Fascists & Facts

"Let no one shed crocodile tears over 'poor Belgium' or 'poor Holland,' " wrote anonymous Commentator "Blackshirt" in Bologna's Resto del Carlino the day after Germany's new invasion began last week (see p. 22). "It is not for Fascist Italy to lament the fate that has overtaken two sanctionist countries, worm-eaten by democracy and anti-Fascism."

That this was no private opinion of fire-eating Blackshirt, but the line all of Italy's controlled press was ordered to take, was made clear when the sober Popolo di Roma declared: "The Belgian and Dutch request for assistance is nothing more than official and public manifestation of a pre-existing armed solidarity."

The night before, gangs of young Fa-scisti had roamed the streets plastering walls with posters that announced: COLLAPSE OF THE DEMOCRACIES, INCONTESTABLE PROOF OF FRANCO-BRITISH DEFEAT. In front of the Regina Carlton Hotel in the Via Vittorio Veneto they bumped into two British Embassy attaches and two U. S. newspaper correspondents. One of the Englishmen, Secretary George La Bouchere, started to peel one of the posters from a wall. With that the fight was on. Into the lobby of the Regina Carlton burst the milling group. Correspondent Virginia Cowles of the North American Newspaper Alliance ran to telephone British Embassy Counselor Sir Noel Charles, while the Chicago Daily News's John T. Whitaker stuck with his British friends. Downstairs in his pajamas came the hotel manager to try to make peace. He was knocked flat.

Sir Noel turned up with a high police official, and soon he was being pushed around. At this point the police official decided to intervene and the belligerents brushed themselves off. But as ruffled Sir Noel started to get back into his automobile he saw one of the posters on the side of the car. He ordered it removed and it was. Next day he turned in an energetic protest to the Foreign Office. Its reply was to suggest that British consuls tell their nationals to go home. It was getting too hard to protect them.

While the Fascist Party systematically tried to stir up anti-British feeling and crowds of students demonstrated in almost every Italian city, officially Italy did nothing. At a mass meeting in the Piazza Venezia to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the Italian Empire, Benito Mussolini told a none too enthusiastic crowd: "After my speeches you must accustom yourself to my silence. Only facts will break it."

The facts that kept II Duce silent as this week began were these: P: Though he had made up his mind to enter the war, the Italian royal family and the mass of his people were against it. Not only is Crown Princess Marie-Jose a Belgian, but Dutch Queen Wilhelmina's appeal to "the noble sentiments always shown by the House of Savoy" had strengthened King Vittorio Emanuele's dislike of Germany. In the market section of Rome appeared Abbasso Germania! Abbasso Hitler! pamphlets. Roman fishwives cursed police who gathered them up and arrested bewildered loiterers. P:In the Balkans, time and the shifting pressure of power politics seemed to be working against Italy. Rumania's Premier George Tatarescu reconstructed his Government, replacing German sympathizers with Francophiles, and put all defense preparations in the hands of War Minister General Ion Ileus. In Sofia, Germany's Dr. Karl Clodius and the British Ambassador to Turkey, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, were holding a tug-of-war for Bulgaria's support when war spreads to the Balkans, as it almost surely will. Yugoslavia signed her trade treaty with Russia, but unconfirmed were reports that Russia had promised troops if Yugoslavia was invaded. Turkey and Hungary called up more men.

P: Until the French Army was on the run in the North, II Duce would hardly dare to attack France in the South. But sharp-eyed observers interpreted the German bombing of Lyon as a possible prelude to an effort to cut French North-South communications, giving Italy the signal to come in.

P: If it were true that some units of the Allied Fleet had left the Mediterranean, Italy might stand a chance of clearing that sea in an air and naval guerra di fulmine.

This would probably involve seizure of Salonika as well as the Dalmatian coast.

P: German preoccupation with the Western Front was to Italy's advantage in carving herself a piece of Yugoslavia. Crowds of Fascisti shouting "Dalmatia! Dalma-tia!" through the streets of Rome convinced Yugoslavia that her turn might come any minute. Unless Germany were stopped in the Low Countries, Italy's die was cast. II Duce had gone too far to turn back. But in his silence he may have reflected that his following consists of a goose-stepping press and Party, and a war-weary, resentful people.

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