20 Million British Sleep Nightly in Basements Subways, Tunnels as War Heads for 3rd Winter
20 Million British Sleep Nightly in Basements Subways, Tunnels as War Heads for 3rd Winter Parlies, Libraries, Lecture in Shelters Maintain Morale LEd. Note.—As member of the British Cabinet, in...
...whereas if the population is dispersed among many small JWers the risk of a long casualty list in very much less...
...Finland, the hero of yesterday, now has been forced to become an ally of Hitler to protect itself against Stalin in the struggle for dominance in the Baltic (dominium maris baltici...
...j * * * Perniment has since done...
...On the way to the North Cape, as gaenas and without payment for the transit and ostensibly without arms, they sang "Wir fahren gen England...
...This is what the Fascists want...
...He didn't bother to tell the jhelter about that...
...People begaA to wake up and sigh and groan...
...From discrimination they draw tl necessity of greater isolation...
...A patter crow is, on the whole, a practical crowd, not a panicky one...
...Shelters, jn fact, are passing out of the "problem" stage, 2f instructive, social experiments are growing up where scandals used to be...
...The Fascists advise quite a different solution...
...The bunks, which are allocated to tteket-holding "regulars," are perhaps ¦^•ggest improvement of all...
...A citizen or resident of Italian descent is hindered by obstacles which do not exist for others...
...the Minister' for Foreign Affairs, Christian E. Guenther, and the Minister of Justice, K. C. Westman, spoke for-the amendment, while three prominent former Ministers, al...
...In J*?* cities there is open-air singing for shelter parflna^open-air dancing and One of the most popular shelter activities at present is a visit to the ^pf18 Zoo, where shelter .parties are admitted half price...
...They must listen only to Italian radio commentators...
...It consists in holding the Italians close together under the control of the Italian celebrities and politicians...
...She has charge of the handling . and {provision of air raid shelters and problems throughout I •• • the Isles...
...result, as everyone knows, was of grat discomfort and some bad muddles...
...They are ijiylt with a" job of work waiting for them...
...willed it so...
...they mixed with other groups...
...They therefore held the entire country I iipWMJMtj...
...S o m etimes in a public shelter there seems to be almost a conspiracy to ignore Hitler...
...The remedy against discrimination is shown by the role of the earlier Italians...
...i In one public shelter I know,'you will find a grdup'of pretty shop girls who 4atttbe same corner each night except when they are on civil defense work out a! tears...
...At the same time the Italians were working, as they know'how to work when they apply themselves...
...But the masses of Italians are less ar less able of assimilation...
...He therefore argued that the new law would not change the spirit of the constitution of 1809...
...With your workshops m*** vd y°UT comradeship'backing us, the working people of this country ^55fW.lose heart.- - ¦ _._ ,___________ Duce's Agents Here Isolate Italians as Aid to Fascism By PROFESSOR GAETANCt SALVEHINI II A GAINST, the deceit of confusing the Fascist Party with the Italian people, "* and of identifying Mussolini with Italy, we democrats of Italian origin have always protested...
...After a while they felt better and wed a silent game of cards, whild the guns thundered and the shelters slept, fgoenly our Polish baby woke up And yelled: (he comes every night with his «j?a*r, who doesn't speak a. word bf English...
...Instead she has granted to.a special New Leader correspondent in London an exclusive interview on r the air raid shelter problem, with which the United States i government is only now beginning to deal...
...When poor men fight each other for bread the struggle oftenbecomes cruel...
...It must be added that behind the honest and hard-working mass of Italian immigrants came the stream of criminals, politicians, and opportunists...
...because they were .commanded, not by generals but by asses...
...She did her best to quiet him, Mhe went on yelling...
...There was competition in the labor Anarket between the early and late comers...
...The Italian soldiers refused to fight in Albania and in Lybia because they knew that this was a war of tyranny, not-of defense...
...They must cut themselves off from the rest of the country...
...a mntless i small kindnesses, controvings, improvisations...
...The people of Sweden receive the Nazi troops with, icy coldness, but their roles are forced and they are eons* pel led to play the host...
