It really is astonishing the way Hitler's propagandists manage to let poor Mussolini down. The latest example is the famous air-raid on Taranto which wrought such heavy damage to the Italian Navy, and has obliged it to remain under the shelter of land fortifications, rather than assume command of the Mediterranean, which Mussolini, the creator of communiques. which he claims are the mirrors of truth, alleges is Italian. It will be remembered that British claims as to the destruction done to Italian warships in the harbour at Taranto, backed up by photographs which speak for themselves, were strenuously denied by the Italians. Now comes one Herr Kircher, the Rome representative of the "Frankfurter Zeitung," who spills all the beans out of the bag Although the British communique on the air raid on Taranto was exaggerated, it is a fact that true happenings at Taranto were sad enough. Some devil-may-care, foolhardy British pilots succeeded in firing torpedoes at Italian warships and damage was done to the young Italian fleet which is only in its most painful growing stages.
The loss suffered will be felt for a long time, although one warship only was severely damaged and others slightly damaged. The strength of the Italian fleet has certainly not been increased through this, but Mussolini has given the assurance that it is still strong enough to safeguard. communications in the Mediterranean.
Far from the raid being the work of a few rash British pilots, it was an operation carrie out, after careful planning by the R.A.F. and the Navy, and constituted one of the first heavy blows which have been struck against the Italians. Mussolinis claim that the Italian fleet is still strong enough to safeguard communications in the Mediterranean will probably have come as a surprise to Marshal Graziani who has been clamouring for reinforcements in men and material for months, and has not received them, simply because Mussolini cannot transport them across the sea, which the British Navy so competently controls.
Another German publicist has been worrying over the staunch courage which the British have been displaying since Hitler commenced his wanton air attacks on the civilian people of Great Britain. Thus a writer in the "Lokalanzeiger" in an article under the heading "The British Public" writes as follows The question that many of us have prob-capacity for suffering unlimited, or are the dwellers in England's cities a mass of heroes?
He answers the question in this manner That which appears to the world to be the British power of resistance is really nothing more than the nature of the British masses. The average Englishman, from the proletariat to the limits of the lower-middle classes, is fundamentally a fatalist, He takes the world as it offers itself, and is not troubled by any wish to alter it.... The British have become a nation of serfs, a herd of will-less creatures with but one desire—to eat, sleep and make merry. For his own life the Englishman would not give a penny, for he knows it is not worth that much.
This is in effect no answer at all, and reveals a complete ignorance of the British character, which has made the Empire what it is, and will continue to preserve it. It is true that Britons think life of little worth if they have to live it in circumstances such as the. Germans with their atavistic barbarism would seek to impose upon the world. If the average Briton took the world as it offers itself he would long ago have surrendered to the German onslaughts, but it is in his determination to improve it by the elimination of totalitarian menace that he is demonstrating his great capacity to suffer for a good cause. If indeed the British are merely a race of serfs, what is to be said for the Germans of Hitler's fashioning, deprived even of the right to think for themselves, spoon-fed on doctrines which they are oblived to accept without question, living regimented lives in which they dare not call their souls their own? What this strange student of British characteristics fails to realize is that the spirit, which has made the Britons what they are, has not diminished down the centuries, and that what Hitler would like to think is a decadent race is still endowed with a virility which must astonish even the British themselves,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.