SICILIAN MORALE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 80, Issue 24634, 13 July 1943, Page 4

SICILIAN MORALE

One of the most important points in the Sicilian campaign is likely to be the attitude of the island's population. Repute has it that the Sicilians have never liked the Fascist regime and that they have long nourished friendly feelings toward the British people and more recently toward the Americans. It is true that in the Napoleonic era our troops occupied the island and that we assisted Garibaldi to launch an expedition from Sicily against the mainland. The United States for its part has given prosperity to many an emigrant from Sicily. \\ hat goodwill toward both countries survives from all this after so many bitter months of war is a matter of doubt. Italian morale is said to be stronger since the population has recovered from the initial shock of the Allied air raids. Aerial attacks have a progressive effect on morale; first they damage it; then the very sufferings of the bombed peoples seem to strengthen them; finally continued bombing is said to disintegrate and overwhelm the victims, although there is no evidence of this last phase as yet in either Germany or Italy. Nevertheless this phase may soon appear in Sicily. The Sicilians, and Italians generally, have a particular reason for turning on Mussolini. He has reduced them to servitude to the Germans. the most tactless and overbearing of all ruling peoples. The mounting fury of the Allied attacks may finally encourage the Sicilians to turn against the Germans at whose hands they have suffered so many humiliations. Nor will the base desertions by the Nazis in Africa be forgotten.