...This assertion of a newspaper neither censured nor confiscated, contradicts the claims of the Swedish Government that the Nazi troops passing through Sweden are "unarmed...
...In the First Chamber, the constitutional amendment was adopted by a vote of 74 to 45, which rs less than a three-fourths' majority, and the same is true of the S*:ond Chamber, in which the vote was 140 to 58...
...they saved money...
...We can get a clear.idea from the attitude of various newspapers...
...Yet in their time there was., still room for- everyone...
...The two latter are now provincial governors but, like Professor Unden, are also members bf the First Chamber...
...discrimination is not abolished but perpetuated, because it nurtures the suspicion and the mistrust towards everything that bears an Italian stamp...
...It was still "a bit pry overhead," but no one took...
...There are the new indoor ^liison" shelters, thousands bffwhich are now being distributed free to people W**0* less than $1,200 a year, the "Morrison" shelter is a steel box with open •¦¦sides...
...crowded 8s ^USt g0t everyone bedded down peacefully...
...The Italians must read only Italian newspapers, they must entrust their sons only to Italian parochial schools, or to...
...This Was economic disaster to the laborers in Italy who could no longer come hereto earn a living...
...Note.—As member of the British Cabinet, in the • Min-trv of Home Security, Ellen Wilkinson, is not permitted to write {articles...
...We could not ISyer that he was the least bjt proud of driving his bus through a nightly ¦n in London...
...The truth 4s that the improvement is due, first of all, to the cessation of immigration because it was forbidden by the American government and not by Mussolini, and, secondly, to the fact that the Italians in this country progressed on their own merit and not through any magnetic powers of Mussolini...
...The funny thing was that it JMpI...
...s •« . To be sure, even, if there is no actual hostility against Italians in this country, there ts' a certain feeling of superiority in regard to them, and that, from this unfavorable feeling spring difficulties, "discrimination" as it is termed,' against which they must struggle...
...The son of a modest bandmaster...
...These girls bring a little tin of water, dip their hair curlers in it and SEfneir waves very carefully eveh on the very worst'nigiits...
...11/HEN the Fascist agents here realize that even the blindest can see that ** Mussolini's tragic mask only conceals a farcial clown, when they feel, overwhelmed by Jibe hostility of-*he Amerl&n people, they" -w'ail that the Ainerican people hate'the Italians...
...The baby stopped crying and listened...
...they moved from the "Little Italys" as soon as they could pay for better homes...
...one has much leisure ttiis summer, but what there is will be used to Xjjjaunshine and fresh air, in case there is another shelter winter coming...
...In the final debate the Prime Minister, Per AJbin Hansson...
...On the other hand, he said, that despite the old law, permitting freedom of the press at all times, it has been practically impossible to convince foreign powers that the Government was unable to prevent editors fnaan commenting on foreign affairs...
...Because he made himself respected as an honest aad intelligent person...
...Such permits will be granted only for limited paranja...
...A constitutional change requires a majority vote by two successive Riksdags, between which there has been a general election...
...Then at the right moment the ¦Mriver gave him a bit of ohr precious hoard of barley sugar and handed him adjtto his mother...
...Even in Italy the peasant from Calabria or Apulia who seeks work in Turin or Milan is looked down on by the northern laborer because he_ is satisfied with less pay, he works harder, and his tastes arfflfsa refined...
...It was not their fault, but it was reality...
...What is LaGuardia today...
...Less fortunate were those who were born or came here between 1910 and 1920 and came of age between 19&0 and 1940...
...Even in this country among the Italians themselves the southerners.are mistrusted by the northerners...
...The vast stream of Italian poverty which had invaded the American cities stopped...
...Swedes Show Hostility aw& Nazi Troops Cross Country By KURT D. SINGER - -a4i, FOR more than six "months Nazi troops kept marching to Northern Norway through Finland...
...In the stations of Northern Sweden, as for example Aividsjaur, Swedes are forbidden to set foot on the platform, while the Nazi troops are of course permitted to move about freely in the village...
