, grievous question of our time. It is one which reflective beings have put to themselves for the last twenty years.” Postwar Europe, lie says has been continually exasperated by a succession of fictions ami pretences. “For example, there was that most serious one- —war reparations,” he writes. “At first, we all pretended to believe that Germany could pay the astronomical figures demanded. As time went on these mad hallucinations were reduced in volume, but for many years, from London to Spa. from Spa to Lausanne, we eontinned to divert ourselves with this fiction until to-day it is finally buried under the mountains of useless paper printed about it. While the fiction of reparations is liquidated that of interallied debts remains. We still pretend to believe that these debts will—some day—be paid off.” Signor Mussolini then attacks the League of Nations as

“the organ which creates, cultivates, expands, and apologises for the fiction system as a method and practice of life.” He cites the “fiction of its universality” made blatant -by the a!>senee of its parent, the United Elates; the fiction of equality of member States, obviously ridiculous in its assumption “that the vote of Great Britain means the same thing as the vote of Liberia.” 11 Buce, after appealing for realism in policy and politics, con-

cludes with a warning on an ominous note. “One day these paper castles will be overthrown by reality, which in every age has had one and only one name—a name which is grave and l‘or which there is no alternative.”