JUSTICE FOR ITALY
sni,—It is hard to understand'Mr. Nutting's contention that Italy must not have what he calls "a soft peace," and that "the Italian people must take the rap for the crimes committed in their name by Mussolini and his henchmen." The attitude of the British Government was very dif- ferent when first the Italian surrender and then active Italian co-operation were sought, and the most pro-Ally Italians are those who today remember with most bitterness the assurances given them at that time. The extent of Italian co-operation, which according to Field Marshal Lord Alexander was such that Italy could be considered to have fully "worked her passage," is too little realised in Britain. But, apart from this, its cost in human suffering from German reprisals (9,000 persons wee shot in Rome alone, and Rome is one of the cities that escaped most lightly, enduring, moreover, only nine months of Occupation), and in addition the very great suffering caused both by material devastation and by Allied financial and economic measures deliberately punitive in intent (chief among them an inflation that sets the cost of the most ordinary and essential food- stuffs beyond the purse of the ordinary citizen) have been such that to demand a punitive peace would imply an insatiable vindictiveness surely foreign to the British character._ It is moreover creating a rankling sense of injustice that is doing what the worst Allied air-raids never did—alienating that genuine affection and esteem for Britain that was one of the reasons why pro-Ally activity was able to win such a nation- wide response.
At the Congress of Vienna, when there was talk of punishing France, the question was put: What France? The France of Napoleon? But Napoleon had gone. Then the France of Louis XVIII ? But its restoration had been one of the aims of the war. The application of similar criteria to democratic Italy would seem demanded not only by explicit pledges but plain common-sense.—Yours, P.S.—In respect of Italian colonial administration, it is far too readily assumed that this, prior to the Fascist period, was oppressive. The Italian Government has indeed asked for international investigation, confident that its findings would remove an undeserved slur on non-Fascist Italy.
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