The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 14

THE BOSTON DAILY GLOBE WEDNESDAY. JULY 28, 1943 14 Italian War Over, Published by GLOBE NEWSPAPER COMPANY 242 Washington St. Boston, Mass. (Established March 4. 1872.

Eveninf edition first issued March 7, 1878. Sunday edition first issued Oct. 14, 1877.) WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 1943 No Matter What New Regime Does Bt'BSCftlPtlOM ItAtES Daily Per rr Sunday Per Per tlldr1 VI- Norman Rockwell gi -jT Mo. .33 50 11.40 Mo. pivstnn rrta1 Znn .93 Zoht 2.

inlulint N'W York rtty ami nil Nrw Fnelntid i--it Notthctrt nhi In Unite Hlnle 1111 40 By Dorothy Thompson fin .70 no 5 4') 9.BU 10 pn 12 no Canarta 1.00 (Pleas da not send ch. Use money orders or checks.) His Pictures Must Tell Stories Back pumhers rper copy). 1 week or older, 8.05 daily: $.15 Sunday; over 3 months old, out of print. Entered as second class mail matter at Boston, under the act of March 3, 1879 242 Washington St. The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to the use for publication of all hews dispatches credited to or not otherwise credited in thl paper and also the irl news published herein.

AM riant of lepubll-ration of special dispatches herein are also reserved. 1 Globe Man's Daily Story Sam Goldwyh and another film producer were battling over a certain scenario writer and the debate raged fot nours. At last the other man proposed that the dispute be arbitrated. "I'll agree to arbitration," said Goldwyn. "Nobody can say I'm net fair.

But remembr no matter what the eatcefne, he fcoes to work for me!" To mountain and seashore retreats of New Enaland come quietly each Summer a jew to stay scores of artists and writers. In sail-loft studio or hillside Jarmhbuse they find inspiration and ideal working conditions. In this series of informal sketches, written by Globe reporters, will be found a hint of their lives, thoughts and personalities. By ROBERT PLAYFAIR ARLINGTON, Vt. Roll up a dusty wagon road beside a chuckling river.

Swing left in the shadow of mountains, across a covered bridge. Walk into a yard of druid lilac bushes and age-old elms and meet Norman Rockwell illustrator, creator of the Four Freedoms canvases, artist not only in paint but life. At 49, Rockwell, most widely known magazine "cover" man in the world, could live anywhere he chooses, and year round he chooses to dwell in this drowsy Vermont hamlet of West Arlington by the green where Ethan Allen lined up his men and where, today, their descendants are the playmates of Rockwell's children, the companions of his evenings, the models for the well-loved Rockwell pictures which all America knows. "Lots of states have mountains," says Rockwell earnestly, "but only this has Vermonters." Curly-haired, slight, boyish and ineffably alive, Rockwell became a permanent settler in Arlington five years ago because "I love the folks here. They're genuine and they're marvelous as models.

They have a character city people just don't have, for the most part." Past his nearly finished new studio races the churning Bat-tenkill, Yankee river Dutch-named because it empties at last into the Hudson, and skyward on all sides rise mountains Ethan Allen's Gx-een Mountain Boys In; has happened. Italy cannot continue the war. No matUr whit Gen. Badoglio or the King may say, the Italian war is over, because it is in the nature of events that it must be. Tha Italian war was the war of Mussolini and tha Fascist party, made for their concept of what the nation was and what its inlereita were.

They cannot be repudiated and their war continued, nor can a new war be started at thi3 stage. The fall of the dictator is the end of the dictator's war. This is a conclusion in historic principle. There may be token fighting for a fortnight, while the war of a nonexistent dictator peters out But with the dictatorship broken tha real forces of the nation will march forward, and what Mussolini could not do neither Badoglio nor anyone else can do. The Fascist dictatorship had.

at least, an enormous apparatus. The King and Badoglio, if they do not follow the will of the people, have nothing at all. If anyone does not see this he does not see how great the moral crisis in auch a moment. Right now all Fascists in Italy are trying to escape into the people, and their bitterness against the defunct regime will exceed that of others because they, of all people, have been most betrayed in their hopes, being the only persons who had any. The idea that the Germans can keep the Italian people in the war is also fallacious.

What Mussolini could not do. Hitler cannot do. He would have at least to give the King and Badegho the support which he refused Mussolini, and that is obvious nonsense. If he could have done so, he would have saved Mussolini at any cost, for the fall of the Duce will have terrific repercussions in the whole of Europe and in Germany itself. The spell has been broken.

