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Show ITALY'S TWIN FAILURES II Duce, before the war, boasted of Italian prowess prow-ess on land and sea. He called the Mediterranean an Italian lake, out of which foreign navies should be expelled. ex-pelled. His army would establish Italy's right to further fur-ther colonial enterprises. So much for Mussolini's talk. The record reveals Italy's armed forces as twin failures. In every theatre of the war the Italian forces have been significantly defeated. In no sector of the battlefront can the Italians point with pride to any outstanding victory. Their soldiers and sailors have failed completely. The Italian army invaded France, after the latter lat-ter had given up. Its first test came when it attacked Greece, and here the Italian army vainly attempted to conquer that smaller nation. In Ethiopia and in Libya the record has been the same, inability to defend de-fend their own territory against inferior British forces. The Italian navy has not won a single notable victory. When the war started Italy possessed a supposedly modern, fast-moving fleet of ships. The British, with smaller vessels in the Mediter-II Mediter-II Duce, before the war, boasted of Italian ranean, prevented any Italian control of the sea, and in every encounter handled the Italian ships so badly that seldom have they emerged from their harbors. Even now, after serious losses, the Italians still have eight battleships, twenty-seven cruisers, eighty submarines, and over a hundred destroyers. Yet, their offensive value is slight. The Italian naval forces have never seriously injured a single British convoy, notwithstanding not-withstanding many of them sailed with far less protection pro-tection than the Italians could have brought against them. More and more, there are rumors that Italy is about exhausted and might soon fall out of the war. This debacle would have already taken place if the Germans hadn't sent men, machines, and planes, both into Italy and Africa, to help their allies maintain some fighting front for their forces. The showing of the Italian army and navy has been pitiable, particularly in view of all the boasting of Mussolini in the days of peace. |