...We Italians bear on our shoulders, in this country, the burden of a sorrowful past We must correct it by making ourselves better, by helping our fellows improve themselves and by refusing our support to anyone unworthy of calling himself a good Italian and a good American...
...ijf-It was dear from the start of the Blitz that most people were not in the j^crs to shiver and shake, nor were they there to embarrass the Government, fan were there to get a^ night's sleep, so as to do a day's work, so as to beat fjft, That is still the position now...
...This policy of isolation makes worse the misunderstandings between tl groups of Italian origin and the rest of this nation...
...It deepens the ditch whi< prevents them from mixing...
...Opportunities were no longer as favorable as before...
...A man of Italian origin, LaGuardia, is the mayor of New York...
...It serves as a bed by night and a table by day...
...Especially embittered are the Swedish soldiers who ana transported, as a rule, in baggage or freight cars, while the Nazi soldiers and officers travel through Sweden on their way to Norway in good passenger cats...
...They scorn the Fascists because they are Fascists and not because they are Italians...
...He was insulted and beaten by Fascists, in Italy and not in America...
...He said the baby was "getting on his mate's nerves" and he thought he" jgfthelp- We let him try...
...Then the bus driver came jMgnl...
...it is an extraordinarily useful quality in this kind of war...
...Then, the shelter wardens tried, but the baby didn't like yelled louder...
...This process is still under way...
...The second group, between 1900 and 1920, profited by the experience of the first and, furthermore enjoyed the/advantages of twenty years of great economic prosperity...
...sleep in a ¦athn* one night and go up to...
...They hope to attain a decoration 4 knighthood or to be made Commendatori, or perhaps Grand'omciali...
...members of the preponderant Social Democratic Party, were opposed...
...to increase its influence throughout the country...
...In all countries the lot of the poor man is hard...
...Although there art almost as many railway trains now as before, all trains are filled and used only by the servants of the 'Great Fatherland.' For the Swedish population, only a few spare trains are left.- Germany first, and then Sweden...
...Miss Wilkinson is a prominent British Laborite, being a member of the National Executive Committee...
...z?i Large numbers took shelter in subway stations, tunnels and basements that kit never been equipped for the purpose...
...Such an election was held last fall...
...The%e people discredited the Italian name more than the poverty of the working mails...
...The person wl has been wronged is left without help...
...Russia knew of this all along...
...The truth is that a good-for-nothing remains a good-for-nothing even if he is a compatriot of Dante...
...He took the baby and he talked to it in a long, fgntts Cockrtey monologue, one man to another...
...They mean added comfort and more space, and Wk f<> away with the depressing shelter queue...
...If a large shelter is hit there may be *jajor tragedy...
...Toscanini is Italian and yet he is the idol of the American people...
...Sweden's policy today—like that of Finland, and that of Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania—must allow the transit of German troops...
...compares the condition of the population of Italian origin as it is today with that of forty years ago is astonished and cheered by the progress accomplished...
...ordinary quiet men and women...
...they won because they fought in defense of their homes against foreign invasion...
...of the Swedish railways relate how the German Nazi troops declared that they had never seen food so good in all their lives—all the more reason for the Naxja to go to Norway and Finland by way of Sweden...
...but a nigh* off i# a^ night off, and down in the shelter life for all its strains and s t r e sses remains fundamentally nor-,, mal — because the -people...
...swipe fire bombs on the roof, the next night...
...Hundreds of thousands of them, after' landing in New York or Boston, gath-red together ia...
...However, little by little, the situation has becdme better^ The first immigrants, between 1880 and 1900, had to face terrible hardships...
...But the Fascists as the politicians try hard to build up new "Little Italys," not material, but inte lectual and moral, self-inflicted "ghettos" in which the Italians barricade then selves, refuse to have anything to do with the fate of the country which harboi them, and think only of their country of origin...
...The problem last September was not simply shelter— LStf shelter plus sleep...
...each other those first Blitz nights...
...In this way...
...In Italy we say: "You cannot have a full cask and a drunk for a servant...
...They are the defeats of the generals, of big business, of the high civil servants, of the King, of the last two Popes—those who created, cooperated in, and profited from the Fascist regime...