Mussolini is not God, to whom millions of lives must be offered in blood sacrifice. And if he is not God, neither is Hitler, and he, too, can be dethroned, despite all his apparatus jf power. The people are always logical. Finally, we have an intelligent political warfare agamst Italy, which is more than we can say about our policy toward Germany. We hrve trusted the Italian people and assumed that they hated Fascism.

And since this is true, our political moves have had results. In Germany we have assumed that Nazism was popular. Since this is not true, the assumption brings no results. The Russians are the only Allies conducting an intelligent barrage against the German mind, and we had better fall in line if we want to save American lives. This is an anti-Fascist war, and when we conduct it strictly along those lines, we make progress.

(With this article Dorothy Thompson resumes her THE fall of Mussolini is an event that must recall any columnist from a vacation. What has been said could happen even so short a time ago as Sunday, and even by so well informed a correspondent Herbert Matthews who spent years in Rome-has happened, namly the overthrow of the oldest Fascist dictator by an internal coup d'etat. Despite the fact that the structure of the state was in his hands, down to the smallest official, the whole oyer by a secret police, press and radio strictly controlled, and he himself commander in chief of the army, he 'has been overthrown. That the world Is staggered and surprised is only because it saw merely the apparatus of power but not the living forces of tha Italian nation. For Fascism has impressed the democracies, and lately has been impressing them as a political power structure much more than it has the people who live under it.

A despotism is bearable only as long as it produces results in national power and glory. When it fails to produce them it falls, and not all the police, spies, guards and propaganda in the world can keep it up. Fascism and Naziism are weak and not strong. The Italian regime has fallen not before conquest but before the first threat at its citadel. Even the tottering French Republic fell' only when its capital was conquered and its armies knocked out.

In spite of all the Fascist Fifth Columns in democratic countries, the people nowhere welcomed invaders as the Italian people have done. There were no popular demonstrations in Paris or Lyon to cheer conquerors with joyful cries of "Peace, peace." Democracy does not even have to succeed to be legitimate and maintain itself, because goo or bad, it is the people's own. They relinquish their liberties to a dictator only for a price, and if it is not paid they will even accept another dictator in preference to what they have. The Italian people have been conquered for 21 years, and even another conqueror might be a change for the better. Fascism claims to be based on nationalism but in truth it destroys it.

For the nation is the people, and if the people are subjected they are literally men without a. fatherland. The Fascist party has been the fatherland, for nearlya generation, and a non-Fascist has had no homeland. In or out of exile, that was the status of the average Italian. And when confronted by life or death for the real nation, namely the people, they are not prepared to die for a phantom.

With or without confirmation Mussolini is a prisoner. He has to be. It is in the nature of what HE THINKS COUNTRY PEOPLE MORE GENUINE Norman Rockwell, cover and poster master, at work at Arlington, Vt. Hail to an Old Friend One of the pleasures of living In what might otherwise be an appalling period of human history comes when unexpected proof is given of the tenacious survival force of a wise, creatively useful ideal. Such testimony has come to light as a concomitant of the chaos and confusion of Fascism's growing debacle In Italy.

Twenty years ago, in the city of Milan, a great newspaper died. Ostensibly, of course, it continued to appear every day as usual. For a considerable time its old acquaintances continued to read it. But they were soon disillusioned. When Italian Fascism throttled freedom of pthe press in Italy and seized the plant and control of the Corriere della Sera, the day of that great liberal organ seemed ended.

And indeed, temporarily, it Was ended. Week by week, month by month, the greatest newspaper of pie-Fascist Italy was systematically debauched and transformed to the uses of tyranny and falsehood. The noble ideals for which it had fought during a generatidn before became a hissing and a byword in its own columns. An organ which had fulfilled for Italy the function Which the Manchester Guardian filled in England fell lower than the lowest. On Monday of this week the founder of the Corriere della Sera, thanks to the passing of Mussolini, took back his paper and proceeded at once to restore its old character and flair for telling the truth.

Though we are still at war with Italy and will continue to be until the Italian Government yields as demanded, it is nevertheless permitted hope that the influence of the restored Corriere della Sera will be exerted once more for sanity, speedy meeting of the Allied terms, and the reconstruction of Italy's role under happier auspices. A Job for All Americas Has the United States as much margin, on food production as many people think? That the potentiality for producing ample food to satisfy domestic needs is real, is beyond question. One need but examine the history of American dietaries this past 15 years to convince himself or the statistics of production. But what about exportable surplus? Have we enough, additional to a reasonable meeting of domestic needs, to permit us to assume huge commitments for other nations? An analysis made by one of our great financial institutions doubts this. It is pointed out in this study that crop land shrank 7 percent in this country between 1932 and 1940, and that the prodigious effort now being made in wartime is in reality an effort to recapture that lost 7 percent to production, rather than an effort enormously to expand our capacity.

