OPPOSED TO WAR

Opotiki News, Volume III, Issue 355, 25 October 1940, Page 4

OPPOSED TO WAR

PEOPLE OF ITALY , AMERICAN’S COMMENT IL DUCE OUT OF TOUCH • I COLLAPSEi PREDICTED . “Italy’s declaration of war is an event whicn, like many others of recent weeks, has been abundantly foreseen,” said Mr. Vincent Sheean in a broadcast address over an American network. “Many efforts were made to prevent it, including efforts by numerous Italians. That this event has taken place at all is due to the will of one man, Mussolini.

“Not long ago I was in Italy, a country I have known and loved for 20 , years, where' I have many iriends, where seme aspects of life appeal immeasurably to anybody who values the culture of Western Europe and the United States. Italy, France, and England are, in fact, the three countries which have created our culture.

“Mussolini has decided that the Italian nation, which belongs by nature to our world, shall fight against democracy. I’d like to testify that in my recent three weeks in Italy I met nobody at all who shared his view. 1 know lots of peopie in Italy and plenty of Fascists among them. No matter how firmly they have supported Mussolini’s -course in interior affairs' they did not like this German alliance and the war to which it was inevitably leading. “I believe that there will be desertion, treachery, and sabotage in the Italian army, navy, and air force beyond anything hitherto known to- the experience of men in war. I am quite positive that the ordinary people of the country will do everything they can contrive to help their alleged enemies to win. I have been told over and over again by Italians in recent weeks that they would desert at the earliest opportunity and bear arms il possible against their own country in tne hope that this- enterprise of Mussolini’s would be defeated. “I heard the same story from Fascist officials, from people in Italian ministries, from people who presumably are the instruments of this policy. But the main source of my impression is the peasants and fishermen whom I have known for many years, who belong to no political party and care nothing whatever for power politics. They hate war. They are an ancient and profoundly civilized people.* They have never been a warlike people in the sense of clesiring conquest. -The theory -that they are the heirs of ancient Rome with all its appetite for glory is one of the most foolish delusions of the Fascist delirivm. They have never been warlike.

“No Longer Knows His People”

“The most important and signifirail fact about Mussolini is that he no longer knows his own people. He did have at one time an uncanny sense of what they felt and wanted, but for 18 years he has occupied the semi-godlike position in which he cannot talk in ordinary terms to ordinary people, and knows nothing whatever about them. I, as an American, a foreigner, can get into the kind of talk with his people which he, the Dime, has no chance of finding ever again. “The Fascist organisation can carry its -present desperate enterprise for a short time, I think a very short time. Italy is at the present moment the most demoralized and anarchial country in Europe. I met nobody whatsoever of whatever rank in society who believed that this desperate plan of attack would succeed. What isi more, 1 met nobody who believed that Ital,y would be better off if it did succeed. I am talking of all kinds of people, from fishermen to men of very high rank.

“Mussolini’s will alone has pulled this trick and it was the last despairing throw of a ruined gambler. He was ruined whether he caine in or stayed out and he is playing everything he has on the chance of German victory in which he firmly believes. The great fact that German victory would be the end of Italian independence has been clear to all of his helpless subjects for a long time. It is apparently still not clear to him.”