THE ITALY OF TO-DAY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 290, 6 December 1929, Page 10

THE ITALY OF TO-DAY

"FROM BAD TO WORSE” A CRITIC OF FASCISM LONDON, Dee. 4. ‘ ‘The general situation in Italy is going from bad to worse,’’ declares •Signor Rosselli, who is at present visiting London. “The best proof that the Fascist regime has not got the country’s support is that Signor Mussolini cannot govern without the ter. rible exceptional laws passed in 1926.’ ’ Signor Rosselli asserts that the prisons throughout Italy, especially in the south, are full of people, their only crime being that they are not in sympathy with the regime. They are subjected to most shocking tortures, the latest being to tie a prisoner in a chair and strike him heavily repeatedly over the heart with a rubber-covered hammer. Reprisals against the families of anti-Fascists have now become part of Italy’s legal system. Thousands of Italian homes have been ransacked and the furniture destroyed in front of helpless women.

Signor Mussolini, in an important speech at Palazzio, Venetia, on September 14, dealing with the recent Cabinet changes, explained that the Fascist Militia Police Council and the State Court of Accounts remained under his control. “Never before have I felt more strongly Fascism’s reality by which the State is centred in one person who

is the complete master. Some ‘idolaters 7 call Italy a dictatorship lying in the political, moral, and intellectual force of the man who exercises it and the objects at which he aims. That isS the fact and it is a necessity.”

He added that reports that the Fascist Party was suppressing itself were grotesque and denounced attackers who were accusing the Fascist leaders of dishonesty. On the cyarrtnocausing dishonesty. On the contrary they

Signor Mussolini declared that Italian exiles were drowning themselves in ridicule. ‘ 4 l have often asked myself whether an amnesty can be granted such a herd of sheep afflicted with such mortifying stupidity, or criminals responsible for bombing Italian women and children,’ ’ he concluded.