The entrance of Miss Deanna Durbin, the well known cinema actress and. splendid singer, into the political world as a figure causing some anxiety to Italy, has been duly by Mussolini's own newspaper "Popolo d'Italia" which pleads with her not 5 Fi pale aid to Britain. In what appea a very quaint article the writer fears "that you like the remainder of Ameri-1, can youth are controlled by Congress and the LO: P Such a blinding glimpse into: the obvious is indeed. remarkable, but it needs to bea that Italian youth are also controlled by the soul-destroying system of Fascism, and "Miss Durbin, if she has given the matter any particular thought, would probably prefer the liberty which is still the lot of American than the regimentation of children is a feature of life in Germany and ie writer should have point-
"at present. It is to be inferred from of the article that what apparent-7 fears is the actual entrance of e war, for the writer goes 2 is be able to gnaw Axis
b Hn The idea a hefty bite out of, ili or gnawing herself has its attractions, rest assured that Miss n tes no such thing, so that can at least spare himself that nightmare. Tf it were that conditions in Europe were not so tragic the concluding sentence of the article would be positively funny: "If you only knew how good and beautiful are the children of Rome and Berlin, and how much poetry there is in the youth of Europe, then you would not listen to our and your enemy." "Phe glorious manner in which the Axis has been spreading poetry amongst the youth of Europe has to be seen to be believed. If in suppression, slavery, deprivation of the simplest liberties of life, if the wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians, men, women, and children is indeed poetry, then such lands as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and indeed all those other countries which the Axis Powers have treated so brutally must be passing through the most romantic period of their histories.
It may be that in'this appeal of the "Popolo d'Italia" there is some- deep plot to bring about a schism in the ranks of the film artists in Hollywood. Miss Shirley "Temple has been overlooked; Mickey Rooney has been ignored, Clark Gable left out in the cold. Can it mean nothing to Mussolini that they are probably as widely known as Miss Durbin? Has his paper gone out of his way definitely to slight them Why were not the Marx Brothers and Eddie, Cantor included in' the appeal? No one knows accept the unconscious humourist who plies his pen for Mussolini's organ, and probably he will never tell. But to appeal to Miss Durbin as the possible moulder of the opinion of American. youth is to ignore all those others who have done their bit through the medium the screen. It will probably leave them with their withers unwrung. They together with Deanna will probably' have a good laugh over the whole matter, and, if in response to the Italian paper's remonstrance they all join in a most eloquent "raspberry." it will be all that the Italian journalistic antic could hope to expect.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.