THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1941 ENFEEBLED ITALY

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24104, 24 October 1941, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1941 ENFEEBLED ITALY

The Royal Air Force has blasted Naples with bombs to reinforce the murmurings of the disillusioned Italians. It is ten months since Mr. Churchill addressed his radio appeal to the people of Italy to wrest their destiny from the hands of Mussolini. At that time our Army of the Nile was dealing (he forces of Marshal Graziani heavy blows, and the Prime Minister must have felt with some confidence that the disasters of Greece and Africa would enable him to drive a wedge between Duce and people. Mr. Churchill declared that it was one man who, against the Crown and Royal Family of Italy, against the Rope and all the authority of the Vatican and the Church, against the wishes of the people themselves had hurled Italy into war. He warned the Italians that their African Empire would be torn to shreds and tatters, and that thereafter we should come to much closer grips. The appeal and the warning did not lead lo an Italian revolt. There had been murmurings in the army over the resignation of Marshal Radoglio, the Chief of the General Staff. In January there were reports front Yugoslavia of riots in Milan and Turin, of brawls between Fascists and members of (he regular army. Yet it all came to nothing. The King and the Crown Prince did not break with Mussolini; the Duce purged some of the party heads, and an uneasy calm descended upon Italy. Possibly reports of riots were inventions of Dr. Goebbels to justify the entry of Nazi officials and troops whose unobtrusive arrival threatened to reduce Italy to the level of a German province. Hitler's campaign in the Balkans extricated Mussolini from ruin in Albania. The Germans reconquered Cyrenaica. The Duce emerged from his lair to extol the incomparable sense of discipline of the Italian people and to praise them for not losing heart when the news was bad and the days dark. His words can have been little comfort for the mothers and wives who had lost their sons and husbands in the snows of Greece, the sands of Libya and the mountains of Abyssinia. Hitler took no risks. Thousands of German troops reached the south of Italy, ail the key posts in the Italian administration were taken over by German officials and the Italian police were honeycombed by the Gestapo. The threatened reduction of Italy to a German province became a fact. The Fascist party can have made little opposition. Thousands of its officials are venal young men who would sell their country to retain their posts as Hitler's underlings. Those who disliked the change were too cowed to oppose or denounce it. As for the King and the Crown Prince, the rumours of their hostility toward Mussolini never seem to have amounted to much. The King has been described as a wellmeaning and intelligent man—more often than not in a mood of selfeffacement. He did not blush to receive the Crown of Abyssinia from Mussolini or the poor bauble of Croatia for his nephew. The succession to the throne is in the hands of the Fascist Grand Council, a law which makes the Crown Prince very amenable to discipline. Finally, so many reshuffles in the High Command have weakened the capacity of the army to resist the administration.

Since the Axis conquest of the Balkans the Italians have become parties to Hitler's gigantic and bloody venture into Russia. Their hearts were never in the Abyssinian or the Libyan campaigns. To be transported hundreds of miles to fight Hitler's battles on the cold and illimitable steppes of Russia is some■thing loathed from one end of Italy to the other. Even the Regime Fascists, a fanatic supporter of the Government, admits the unpopularity of the war against the Soviet. The sufferings of the Italians, their ordeals from bombings, their participation in a war which is only Mussolini's, make them ripe for revolt—if the Germans are unable to prevent it. Mr. Churchill last December said he would leave the unfolding story until the day came—as come it would—when the Italian people would once more take a hand in shaping their own fortunes. That day can be certainly foretold only when a British army invades the Italian peninsula. Before that event the Army of the Nile must conquer the whole of Libya, and then have the strength to seize Sicily and launch an attack on Italy itself. Such ventures are greatly to lie desired, for the Axis must be attacked at its weakest spot. But rather than on poor Italian morale, Italy's resurgence depends on Great Britain, upon whose exertions, in the words of Pope Pius XI. to Mr. Chamberlain, rests mainly the cause of European civilisation.