Deportations

Pallid busts of the Caesars keep a spectral watch in the great highceilinged room which Signor Mussolini calls his office. There, upright at his massive desk, he transfixed newsgatherers last week with a calm smoldering glance, answered their questions about the new Proscription Law (TIME, Nov. 15). Was it not, hinted the representatives of the press, a little persecutory to deport non-Fascist offenders to "penal islands" in the Mediterranean and Adriatic for "political and social crimes"?

The brow of II Capo del Governo contracted as he formulated a definition. Soon it boomed from his heavy lips: "Persecution! Recall the meaning of that word. Persecution only begins where no reasonable proportion is observed between the force used in compulsion and the importance of the interests which it seeks to control. Deportation for single political or social offenders has existed at all times. We do not send these people abroad to ferment in other countries, but merely put them in a political and moral quarantine. We are perfectly justified in doing so, but take care that where at all justifiable mercy shall season justice.

"This measure for the deportation of incorrigible political and social riff-raff, including loan sharks, cocain sellers, white slave traffickers and perverters of children, among them some women, will be a social purge ridding the country of many pernicious influences. In Naples alone over 60 usurers and 40 co cain sellers repeatedly guilty of the lowest offenses are on the deportation list. With these I have no pity.

"There will be no irresponsible or arbitrary deportations. A com mission of appeal is examining thoroughly every case, referring it in the last instance to myself, who decides each one on its merits.

"Furthermore, the deportations are not in any sense acts of personal revenge or enmity, for I assure you that no personal or political enemy of mine is among the deported political agitators. Of 161 cases already judged 104 ap peals have been refused and, on the other hand, seven condemnations have been revoked and 16 reduced to shortened terms, while in 20 cases I have converted into mere formal warnings or admonitions the original deportation sentences.

"Financial help and subsidies were granted by me to 29 families of offenders. When in a position to do so and if they wish the proscribed may take their families with them . . . to islands of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, chiefly to Pantellaria, off Tunis, and the islands of Tremiti, in the Adriatic. . . . There is no work for them on the islands, but they will be well treated, They are in charge of my Black Shirt militia."