The experts will argue about this point, yet it is well taken if it helps emphasize that the United States of America should seek to make solution of the food shortage problems of the outside world a Canadian, American and Latin-American job, rather than ours alone. The new world has vast capacity. By cooperative effort it can meet the problem. In the Blue Pacific Let us not neglect the brave and effective operations which our men are undertaking in the Pacific. While events in Europe naturally hold attention fascinated, events in the other great theatre of this war are moving with rapidity as the all-out assault on Munda, in the Solomons; steady downpour of bombs on Kiska and the relentless jungle fight in New Guinea all make plain.

The campaign against Japan in the Pacific is one of the grimmest, most difficult and soul-testing fights this nation's defenders ever faced. Side by side with their Australian comrades they are confronting it with a quality of courage, a power of will and a resourcefulness which are breath-taking. To the men of the fleet and the men of the Air Corps, to the soldiers and marines who are slugging their slow, steady way into the bastions of Japanese power in the Pacific, this nation already owes much. It will never forget that accumulating debt to valor. EDITORIAL POINTS Now that the black shirt has been eliminated, maybe something can be done about the black market.

Somebody writes to ask who originated the polka. We don't know, but it's certainly a great game. Those who feared a shortage of suds were right, although the scarce commodity is not soap, but beer. Tonight's fireside chat by F. D.

R. may be the hottest in a long series, featuring the burning of Rome and the scorching of Hamburg. In the new Italian Cabinet is a "Minister for Italian Africa," who will have the softest snap in all Europe. With Italy sinking in a sea of troubles, Churchill throws her a rope with a noose on the end. knew intimately Minister and Swearing and to the East Red Mountain.

One pre-dawn last May the valley sky glowed crimson as Rockwell's studio burned. Saddened villagers watched helplessly the inferno that left "not even a thumbtack" and destroyed a valuable wardrobe of period costumes they knew to be unreplace-able. "I couldn't live in that house any more. So I bought this house up the river and the neighbors are building me a new studio just like the first." Today Rockwell works to a chorus oi hammers on the roof, as his contractor and oft-time Walt Squires, finishes irom non-priority materials the fashioned in wood atop a mousetrap built by a neighbor a replica of the four-peaked steeple of ancient Methodist Church by the Green. In a cabin deep in mountain firs a Vermonter would be pictured whittling the better mousetrap, with a queue of city folk lined up the trail, patiently waiting to buy the better mousetrap.

"Isn't it a swell idea?" he asked the art editor of a national magazine in a long distance call before he mixed his paints. "No, it isn't. Don't you realize that tho whole advertising business which makes magazines possible is based on the premise that the better mousetrap idea is out? That you've got to advertise a i product, -no matter how 'good it studio by the Battehkill. THE PLAYGROUND JOB Never has adequate provision for Summer play been more important to children than now. Many fathers are absent from home.

Mt.ny mothers are in war employment. Transportation difficulties prevent recreational trips that formerly added interest to the vacation season. The sorry figures for juvenile delinquency attest the greater need to provide wholesome activity for young people. Most communities have recognized the need. Boston has almost doubled the budget for supervision of city playgrounds.

The problem of securing adequate supervisors is increased by the war itself. Many of the trained athletic directors and coaches are in the service. All playground departments are operating under a handicap. This handicap is greater in Boston, which has no playground department and seeks to fill the gap by an arrangement between the School Committee and the Park Department. This works pretty well, but neither the School nor the Park Department is organized to give its primary attention to children's play.

This is a season when it would be of great value to have a department set up to devote its central activity to the playgrounds. Some of them are admirably organized and some could receive a good deal more attention. There are sections of the city where only the most devoted and skillful efforts can give anything like satisfactory results under the difficult physical conditions. These conditions justify an appeal to the recreational authorities to give more attention to those sections where playgrounds are overcrowded and under equipped. It is humiliating to conduct a visitor through parts of Boston where children play in the streets, apparently for lack of any other place to play.

