Ferguson: Fidelity and feuds
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
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Millett: Wartime experiences ‘reform’ conversation
‘Scarce as nylons’ gives the idea
By Ruth Millett
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G.I. insurance to cost U.S. over $1 billion
95% of servicemen take out policies
By Ned Brooks, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Liquor holiday barred by WPB
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Landing at Hong Kong expected by Japs
WITH CHINESE FORCES ON THE WESTERN HUNAN FRONT (UP) – The Japs are preparing for a possible American landing at Hong Kong after the Battle of Okinawa, high American officers said today.
The enemy has stationed at least 350,000 troops along a corridor from Canton to Hong Kong, the officer estimated.
Nearly 100,000 Jap troops have made progress in a drive towards the 14th U.S. Air Force airfield at Chihkiang in Hunan Province. If the Japs knock out Chihkiang, they can keep the Hankow railway repaired for use in moving troops to Hong Kong. The Americans would have to land many more troops at Hong Kong if Chihkiang falls than would be necessary at present.
An adventurer’s career ends –
‘About time,’ Romans say of Mussolini
Duce first of modern dictators
By J. Edward Murray, United Press staff writer
ROME, Italy – Il Duce was dead, disgraced, and defiled today, and the Italian people from premier to peasant took the news with satisfaction.
The Vatican reportedly received with coolness the news of Mussolini’s summary trial and execution, but throughout the rest of Rome there was only rejoicing.
Unimpeachable Vatican sources told the United Press the Holy See felt Mussolini should have had a more formal trial. The revilement of his body also displeased church circles. American Monsignor Walter Carroll was due to leave for Milan today to bring back a report on the entire episode.
No regret
No such niceties bothered the Italians who had lived so long under the Dictator’s yoke. The news was first flashed to a huge crowd gathered in the Piazzo Santi Apostoli to celebrate the liberation of North Italy. That is only a block from the Piazza Venezia, where the balcony was now bare of the blackshirt for good.
The excited crowd almost mobbed two news vendors who shouted “Mussolini executed.” A United Press correspondent who circulated through the crowd reported the only regret expressed was because Rome did not have the privilege of trying and executing Mussolini.
Premier Ivanoe Bonomi said:
The career of an adventurer who has been gambling with his life and with the destiny of his country has tragically ended. Fortunately, the country is not dying and will revive.
‘About time’
Mario Luzzi, bank clerk, wanted no grief on his former dictator.
“About time. He already was a stinking corpse,” said Luzzi.
“He deserved execution. It was overdue,” agreed shopkeeper Giuseppe Marni.
It was considered poetic justice that the mortal remains of Mussolini were taken for all to see to Milan, where his Fascism was born 26 years ago.
By that time Mussolini, son of a country village blacksmith, had already had a varied career as a soldier, Socialist, editor and teacher. From his birth on July 29, 1883, at Dovia di Predappio in Romagna, Mussolini pursued a relatively peaceful career until 1904. In that year he was expelled from Switzerland for political activity.
Jailed once
Mussolini returned to Italy and divided his time between school teaching and Socialism. He was jailed once for his part in a farmers’ strike. In 1909, he founded a newspaper called The Class Struggle. Three years later, he became editor of the Socialist daily, Avanti.
When the First World War began, Mussolini abandoned his Socialist and pacifist ideas. He gave up his post on Avanti and founded his own paper, Il Popolo Romano. In 1915, he was arrested for making a speech urging Italy to enter the war on the side of the Allies.
Mussolini joined the army and his war record was a good one. He was wounded several times, mentioned in dispatches frequently, and ended as a sergeant.
Started in 1919
Fascism was born in March of 1919, when Mussolini founded the first “Fasci” and was first called “Il Duce.” By 1922, he had a million followers and was able to declare that the Italian government would “either be given to us or we shall take it.”
That was October 24. Four days later from Milan, where his battered corpse had returned today, began the blackshirt march on Rome, a march in which Mussolini himself did not take part. A frightened King the next day invited Mussolini to form a new cabinet.
Mussolini bullied and beat his way to power. Where his balcony speeches sometimes failed, castor oil or rubber hoses rarely did. the murder of the socialist leader, Giacomo Matteotti, showed the world. But Mussolini went on his colorful swaggering way.
Signed Vatican pact
His first big diplomatic victory was when he healed the historic rift between Italy and the Vatican with the Lateran Treaty in 1929. His next was when he went to war with Ethiopia and got away with it. The League of Nations delayed in applying sanctions until it was too late. Mussolini’s dream of empire was being realized.
He supported Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War, and his troops took a terrible whipping at Guadalajara.