...the respected mayor of the largest city in the United .States...
...When I went through Einland, I myself saw on the road from Rovaniemi (the last railway station in the Arctic Circle) to Petsamo (Finland's great Arctic port), German signposts showing the Nazi troops the way to Norway...
...Those who were bom' or came here as infants between 1900 and 1910 and came of age between i»20 and 1930 were the more fortunate because those were the fat years...
...We suddenly found that the Nazis were not only comJEgfer most nights—they were staying over all night, and would no doubt go Jgnlnf so for months to come...
...Jfliil shelter conditions last year revealed some of the failures of officialdom, tjjr" »bowed up also the courage and gaiety of the people and brought out g>*t qualities of leadership in...
...In this country the Italian worthy of respect is respected...
...for much ¦Kflfee can be more bearable than one howling baby...
...Incidentally, Gecman troops en route to Norway are told they are pisparing for an invasionof England...
...Thus they can monopolize the Italian' vote and sell it I the highest bidder on election day...
...lay teachers sent especially from Italy...
...a big job in bringing order and decency out lis;-but jas important in its way as what the Government did was what ,di« fori themselves and...
...We can no longer speak of mass immigration ih 1920 because the United States began tq limit immigration and in 1924 prohibited it almost entirely...
...Italians must forget that they have the right to be respected only because they bear an Italian name...
...a letter that Would have required only one day former!}, now takes three.days...
...Jjpfow •helter settled down gratefully again and slept...
...There can- be no doubt that Sweden is in an extremely difficult position...
...But it was a great advantage to the Italians who were already established here...
...the more fortunate ones sent their sons to college...
...Who was LaGuardia fifty years ago...
...For next September *3*y *belter program is planned covering lectures, libraries, work parties, and 7^f*«t rangejfrom foreign travel to/JHow to Make the Most of Your Rations...
...crimes of Fascism, we alone, and not the Fascists, have the right to protest against those who scorn the Italian today...
...Since this improvement has occurred in the years in which Mussolini was in power, the Fascists have given Mussolini credit for it...
...and that democratic Sweden is fighting a life and death struggle for its democracy: but Germany knows how...
...they took on American habits...
...They rethat it "seemed a bit heavy overhead...
...Mussolini's crime is not that he^was defeated on land, on sea, and in the sky...
...The same newspaper writes in addition: . "^When our mail arrives, it is three or four days late...
...One must see carefully whethi national discrimination really exists, and one must deal with each individw case without fuss, in a friendly way, on the basis of persuasive proof...
...Many Italians in this country think themselves duty bound to vote for every scoundrel who bears an Italian name and is a candidate for public office...
...Above a they want to force their power on ^he Italian communities, and they accept tk help of the lay and clerical Fascist agents to keep their flock isolated from tl rest of the nation...
...Please do not forget that the Germans are today in control of traffic on the Riks?rans-banan (Northern Swedish Railway Line), and that all trains nowadays arrive more or less late.*' These courageous wcrds of criticism show that the people of Sweden know very well what they have to expect from the Nazis...
...It would be unbelievable if we did not see it happen daily under our eye Too many personalities of Italian origin have a hand in this disloyal maneuve forgetting that they or their fathers arrived in this country with bare fa and with a pack on their back, and that they owe to American democracy it opportunities of livelihood...
...In defense of the people in whose civilization we were brought up and to whom our hearts remain bound, we who have never made concessions to Fascism, we who share no-responsibility in the...
...German officers have declared quite openly to the Swedes: "Sweden is a democratic oasis at the North Pole—if attacked, it will defend itself-for three weeks...
...A country that has had a parliament and a democratic form of government for more than 500 years, that is democratic to the core, must now choose the nath of cautious compromise, for it is surrounded by Nazis and by Russia...
...However, what the Fascists want is not that the individual wrongs I righted...
...The employees in- the restaurant...
...Hundreds of basements have been requisitioned as additional HJJBC shelters...
...those horrible sewers of humanity known as "Little Italy...
