MUSSOLINI’S QUESTIONS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 25 March 1936, Page 8

MUSSOLINI’S QUESTIONS

PAYING BRITAIN A COMPLIMENT “Pietists and quietists, pacifists and their allies,” said Signor Mussolini, in a recent interview granted to Sir Arnold Wilson, “may continue to cherish their Belief in and hope for a world in which there is no struggle, in which the least competent will be able to keep the progressive elements in the world within the territorial limits set at a given moment by the accidents of history. Much has happened since 1919. Fascism has arisen, and also Communism : new nations are being born, and new needs created. The old boundaries regarded only the need for land on which to grow corn and pasture cattle: modern nations need much else. Is it not time the British people realised that their present attitude implicitly condemns all that is greatest in their history. Are you really ashamed to have seized the great areas you hold as beneficiaries, but also as trustees for the inhabitants and the world at large? Do you really believe that you should, in the past, have left the .savage world to its own devices in the New World, in the Antipodes, Africa and Asia? Have your activities for the last three hundred years been criminal adventures in your eyes? Are not we Italians, by imitating you paying you the highest compliment? Was Cecil Rhodes a criminal? Was Gordon’s mission to the Sudan a delusion ?”