MUSSOLINI SEEKS THE JACKAL'S SHARE
Mussolini Seeks the Jackal's Share -From The NEW YORK TIMES WITH the courage of a jackal at the heels ol a boldler beast of prey, Mussolini has now left his ambush. His motives in taking Italy...
...It does not seem believable that out of it can come gains for them great enough to compensate for the losses they must suffer, morally and materially...
...This is the end of all these weeks and months of hesitation, all this eager watching, all this cautious sniffing of the air, all this splendid courage held in leash so carefully for some sure sign of the weakness of the victim...
...By every artifice of propaganda, by every pressure that dictatorship can bring to bear, by every goad he could apply, Mussolini led the Italian people away from peace, away from the position of respect which they could have held so easily, away from their own best interests...
...It is possible, in the event of a final German victory', that they will be awarded the jackal's share of the killer's spoils...
...If that decision had to be made, if the Italian people had to be led upon this tragic course, it is at least fortunate, from our own domestic point of view, that the decision was made by a dictator and not by his people...
...it is much more likely that the killer, having slain his prey, will turn upon the Jackal...
...IF there was ever a decision made by one man, and not by a whole people, it is the decision that now takes Italy Into the darkness of night and makes her a moral enemy of every democratic people...
...But they have a cultural unity with France that is more profound than all political disagreements...
...For it does not seem believable that participation In this war can be in Italy's best Interests...
...They could have conserved their strength to help buiid a new order on the smoking ruins of a broken world...
...For there are great numbers of Americans of Italian ancestry—fine, loyal citizens of the nation which they or their forebears adopted as their own —who can in all justice lay the responsibility for this crime at the, door of Hitler's accomplice, a traitor to the true interests of his country...
...For it is the overwhelming testimony of those who know Italy best that, given a free choice, uninfluenced by the gigantic official propaganda to which they have been subjected, the Italian people would have chosen to remain at peace...
...Fascismo marches when it thinks that it smells carrion...
...His motives in taking Italy into the war against the Allies are as clear as day...
...Even in the case of the British their dislike ia certainly no greater—it is in many ways considerably less, since it ia not compounded with the same fear of a great alien power at the Brenner pass—than their instinctive dislike and distrust of the Germans...
...IT IS questionable whether any other statesman in our time has done a greater wrong to his own people...
...In their traditions, their manner of thinking, their heritage of law and culture, they are part of that Western European world of which Fiance is a part—and of which the Nazi Germany of Hitler has never been, and could never be, a part...
...It Is equally true that they believe themselves to have been unfairly treated by the French...
...Unfortunately this was not to be...
...They could have been a stabilizing rather than a destructive force in Europe...
...They could have continued to serve as the custodians of Western law and Latin culture...
...It Is true that they dislike Britain...
...He wants to share In the spoils which he believes will fall to Hitler, and he has chosen to enter the war at the-precise moment when he thinks that he can accomplish this at the least cost and risk to himself...
...Given a wiser leadership, given a clearer view ahead, given an opportunity to follow their own natural inclinations and desires, the Italian people could readily have remained at peace...
...It does not seem believable that the people of Italy can profit from this cynical adventure into which they have been led...
...It is still more likely—it is certain—that in the event of a German defeat and the destruction of the Nazi system Italy will find herself at the war's end friendless, bankrupt and dishonored...
Vol. 10 • June 1940 • No. 25
