ROME —In spite of Fascist censorship, news of internal troubles leaks out of Italy and indicates that Dictator Mussolini looks into a dark future and prepares for it.
The Italian lira continues to lose in the race against the British pound and the American dollar. Unemployment is on the increase at an alarming rate, and nothing is being done to take care of the jobless.
The Italian middle class, after trusting to Mussolini’s loud prophecies of victory in “the battle of the lira,” is beginning to understand that Mussolini’s victory means a loss of its own savings. And no Fascist button on the lapel of the middle class coat can reconcile the loser.
Fascist Press Boasts.
The disappointment of the Italian middle class is intensified by the silly boasts of the Fascist press, which still points to the fall of the French franc as proof of the need for a French Mussolini to “save” the nation.
Nothing like that can happen to Italy under Mussolini’s leadership, yell the Fascist editors, while the small bank deposits are being slowly wiped out in Italy and the workers are roaming the streets in the vain hunt for a steady job.
Resentment against the financial juggling of American bankers hits Mussolini directly, because Wall Street’s rule in Italy is due to Mussolini, and because only Wall Street juggling has the power to rob the Italian middle class of its savings and throw the Italian workers on the streets.
Seek Diversion Abroad.
In order to divert public attention from the internal troubles, the Fascist press keeps up its saber rattling and its threat of imperialist adventures.
A recent decree of the dictator provides that any surplus in the government budget shall be applied to military expenditures. The minister of war has been authorized to draw from the national treasury 200,000,000 lire per year for extra expenses for the next three years.
The Fascist press, evidently instructed from above, said nothing about this, but everybody under stands that this money is to be used for the up-to-date armament of the Fascist militia. Mussolini wants to be ready for any act of deperation which the ruined middle class and the unemployed may undertake.
Make for Division.
The economic crisis which is slowly strangling the Italian industries could be met more easily by a united than by a divided nation. But the Fascist slogan has divided the nation and keeps it divided.
Millions in Italy regard the hard times as the natural result of Fascist rule and do not intend to increase Fascist power by working harder, eating war bread, cutting their small savings in enterprizes managed by Fascists.
The Fascists, on their part, prepare to crush all independent movements in blood and to remedy the business crisis by murdering more citizens. The banks have been forbidden to accept any deposits of Italians in foreign money. The government wants to forbid even the publication of stock exchange rates, in order to suppress all information on the actual condition of the country.
The Milwaukee Leader, Milwaukee, WI, August 19, 1926