That is the condition on the way to the East Boston Airport. It is true of the congested streets of the North End. The North End is an acute instance of the need for more play space, more play equip- ment and more organization of play activity. Here live more than 18,000 persons with only 6V acres of playground, and only two acres of that under supervision. Sometimes 15 or more children try to use one seesaw.

With more than 5000 children between kindergarten and draft age in the district, the total playground equipment is three seesaws, 26 swings, two shuffleboard outfits and a few balls, bats and bean-bag boards. This equipment is woefully inadequate and so is the staff of six teachers who supervise, most of them without benefit of training in physical education. The teachers who monitor these playgrounds are not responsible for the shortage of play equipment. Nor is it fair to criticize them because they lack the special training of others who are not now available for the work. But one or two things can be done to improve an unsatisfactory situation.

It should be possible with very little expenditure to put in more seesaws and swings. And it should be possible to secure the services of a few people, either volunteers or professionals, who are playground-minded and trained, to develop more active leadership in games. A little coaching of the staff in waysto organize games would undoubtedly be appreciated by those teachers who are new at this work, and it would enable them to be more than monitors of the playgrounds. Many suburbs of Boston are putting a lot more into their playground work and getting much more out of it. The recreational problem of a crowded city is much greater than that of the suburb.

It therefore needs more attention and more effort to get an equally satisfactory result. It surely is important enough to be worth all we can put into it. In this season of war strain there is no other part of the Park Department job so important as the playground job. And there is no other problem of the School Department so important in vacation as the needs of the children out or -school. It may be worth more than we know to put everything we can into this job of getting the' greatest possible value out of our playgrounds in Boston this Summer.

UNCLE DUDLEY. is?" i Mrs. Rockwell makes any hard-' ship easy to bear. She's pretty and sweet, and the belle of the square dances held each month by Pomona Grange, to which the Rockwells belong. Gracious and efficient, she spreads on the lawn by the new 200-year-old house each noon a hot lunch for Norman and whoever nappens to have found his way to the remote farmhouse into which the Rockwells are moving even a stray reporter.

Currently, Rockwell is working on a series of water colors depicting life in the White House, entitled "So You Want to See the President?" If you look carefully, you see that the Secret Service man looking down his nose at newshawks seated on a divan is actually Walt Squires, the contractor who built Norman's new studio. Buddy Edgerton, 13, another neighbor, will become familiar to Boy Scouts of the world three years hence when the calendar Rockwell recently completed is distributed. The organization sent Rockwell a complete uniform which Buddy donned during thtf modelling, and now Buddy, owner of the only uniform but one in town, has decided to join the scouts, hatchet, whistle, neckerchief and all. Wartime Wife She Gets in "Dutch" I'se got the misery the misery of one who knows she ought to have seen more clearly and more wisely and didn't. Last week I wrote about William, our fruit man, and how he didn't have much to sell us, and is he argry and did I get a lecture and William, my pal, all these years.

He explained as to a child of 8. the reason he hasn't lemons, and onions, and that is because the dark, dark market is not for him. Not. said William, as long as my son's life is at stake. 0 course I feel terrible.

I'm also in Dutch with the cleanser and Rob is beginning to think there must be something personal about our not getting any more meat. Two hundred pounds into town last Friday to feed some 3000 people, and a little sign up, "If you got meat last week don't buy any this week." Frankforts and such are no longer considered meat around here, and who will ever want one when the war is over? Now. William, I hope you consider this a nice apology and that you will come as usual. POLLY WEBSTER Unlike most illustrators, Rockwell never had financial difficulties. He sold hfs first pictures at ,16 to outstanding children's magazines and his first Saturday Evening Post cover when he was just 21.

But life has not been without heartaches. "For years I did advertising pictures. The 'surprised satisfaction stuff and always I knew that a huge can of soup or vast rubber tire would be superimposed on my picture and I couldn't rest easy, somehow." Friends hounded him, also, to go "art for art's sake." "I tried it once. I went to Prov-incetown and tried to paint in the abstract, but after six months I gave it up. I want to tell stories in my pictures and if I make money doing what I love it isn't my fault, is it?" Sometimes a favorite idea of his will be ruled out by the taboos of magazines.

Last week he woke at midnight with an idea which sent him running to his studio in pajamas. The "better mousetrap" slant, in paint. By evening he had What People Talk About Letters From the Editor's Mail Rowdies at Church Anglo-American Alliance Difficult Decisions By Gluyas Williams To the Editor I was "raised" and trained to believe that wherever a few gather to worship God there is sacred ground and I have never entered a place of worship to feel strange. I've attended a mass celebrated by a Cardinal in a great cathedral and I have spent a Summer Sabbath morning in the little Friends Meetinghouse which Whittier attended. I haven't the remotest connection with the Cathedral Church of St.

