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Show 'Let Us Live Like Lions' ; y j mi II INN LJ I IN HIS SECOND YEAR of rule, 1923, Premier Mussolini was already al-ready showing his yearning to rattle the sword. He sent such a sharp diplomatic note to Greece on the murder of members of an Italian commission on the Greek-Albanian frontier, that world chancellories feared a war was near. on Ethiopia, Mussolini's first openly imperialistic move, and a successful success-ful defiance of the League. Italian and German policies were moving closer together through similarity sim-ilarity of interests, and Hitler and Mussolini began concluding a series of treaties and agreements that culminated cul-minated in the formation of the "Rome-Berlin Axis." Both Italy and Germany sent troops into the Spanish civil war. The Italian troops showed even then their distaste for fighting, but the officers gained valuable experience with new weapons and tactics, especially espe-cially airplanes and tanks. Mussolini joined in signing the Munich Agreement that was supposed sup-posed to assure "peace in our time" as Neville Chamberlain put it. Knowing Know-ing that a great war was around the corner Mussolini then turned his attention at-tention to bringing his army, navy, and especially his air force to full strength. 'Stab in the Back.' When France was staggering to defeat In the spring of 1940, Mussolini Musso-lini thought he saw the long sought opportunity for important territorial acquisitions without much loss or risk. He entered to war on the side of Germany, hoping to get a few French islands. President Roosevelt characterized this move as a "stab in the back." From then on, Italy was in World War II. All looked rosy as long as the German blitzkrieg blitz-krieg continued to smash ahead, but in 1941 English troops defeated the Italians in two widely separated African Af-rican campaigns, and the Italian navy lost heavily in several actions,. Last year Italy went on the defensive. de-fensive. Mussolini sent some divisions divi-sions to fight against Russia, others to North Africa, with the German Africa corps. Both sustained defeat de-feat and severe losses. The Italian i people began to grumble ever loud-' er against Fascism and Mussolini. He pinned medals on bereaved mothers and wives, made his famous fa-mous balcony speeches, and tried to whip up morale with posters, parades pa-rades of the youth organizations, and every other trick in his bag. But it didn't work. Then came the North African campaign, cam-paign, when the Italian soldiers surrendered sur-rendered in large masses, plainly revealing re-vealing their war-weariness. The invasion in-vasion of Sicily moved so swiftly, not only because of the weight of armaments, arma-ments, but because of feeble resistance re-sistance at many points. Everywhere Every-where the people welcomed the Allied Al-lied trrops. When Rome was bombed, Mussolini's Musso-lini's long hypnotic spell was broken. If he could not even protect the capital, said the people, how could he hope for victory? The Italians were tired of war, tired of privations and restrictions. II Duce got out, just in time, according to majority opinion, to avert a civil war. t t r wt rJ- A- .:... .. ... , j FASCISM ON THE RUN A photograph photo-graph showing Mussolini setting the pace for his army officers during maneuvers in September, 1938, ironically iron-ically symbolizes the hasty exit of Fascism in July, 1943. This time, too, the running was fittingly led by II Duce. |