ITALY'S NEW PLAN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4959, 23 February 1937, Page 3

ITALY'S NEW PLAN

INDUSTRIAL BOLZANO. Premier Mussolini's effort to erect a human fortress along the Austrian frontier and to Italianise the Tyrol region taken from Austria following the World War was given concrete expression by the ceremonious inauguration of the industrial zone of Bolzano, says the "Christian Science Monitor." Cabinet Ministers and Government officials tended, together with tens of thousands of the public. The industrial zone is composed of new and extensive factories erected at a cost of tens of millions of lire. They are designed to attract the Italian workmen to this region, so as to balance the population of Austrian origin. They are surrounded by Government-built workmen's houses, new and comfortable. Fourteen years of Fascism have appreciably impressed the Tyrol-Alto Adige region with the Italian imprint, and the Italian population there has considerably increased—but the Italian is still greatly inferior

to the resident of Austrian origin in number. The problem of the Austrian frontier province was outlined recently in an exhaustive work by the frontier expert Paoli Drigo. Signor Drigo said that there are now 75/ 00 Italians in the TyrolAlto Adige section, compared with 55,000 Italians at the end of the World War, so that from 1918 on the increase has been 20,000. However, this is only 30 per cent, of the total population, which means that more than two-thirds of the people here are of Austrian origin. The economic ranking of the Italians has improved, but it is still not sufficient to give the Italian element enough weight in the community, said Signor Drigo.

It seems of special interest that the Fascists have centred so much money and effort in the development of Bolzano, because it was at Bolzano) (then Bozen in Austria) that Fascism had its real birthplace.