GROWING RESISTANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25799, 21 March 1945, Page 6

GROWING RESISTANCE

PARTISANS IN NORTH ITALY RUGBY, Mar. 19. From a source usually considered reliable x-egarding the growing resist* ance to the Germans in the northeastern provinces of „Italy by “nonpolitical” peasant partisans, it would seem that, while the main interest of such peasants is in fighting and obstructing the Germans and neo-Fascists in every possible way, they confine their interest in politics to such issues as the constitutional questions of a European federation and Italian regional autonomy. This development is considered due to a considerable extent to the attitude of the Catholic parish priests. It is estimated that 50 per cent, of the lower clergy in the regions concerned ai*e known to work openly for the Committee of Liberation, while a further 40 per cent, are openly antiFascist. They tell their parishioners that it is anything but sinful to desert from the neo-Fascist Army, and is right to be against the Germans, because Hitler is the enemy of tire Pope. This information regarding the activities of the clergy is supported by a broadcast given on March 14 by the enemy-controlled Italian home service, which irngiving a press review, stated that the newspaper Volonta d’ltalia published a photograph from a United States journal showing Dom Luigi Piazza, parish priest of San Valentine, with a pistol in his belt and surrounded by a band of partisans who are fighting with the Allies. “A? everyone knows,’’ says Volonta d’ftalia, “he was received by the Pope, who gave his blessings to the priest and bis band.”

Besides the partisans, women, too, have been lending their aid to the resistance movement Turin is reported' to be in a state of more or less open revolt, and the food situation in Northern Italy is very bad, especially in the big towns. It would seem, however, that . there is nowadays a genera] tendency to optimism in thinking that the Germans are on the verge of evacuating. Despite know*ledge of the difficulties of supply with which the Allies are faced, there is also a growing conviction that the Anglo-Saxons will bring “plenty” with them.