A recent arrival in Britain from Italy, Mr. David Edge, member.of the party of Sir Ronald Campbell, former Minister to Belgrade, has made statements which completely corroborate the views expressed in these columns concerning the state of affairs in that country. "Italy," he says, "is absolutely a slave nation under over-lordship of the Germans" According to Mr. Edge an Italian general asked him to try and persuade the British to invade Italy as ihe only means of assisting Italy to get rid of their oppress sors, who are "squeezing the life-blood out of the Italians." Further, a Foreign Office official in Rome spoke to him along the same lines, The Italians loathe war; they hate the Germans, They never had any real Jove for them, and the Axis. which Hitler and Mussolini patched up was designed to serve the purely personal interests of both and certainly so far as Italy was concerned in no way represented the real feelings of the thinking Italian masses. Alliances between traditional enemies, as Italy and Germany have been since the days of the Roman Empire, can at the best be but very uneasy partnerships, and the Axis is precisely that.
When it was only a bond. between Rome and Berlin it was merely an instrument out of which Mussolini and Hitler sought to get the best they could. Ever since Italy went into what Mussolini thought was going to be an easy war she has been consistently betrayed by Hitler. Italy's aspirations with regard to recovery of alleged Italian territories from France have not been satisfied. They probably never will be, if Vichy continues to be increasingly pliant regarding German desires. Instead Italy was fobbed off with Albania, a share in Yugoslavia, and the administration of Greece, which latest reports indicate is now being taken away from her by the Germans. The Germans, it is true, may very well seek to justify their actions by claiming that Italy has in reality contributed little to the common cause, but that will not excuse the overrunning of the country by German agents, and the reduction of Mussolini to no more than a very abject Italian quisling. There is not an administrative organization in Italy, or the remnants of what she was once pleased to call an empire which is not honeycombed by German influence, and the nation is as completely subjugated as are others who have been the victims of rather more obvious methods.
Italy is paying much the same price as other countries which have been conquered fnilitarily. The Germans have grabbed the whole of the oil crop to be turned into munitions north of the Brenner Pass. Butter is unknown,—Hitler would rather have guns. Bread, a mixture of bean and potato flour, is described as being uneatable, while the whole of the lemon crop has been seized by the Germans to be devoted to the war effort: Hence the recent extension of the rationing system. Italy is being foreed to starve in order to help bring about that victory for the Germans which would mean her own permanent enslavement. Is it any wonder that an Italian general should have said "What we want is the destruction of Fascism, and we want to get rid of Mussolini so that once more we can lift our heads and look people in the face."? That they will never be able to do, should Hitler prove victorious in this war. Rather will their heads be bowed in that helotry which the Führer is planning for the whole of Europe, and ultimately the whole of the world, and if ever that should come about the Ttalians will bitterly reproach themselves that their best interests were betrayed owing to the insane ambitions of a man who could have served his nation so well.
The extent of the pain felt by those with whom Mr. Edge came in contact may best be judged from their readiness to have Britain invade Italy which would then become but another battlefield. They see only in the. greatest sacrifice some chance of escaping the fate which Mussolini will have brought upon them. It may very well be that at some future date an invasion of Italy will take place. There has been some discussion of such a possibility during recent months, but it is clear that much will have to be done before it can be attempted. Should it occur it requires no exercise of the imagitation to comprehend what-it would mean for the Italians. Caught between two fires they would be obliged to suffer all the ruthlessness which Germany has meted out to other occupied countries, and it may be taken for granted that Italy would be-just as completely devastated by the Nazis as those other Countries upon which they have laid their unclean hands. There can be nothing but sympathy for the Italian people, who, through mussolini, have been led so completely down the garden path, and nothing but hatred and scorn for those leaders responsible for their "present predicament.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.