Invaded Albania
Mussolini, as the first of the modern dictators, at one time treated Adolf Hitler as something of a pupil. But the master was soon outstripped, and when the Axis partnership was formed, Mussolini was the junior member.
Il Duce’s first suggestion in World War II was against Albania in 1939. Then came his “stab in the back” against fallen France in 1940. Those were his last victories. The invasion of Greece was a failure. The Italian armies were beaten in Africa.
When the Allies invaded Sicily, Mussolini was through. His government collapsed on July 25, 1943, and he was imprisoned. On September 12, 1943, he was rescued by German parachutists and taken to Germany, a beaten, broken man. His attempt to form a “new Fascist republic” in Northern Italy was pathetic.
Around him he gathered the old cronies of his Rome days and his mistress, young, pretty, slender Clara Petacci – the same people whose bodies were tossed in the pile with his own yesterday.
Bluster gone
But the old blustering Mussolini was gone. He was a hollow-eyed, tired-looking man. at the height of his career, Mussolini had been built up as a great sportsman. Once for the edification of American newsmen, he played half a set of tennis against opponents who wanted to let him win but couldn’t, and it was announced he had trimmed them.
One wide-eyed chronicler once reported that Mussolini liked Rome, his daughter Edda, children, horses, folk dances, and fortune telling. He disliked cats, rich men, beards, mummies, and old women.
He didn’t dislike young women, and his notorious love affairs did as much as anything to discredit him with his predominantly Catholic countrymen. His last mistress, the one who died with him, he met on a beach and kept in a villa near Rome.
Son-in-law slain
His wife, Rachele, was kept in the background throughout his life. they had five children, Edda, Vittorio, Romano, Anna Maria and Bruno. The latter was killed in a plane crash.
For marrying Edda, Count Galeazzo Ciano was made Italian Foreign Minister. For denying Il Duce after his downfall, he was executed.
Vittorio was reported with his father after his flight from Milan last week, but the dispatches today did not mention his whereabouts. Signora Mussolini tried to cross into Switzerland with Romano and Anna Maria, both in their teens. Edda is already in Switzerland with her longtime lover and newly-taken husband, Count Pucci.
Bucs meet Cards at home tomorrow
Roe, Strincevich snap Cub jinx with double victory in Chicago
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Hope for Red Sox –
Ex-soldier wins shutout in major test
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USS Franklin D. Roosevelt launched at New York yard
Late President would have watched carrier ‘with pride,’ wife says at christening
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Gracie Allen Reporting
By Gracie Allen
SAN FRANCISCO – Lately, I’ve thought I was lucky to get a taxi in English, but here at the World Security Conference you can get foreign ones. They carry signs in different languages saying “Greek (or Russian or French) spoken here.” At least that’s what people tell me the signs say.
And this “share the ride” plan is certainly exciting when nobody knows what the other sharers are talking about.
Sometimes they get fooled, though. Yesterday, my companion and I were battling away in our own language when an Oriental veiled lady sharing the ride turned to me and said “Oh, so you like Charles Boyer, too?”
But don’t be misled by this movie nonsense, girls. Yesterday at the Conference I sat next to two sheiks in sheets. Did they try to carry off little Gracie to be a desert queen? Well, my address is still the Palace Hotel.
Oberdonau-Zeitung (May 1, 1945)
Politische Morgendämmerung
oz. München, 30. April – Das deutsche Volk verfolgt, von Nachrichtensendung zu Nachrichtensendung mit höchster Spannung den Verlauf und den Ausgang des ungeheuren Kampfes gegen die Mächte der Zerstörung aus Ost und West. Berlin ist und bleibt immer Symbol des unbeugsamen Willens, der sich durch keine Erfolgsberechnungen in der Erfüllung seiner selbstgewählten Pflicht und des Einsatzes aller Kräfte zur Lösung einer Gemeinschaftsaufgabe zum Wohle des europäischen Kontinents hindern lässt.
