FATE OF TYROLESE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4235, 24 January 1940, Page 5

FATE OF TYROLESE

DEATH OF TRADITION. A PROVINCE UNDER NEW MASTERS.

(By N.J.)

“Gruss Gott!” The gracious Tyrolean greeting is as far from the invariable Heil Hitler of Austria to-day as from the brisk Italian military salute. For twenty years, since the South Tyrol was handed, under the Treaty of St. Germain, to Italy, her 200,000 odd people have resisted Italianisation. No undertaking for their welfare was demanded from Italy by the League of Nations, and although Italy admitted her obligation to apply the provisions of the Minorities Treaty, leaving the inhabitants immume intheir nationality, the Fascist Government has since 1923 rigorously discouraged the German customs, speech and traditions of the communes of these valleys of the Upper Adige. Nor have they had the same sympathy that the German Government has lavished on other minorities. Hitler is as anxious as Mussolini that there should be no friction on the Axis through this arbitrary division of a national group. These people of the Dolomites form an unwanted minority.

Yet the trickle of exiles back into Austria, the disbanding of German social, cultural and industrial groups, the substitution of Italian for German in schools, of Italian for German in music and the arts, upsets a vogue that has persisted for 600 years. They cannot even be certain that they will be permitted family and place names for the native German, and the constant policing of the district by carabinieri, troops and agents has done little towards bringing the people into the heart of the Roman State. The Roman tradition of giving her laws and her arts to her colonies and making them loyal sons, of the Empire here encounters a mountain race whose spiritual pride and love of liberty make them intractable material for Roman citizenship. AN UNHAPPY CHOICE. The plebescite of December 31 is Italy’s latest gesture toward the incorporation of the South Tyrol. Those who chose to return to the Reich much cross the Brenner Pass into the North Tyrol; those who have elected to remain must submit themselves as loyal Italians. This choice seems more generous than an acquaintance with the country proves it to be. The peo-

pie who return no longer return to their native Hapsburg Austria, but to a German state politically as foreign as their Italian masters. They must leave the land, for they are largely a peasant community, losing property that their families have held for 600 years. They cannot even be certain that they will be permitted to settle with their German Tyrol kinsfolk, where they might be suspected of breeding disaffection.

Of all the links with their North Tyrol kin, the language is the strongest. The teaching of German in schools is forbidden, Italian is used in all public announcements. Even the century-old exhortation, beside a wayside crucifix, to pray for the soul of a man who died by accident near this place, has been translated into Italian. But the mother tongue is jealously guarded in the homes, and the people remain Austrian in their way of life, their dress, their food, their thrift and industry.

There is a world of difference between the shining farm houses of the Tyrol and the careless poverty of the Italian peasant farmer. It is a countryside of pine woods and meadows, that in spring shimmer with the pale amethyst anemone and the blue of gentians, a country full of clock towers and toy villages of gabled pinewood houses. Fifty miles south, at Desenzano, the scarlet poppies outtop and choke the wheat, but no Tyrolean farmer allows a weed to grow in his crop. Paths through the larch woods are swept daily of fallen leaves, and on the upland meadows not a beast grazes unbelled or unwatched. A five-year-old child keeps one attentive eye on his herd, the other on a smaller brother, elegant in embroidered jacket, leather pants and pointed cap with cock’s feather. ALIENS IN CONTROL. It is on the few towns of the Tyrol that the hand of their rulers lie most heavily. In Bolzano—once Bozen—the chief town of the province, huge barracks frown down from the foothills above the town; the streets are full of swaggering uniforms, and an arch built in 1928 to commemorate the triumph of Fascism casts its shadow over the old town. There the shopkeepers, Josef (now Guiseppe) and Alois (who has become in the Italian Luigi), complain of the regimentation and State interference. They may no longer send their embroideries, their metal and exquisite wood carving to clients in England and America. Permission must be sought from Rome for every transaction with countries abroad. Rome may answer in six months or not at all, but the financial regulations have cut them off from all foreign trade.

Tourists come no longer, since the crises of the past twb years; their own people are poor; native crafts and industries languish, and the stock on their shelves grows dusty.

At the same time one must, from the Italian point of view, realise the necessity for this repressive policy, and for the fostering of the Fascist spirit, if the Tyrol is to be Italian in more than name. Fascism is founded on nationalism; there is no room in the political conception for foreign bodies. Unless the boundaries of Europe change again the culture

and the pride of the province of the South Tyrol will become a memory. There is need, it has been said, to break Tyrolese eggs for the making of Italian omelettes.