Home Trials

While they nursed the wounding news of the fall of Tobruch last week, Italians were also upset by stories in the international press of violent disaffection in Milan, Turin, Trieste, other crowded cities of the industrial North. Emanating mostly from Belgrade, the reports claimed that three unnamed Italian generals had been assassinated, Trieste women had rioted in a breadline, Lloyd Triestino shipyard workers had struck and angrily burlesqued Il Duce, a mob with knives and pistols had attacked Nazi officers in Milan.

Foreign correspondents in Rome, who tried to get facts to support the rumors, got complete denials. Rome's United Press office telephoned an old friend, Journalist Enrico Lelli of Milan, only to hear a languid reply: "The reports regarding Milan are ridiculous and fantastic. I have not seen any Germans and as for riots, that's crazy." Nevertheless, there were plenty of German soldiers in Italy, as the Germans proved by releasing a photograph of troops marching through an unnamed city (see cut). Finally, while the Fascist Party held clamorous pep meetings in the supposedly treasonable areas, the New York Times's seasoned Rome correspondent, Herbert L. Matthews, concluded that the rumors had been nothing more than that. Said he: "Foreign newspapermen in Rome ... are always in touch with the other large Italian cities and could not fail to learn about anything of this sort if it happened. The stories were really false." Italians got what cheer they could from the news that eight of Italy's dozen Cabinet Ministers, including gaudy Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano, had donned officers' uniforms and joined the nation's desperate fighting forces. But the catch in this bit of cheer was that Old War Horse Benito ("war is the normal state of the people") Mussolini now had nobody to restrain him.

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