Returning from America in his best fighting trim Mr. H.
G. ells is outraged to find 'Rome still unbombed. What on arth has the R.A.F. been up to in his absence? By Rome r. Wells (whose emotions fill in about half a page of the inday Dispatch) means Rome as it was a dozen or fifteen ears ago. No nonsense about a separate Vatican City for him. deed "the Pope and the Cardinals and II Duce and the ng, who are collectively responsible for the present breach tween the ordinary British, who really like Italians, and the dinary Italians," are expressly counselled to go (literally) to arth unless they prefer to have the bombs about their ears. confess I find this a little perplexing. The Pope, I always nderstood, was bitterly opposed to this war and Italy's partici- anon in it ; certainly he has on two successive Christmas Eves ade pronouncements which constitute the most damning enunciation of every article in the Fascist creed. Still, Mr. ells writes history and he knows what's what. I am a little tplexed, too, to learn that Catholics in Britain had no vote until the generous traditions of Liberalism took them into tzenship." Mr. Wells, of course, writes history, and he ows what's what. Nothing of a historian myself, I went n this to my reference-books. Pitt, they told me (Pitt the 'herd?), pressed ceaselessly for Catholic emancipation. lining (the Liberal ('anning?) led in the campaign after Pitt's eath. Wellington (the Liberal Duke?) was Prime Minister the Parliament that gave the Catholics votes. Still, by all eans bomb a few Catholics, particularly Cardinals, to outage the others. There are some 20,000,000 others in the nned States alone. They would be, as they say in that great ountry, tickled to death about it. So orr with the bombs.
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