Florence: Another
bellicose speech from Dictator Benito Mussolini as he reviews a massive
assemblage of Italian armed forces that includes 45 planes and 14,000 troops. Seated on a magnificent horse, Mussolini
watches a parade of soldiers, sailors and blackshirt militiamen that’s being
called the largest gathering of Italian armed forces since the end of the World
War.
“Italy’s friendship is precious, but her enmity is hard. There is great ignorance about us. People abroad think we are a minor people,
but we are a nation numbering 40 million.
They think we are governed by tyranny, but it is the Italian people who
govern. I am certain that in order not
to remain prisoners of the sea, the Italian people are capable of great
sacrifices. More important than my
speech today are the big guns and machine guns which I shall see in tomorrow’s
parade. The new naval program will be
carried out exactly as it was laid down in 1929, and new ships will be afloat
because the fascist will is a will of iron.
There are people who think they can isolate Italy, and who would not be
adverse from starting a war against the Italian people, even through the
territory of a third power. We will
await them at the crossing.”
“Fascist Italy henceforth will be a unit so organized as to be
unassailable and without mortal danger.
Though words are beautiful things, rifles, machine guns, ships, airplanes,
and big guns are still more beautiful.
Right is a vain word unless it is accompanied by might.”
“If by chance something should happen on the frontier, then we
people, black shirts, army and former service men, would be at our posts ready
to break the proud and vain attack.” The
crowd responds with cries of, “Down with France!”
In France, the full text of Mussolini’s similarly combative speech
from yesterday is reprinted in many newspapers.
Korneuburg, Austria:
The fascist Heimwehr paramilitary releases the “Korneuburg Oath,” a
declaration condemning both “Marxist class struggle” and “liberal-capitalist economic system,” as well as rejecting the Western democratic
parliamentary and multi-party systems, and calling for an authoritarian system
in Austria. A translation of the text of the oath:
“We want to renew Austria completely. We want the Republic of the Heimwehr.
From every comrade we demand an unshrinking belief in the
mother country, utter fervor of coopration and a passionate love of
homeland. We want to reach for power in
the state and reorganize state and economy for the benefit of the entire
people.
We must forget our own interests, must subordinate all the
ties and demands of the parties to our objective, because we wish to serve the
community of the entire German people.
We reject Western democratic parliamentarianism and the
party state. We want to replace it with
the autonomy of the corporations and strong governance that will not be formed
from party representatives, but from leading figures from the major
corporations and the most capable and proven men of our popular movement.
We shall fight against the corruption of our people by the
Marxist class struggle and the liberal-capitalist economic system. We want to realize the autonomy of the
economy on the basis of occupational groups.
We shall overcome the class struggle and establish social dignity and
justice.
We want to increase the prosperity of our people through a
native economy of public utility. The
state is the embodiment of the nation as a whole; its power and leadership
ensure that the corporations remain integrated in the imperatives of the
national community.
May every comrade feel and avow himself to be an upholder of
the new German state thinking; may he be prepared to sacrifice property and
blood; may he know the three powers: belief in God, his own firm will, and the
word of his leaders.”
Harbin,
China: A raid by soviet authorities on
the Japanese consulate at Blagovestchensk, Russia, is provoking an outraged
response by Japan. Russia says it
suspected the consulate of being involved in smuggling food from Manchuria into
Siberia, and raided the facility to investigate. Japan countercharges that the allegations are
false, no evidence of such smuggling was found, and that the real issue is that
Russian farmers and fishermen are starving due to Russian food shortages. Japan says 300 starving miners ransacked a railway
station searching for food, and trains on the Trans-Siberian Railroad have been
held up for food as well. “The threatening
atmosphere is deepening daily in the villages in the vicinity of Khabarovsk due
to a shortage of food throughout Siberia and as a result the Red Army stationed
at Vladivostok has been mobilized in order to cope with the situation.” Japan dispatches its consul from Harbin to
investigate the situation.
