Word: il
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Nazi aggression. . . . There can be no peace until the menace of Hitlerism has been finally removed." The Prime Minister's voice rose only once, when he spoke the ally's language, perhaps echoing something he had heard over there. It was the Allies' first slogan: "Il faut en finir"-it must be ended...
...strong as these sorry reasons were, two splendid ways of looking at his neutrality remained to Il Duce. In the military situation created by the West Wall-Maginot Line stalemate, a neutral Italy, blocking access to Germany via the Tyrolean passes, had tremendous nuisance value. It would force Britain & France to go clear around through the Dardanelles, Black Sea and Rumania to assist Poland and establish the Salonika front (see p. 22). It was nuisance so great that it might bring B. Mussolini a fancy price if he chose to sell...
...head-of-State in Europe, could not afford big war right now. Italy is poor. Gasoline went to 95? per gallon last week. Coffee above $1 per Ib. - i. e., did not exist. Italy is peace-willing (General Italo Balbo spoke for other Army men when he urged that Il Duce try to carry out President Roosevelt's peace suggestion). And Italy was scared...
...Paris gossip also had it that Chief of General Staff Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Italy's most gifted strategist (who was surprisingly absent from the maneuvers), had won another victory. The tough-minded Marshal, who salvaged the Ethiopian campaign after it had bogged down, and who talks back to Il Duce, was reported to think no more of Blitzkrieg than of many another red-hot Fascist notion...
London. Other reports were that the Italian masses were growing restless under continued war strain, that the Army of the Po, like many a careless motorist, had just run out of gas. London heard that Il Duce, after piloting his own plane over the troops, had suffered a heart attack. The hard-driving dictator, now 56, did not show up for the concluding review, same night ostentatiously appeared at an open-air opera. But the rumors persisted. For answering a query about them, Herbert-Roslyn ("Bud") Ekins, United Press man in Rome, got the most drastic punishment ever dealt...