Paul in Boston. I have never been there except lately to slip into the war shrine for the comfort of a short service tnct prayer among others with heavy hearts. But I do resent the item which told of a group of 200 rowdies singing "Roll Out the Barrel" on the steps of the church during the recent air raid test. Where was the police force of Boston? Has it come to a time when such sacrilege can be carried through with impunity in the capital of Massachusetts? I think the citizens of the Commonwealth have a right to ask the authorities for an accounting. A.

C. Salem. To the Editor There has been discusion in favor of a postwar Anglo-American alliance. Such, an alliance or even the thought cf it is not only dangerous to our war effort but is contrary to the ideals which we have professed we are fighting for. This war is not a sectional conflict but a global battle.

When we plan for our postwar world we must think in the same global terras. This is not a white man's world or a white man's war. This is a global war of liberation from totalitarian tyranny for people cf all colors and races. If we wish to avoid another even more horribla war within the next quarter century, we must not think of tha world as a place for the Anglo-Saxon nations to grow wealthjr and powerful, but as a place for ail the peoples of the earth to live in peace and security. The world, and by that I mean the Chinese, the Indians, the African natives and all the other neglected, underprivileged and exploited peoples of the earth, ij sick and tired of British exploitation and mismanagement.

America is looked upon as a great freedom-loving and liberal nation. An alliance with Britain would completely destroy this reputation. Another Argument against the proposed alliance is the question of Russia. How could a n.Ujrn as powerful as Russia will be after the war, be snubbed? It tint only is practically incrwiceivabl but, if It should be done, it would be extremely dangerous. An American-British alliance i5 no solution to our problem.

It would merely create more discontent and pave the wav for future wars. PAUL. HASKELL. Cambridge. This is the era in which the job seeks the man, at the top of its voice.

The hammerhead shark, says a contemporary, uses its head for a rudder in making quick turns. The mystery about the use to which the hammerhead human puts his head continues. A sports note says United States soldiers plan a baseball game in Berlin. Postwar attention, however, is more likely to be centered upon Hitler's rope-skipping efforts. Observers are becoming so accustomed to bare legs and painted legs that a girl wearing stockings looks overdressed.

Washing machines and electric irons may be manufactured again, it is said. well, women get all the breaks. Eggs are coming so small these dayg that one woman suspects her egg man of robbing pigeons' nests. Glorious to have the days grow shorter; a body got terribly weary waiting for it to get dark enough to go to bed. Wonder what they think at the village Post-office of the vacationer who asks, "Is there anything for me?" There's no underproduction of war poetry, no matter what readers may think of its quality.

The Axis is wobbling badly, and no wonder. One nut is missing. Switched Off To the Editor I go along with our Public Safety committee In their innumerable blackouts; maybe the machinery would get rusty if they did not use it. But it Is my misfortune to live in residential hotel where the craziest plan in the world is followed. This hotel has a master switch.

Promptly upon the sound of the first airen Wednesday night every light in the entire hotel, including all lights In corridors, elevators and whatnot, went out like a flash. Not a radio could operate, despite the fact that tha safety committee tell us to liiten to our radios for news of the air raid and its warnings. The corridors of the hotel were dark as pitch. Tha elevators stopped running. Not even a tiny pilot light was gleaming.

That remained the condition from 0:09 until 10:40, although outside on the street for the last half-hour hundreds of cars were passing with lights on full blast. Is that the way it's supposed to operate? I do not believe that because the hotel has failed to hang blackout curtains, everyone in the hotel should suffer for two hourj. Do you? Boston. II. R.

Soldier Reads Pratt To the EditorWe have Jut read a few of Fletcher Pratt's articles and wish to compliment him on fighting such a great battle on paper. We just wish he could have been with us here, as a great experienced soldier such, as he could surely have been used. We boys think we have done a job just to keep the pre3 free for such men as he. If he can't say anything better than he does about the American boys I don't think he should have the privilege. Why don't the people at home stop such sillv stufi PFC DAN W.

BANKS. THE U5f nmit to DtfOWlNE WHETHER IF "faE SUBJECT OF WA6HIH6 UP, THERt 15 AMV CHAtfCE OF V0UR- PUtfWG UP Ahl ARGUMENT (Relencd by Th Bell 8yndlcu, too.) On Foreign Service..