Während im Berliner Stadtkern noch größere und kleinere Stützpunkte dem Ansturm des übermächtigen Feindes standhalten, liefert, die politische Lage in aller Welt bereits den überzeugendsten Beweis für die Richtigkeit der Zielsetzung des deutschen und mitteleuropäischen Kampfes. In Frankreich hat der Verlauf des Wahltages gezeigt, dass der Bolschewismus überalle da aggressiv fortschreitet, wo keine klare Ordnungsmacht ihm sichtbar entgegentritt. Die Franzosen konnten Sonntag abends vom Rundfunk nicht erfahren, wie sich die politischen Parteien bei dieser ersten Wahl nach neun Jahren neu gruppiert haben. Jedoch liegen zahlreiche Berichte vor, die über politische Zwischenfälle des Wahltages Aufschluss geben. De Gaulle hat in Paris und in der Provinz die Straße nicht etwa den friedlichen kleinbürgerlichen Wählern freigegeben, sondern er musste unter dem Druck der Kommunisten unter Führung des aus Moskau zurückgekehrten Thorez die Straßen für die Demonstrationszüge der kommunistischen Partei freigeben. Diese Vorgänge in Frankreich sind ein nützliches Beispiel für alle kleinen und mittleren Mächte, die in dem leichtfertigen Vertrauen nach San Franzisko gezogen sind, dass die Verfasser der Atlantik-Charta ihre Versprechungen ernst genommen haben und nach dieser Konferenz, alle großen und kleinen, starken und schwachen Völker nur durch das unbeeinflusste Selbstbestimmungsrecht ihre Zukunft gestalten können.
Wie man in Moskau über die Zusagen der Atlantik-Charta denkt, hat der Bandenführer Tito mit der größten Deutlichkeit ausgesprochen. Er erklärte, dass König Peter, der auf Grund der Versprechungen des Jahres 1941 wieder nach Belgrad auf das Schloss seiner Vater zurückkehren sollte, in Jugoslawien nichts mehr zu suchen habe. Man werde ihm auch nicht gestatten, auf Grund des Selbstbestimmungsrechtes sich persönlich um die Wiedererlangung des Reiches zu bemühen.
Das Auftreten Molotows und seiner kleinen Trabanten in San Franzisko hat auch andere politische Klienten Großbritanniens sehr hellhörig gemacht. Die Vertreter der britischen Dominien haben klar ausgesprochen, dass sie gleichberechtigt in der neuen Welt Sitz und Stimme beanspruchen, weil sie dem Entgegenkommen Edens gegenüber Moskau das stärkste Misstrauen entgegenbringen und nicht gesonnen sind, ihre Lebensinteressen ihm anzuvertrauen. Die nüchternen Holländer erwiesen sich in San Franzisko als ein schmerzender Dorn in Englands Fleisch. Der holländische Delegationschef sammelt erfolgreich kleine und mittlere Staaten, die kritischen britischen Dominien und die misstrauische Südafrikanische Republik zu einem Stoßtrupp gegen die doktrinären Vormachtsansprüche der Großmächte. Nicht etwa ein deutscher Gelehrter, sondern ein holländischer Fachmann auf dem Gebiete des Völkerrechtes hat sich gestern abends an das Mikrophon bemüht, um über englische und amerikanische Sender den Holländern, Südafrikanern und Flämmen in ihrer gemeinsamen Muttersprache auseinanderzusetzen, dass die Beschlüsse von Dumbarton Oaks alles andere als eine Klarstellung des Friedens seien. Dieser holländische Fachmann sprach es offen aus, dass alle Bestimmungen, die in diesem Vertrag niedergelegt sind, so flüchtig ausgearbeitet wurden, dass sie für alle Auslegungen dem Gutdünken der Großmächte freie Hand geben.
Alle Länder, die bei Verwirklichung des klaren deutschen Programmes für Europa versagt haben, müssen jetzt erleben, wie sie das Opfer der bolschewistischen Gewaltpolitik und das Opfer der demokratischen Täuschungsmanöver werden. Plutokratie und Bolschewismus sind nicht nur im Hass gegen die europäische Ordnung einig, sondern sie leisten sich auch gegenseitig Vorspann bei ihren imperialistischen Bestrebungen, die kleinen Völker zu entrechten und die kulturelle und wirtschaftliche Eigenart dieser Nationen auszulöschen. Die harte Wirklichkeit entscheidet zugleich den zukünftigen politischen, wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Lebensraum der kleinen Völker.
Das Grab unserer deutschen Helden wird in die Geschichte eingehen als Grabstätte der Lebensrechte jener europäischen Völker, die jetzt in dem Konferenzhandel von San Franzisko zu spät erfahren, dass auch für sie das Kleist-Wort gilt: Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht!
De Gaulle: ‚Kein Europa ohne Deutschland
Bemerkenswertes Eingeständnis – Verschärfte Differenzen mit den USA
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Mussolini das Opfer von Aufständischen
Mit seinem Mitarbeiterstab ermordet
Genf, 30. April – Nach Meldung eines italienischen Senders ist Mussolini mit 17 Angehörigen seiner engsten Mitarbeiterschaft in die Hände von Aufständischen gefallen. Mussolini und seine Mitarbeiter, darunter Farinaci, wurden ermordet, während Marschall Graziani den alliierten Militärbehörden unterstellt wurde. Die Leichen wurden auf dem Minettiplatz in Mailand zur Schau gestellt.