The Duce personally draws up the Ballan High Command communiques. Yesterday he took the unprecedented step of telling the British High Com-rand that British parachutists landed southern Moly had been rounded up. Military practice dictated that hho should have kept such a secret.
Informed circles in London are ask-Ing why he did not do so—Was he concerned to allay the growing public anxiety over Taly's vulnerability" to} attack from the air, sea and now the Jond?—That seems the likely explana-
The Mahan radio went a step further last night in gratuitously informing Britain that it knew—what these men from the skies were after 1 secret" the Italians might well have Kept themselves, The, objective, it stated, was "the world's longest aqueduet™ of Apulia, which supplies 302 Tialian towns with water. "Behind this " seemingly " ineneous assertion may lie the desire} to trick Britain into declaring what vias the precise objective of the parachutists, because of incidents of sabotage which they have found dimi-cult to pin down either to internal external causes, Treated As War Prisoners It is believed that some of the parachutists dropped on Italian soil have made their escape.
number of British parachutists captured in the south of Italy will be treated as prisoners of war, said a semi-oMMeial statement issued in Rome yesterday.
"The prisoners will be lodged in a concentration camp where representa
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.