...Such an endeavor would have remained dishonorable even if it had been successful, even if the corruption of the Fascist leaders and the stupidity of the army chiefs had not resulted iiv shameful disaster...
...Then discrimination will probably disappear...
...It prolongs and embitters suspicions and discrim nations...
...But with all these evils, anyone who...
...TPHIS was the situation between 1880 and 1910, and from this situation resulted * the disrepute of the Italian name...
...They get some vote-hungry politician to make speeches and introduce bills in Congress...
...They become an army camped in an enemy countr a pressure group to be used in this country in the interests of Mussolini, ev« against Amercian interests...
...There must be another generation before every barrier- falls between Italians and non-Italians...
...For example, the newspaper "Norrlandsfolket" in Kiruna, the center o# the rich Swedish iron ore mines across from Narvik, writes as follows"If our subscribers do not receive their newspapers on time, or if they never receive them, it is the fault neither of the circulation department nor of the newspaper...
...If you It* these girls behind.their counters next day (always supposing their counters nsTtitfll there) you would not guess, nor would they want you te, that they had Hint the last night and many nights in a basement with several hundred people...
...Once the Russian front is secured, troops ia the North may be shuttled back to Norway—a northern prong on England mag be the next move...
...It is only unwillingly and with grief and pain that it does so—but six and a half million Swedes have no other choice...
...They burn a forest to cook one egg...
...But they know very well thi no individual injustice is corrected in this way, nor is any general prbblei solved...
...Many among them are not real traitors.--Thel aims are more modest and immediate...
...Two bus men came in, ¦gang Bather pale, because a bomb had just gone off beside them...
...Today that malady is rarer.' If you made ¦at our public shelters now.you would see little that is sensational, and jftrt that is interesting...
...One 6f the most JJfcnsful shelter administrators is "Mickey Mouse," a little hunchback held in jPP*steem by the whole population in theJbig East End shelter of which he y Ibe best proof of the Government's vigorous shelter policy since the Autumn *•» surprisingly good health record this last winter in London and other big JWt Canteens and medical posts have now been set up in the tubes and other ag shelters...
...the Italian worthy of scorn.is scorned...
...1 * * • ¦FHE Stockholm newspaper "Arbotaren"' reports that since July, 1940, two or * three trains a day...
...It is a story, eopie know...
...Altogether about ?.fcffl°n people now have domestic shelter accommodation of some kind, and the T*"*' is increasing daily...
...His crime Was in starting a war against the conscience and the interests of j the Italian people, a W*r in which Fascism was morally defeated before it lost militarily...
...Stoves have been supplied by the thousand and bunks by the JPtai...
...The Italian immigrants, as a rule, had crude habits...
...1 I ""-f""*" y^fi .remember one noisy night when two of us in charge of a big...
...fully loaded wiLh troops and armaments, go through Sweden to Norway—all coming from Germany...
...The Italian soldiers fought heroically in the battle of the Piave...
...There is no one more harsh than the poor man who cuts another underdog out, or believes himself better...
...JjStJ* reasons of health and security the Government's shelter program is now ginned at dispersing the population in the large shelters, by providing the peof"*Jith small shelters at or neat> home...
...He was openly proud of being...
...First of all the Italians'in this country are among the most recent arrivals...
...Rickard J. Sandler, former Premier and later Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Arthur Engberg, former Minister of Education-and Religious Cults...
...Call that vanity ffljpBjnm...
...Today Finland's neighbor, Sweden, is in the same position...
...but if w0 wish, we shall swamp the country just as we did Norway and Denmark...
...The Stockholm weekly "Trots Allt," which enjoys a wide circulation and great popularity, writes about the German troops in Sweden, that the Swedish soldiers keep themselves apart from the Nazis, and with rage and hate, hold aloof and silent, while the officers of the Swedish army give the German officers a hearty welcome...
...What they want is to profit by real or imaginary wrongs in order 1 create among the communities of Italian origin the hysteria of persecutioi increase the ill feeling between groups of different national origins, and in th way force the Italians more and more into a greater isolation...
...j a> LONDON.—Most people who went to see shelters last Autumn got a bad attack of shelter-shock—and no wonder...
...Many people think: "Italy has produced Dante, Michelangelo, Garibaldi, Marconi...
...Military disaWers are found in the history of all peoples...
...Anti'Mi^aumr^S the Italians are not the only ones to be treated badly'.'The Irish were mistreated before them, and the Poles, the Russian Jws, the Romanians, the other immigrants from the Mediterranean countries are not treated .any better...
...The poorer one is, the more one needs to be helped, and the less one is helped, and the more one is taken advantage of...
...The Fascists write articles bursting with indignation against the discrimination which Italians suffer...
...but-on.the whole they are shipjj?t, they are being managed with imagination and humanity, and they are Itflfry better all the time...
...g.J«pirtiirHi«y picture—of American tanks, American planes, American rg*mr Britain^ So long as we ican count on that, we are not going to grumble S? .'boot discomfort below ground or danger on top...
...They know that this is not true...
...Many let themselves be deceived by the Fascists into making one single entity of the Italian people and of Mussolini...
...The Irish just came herd in masse forty years before the Italians, and eventhey had to struggle agafnst serious discrimination...
...Our pubic'shelters today are not perfect...
...The "Little Italys" are disintegrating physically...
...Churchill, that always wins applause...
...go good with kids...
...It is...
...therefore I must be respected like Dante, Michelangelo, Garibaldi, Marconi...
...It is not by the vague chattering of the newspapers and c the politicians that one deals with such cases...
...There are many people who...
...They were Professor Osten Unden, former Minister for Foreign Affairs and now Chancellor df thet Swedish Universities...
...a huge fifth column destined to disorganize froi the inside the spiritual unity of the country before Hitler and Mussolini attae it from the outside...
...They go noisily to Washington to demand laws against those who inflict such injustice...
...The American people hold in contempt the Italian Fascists, no less than the Nazis, they who abuse the hospitality generously offered- here...
...any notice of that The bus driver went back jjto cards...
...The present Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr...
...What is the reaction of the Swedish population to these German troops in Sweden...
...There are various types j^gjajl shelters whose strength and protective powers have been thoroughly ^v There are the "Andersons," jsmall family shelters designed to be put up in or backyards...
...What is the reason for^His...
...Guenther, said that if the law were to be applied, which he hoped would not be necessary, it would be used only in such cases as are now dealt with under the old constitutional prevision permitting confiscation, after publication, of individual newspaper issues or books containing statements that might endanger Sweden's relations with a foreign power...
...When the Italians began to arrive, room was already becoming scarce...
...Newspapers can be suppressed only in times of war, however, and in Order to apply the new law at all, the Govern.ment has to have special permission from a three-fourths' majority in each chamber of the Riksdag...
...they sent their children* to school...
...They were caught in the depression...
...Their mass immigration began only in the last twenty years of the last century...
...Aivt™a,t?helps even more is toiknow^that you are sending us the weapons of 5**Tr :K you went to a cinema in one of our blitzed cities you would find there l** Dews reel picture, apart fnom Mr...
...STOCKHOLM (By Cable).—The constitutional change permitting prats censorship in war-time or in times of danger of war, preliminarily voted last year, Was finally put through this week...
...greater isolation results tn greater discrim nation, and the vicious circle goes on and on...
...Starting in 1920 fife young people who were either bom here or had come as babies, the real Americans, began to forge ahead...
...He can't be ignored when you doing a. turn of duty, above ground, fighting fires or dodging bombs or rescuing other people...
...There are no other remedies against discrimination...
...A factory or a department store or a bank which refuses to hire a Italian just because it doesn't trust him will never tell him frankly the res so for the refusal...
...Short raids had been foreseen and provided for: Jjfjt was a different matter suddenly to supply dormitories for millions of peojt-Bost of whom had to face a full day's work each morning...
...With our heads heid high we say that Italy's defeats are not the defeats Of the Italian people...
...There are "communal" domestic shelters\and "surface" gyrs, usually shared by small groups of neighbors...
Vol. 24 • July 1941 • No. 27
