Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1939-12-26
MussoIini Launches
War on Povertyin
Eroded Sicily
Huge Estates Being Split
Up to Provide Forms
For 10000 Peasants
By John T. whitaker.

DIV L.. w
chicago Daily News Foreign Correspondent
ROME.-Still at peace in war
ring continent, Italy is using her
high explosives and her caterpillar
tractors to build rather than to de-
stroy The "latifunda," or system of
great landed estates, is being broken
up in Sicily in an effort to provide
homes and agricultural opportuni-
ties for 10000 families.
Cultivation over thousand years
has denuded Sicily of forests, cut
deep erosion seams and filled the
seacoasts with malarial marshland.
The volcano Of Etna Is a fitting
symbol of this once rich island, |
where today the owners are i'm
poverished by their own abuses and
the peasants are enslaved by Gen.
tury-old feudal system.
Great Public Work.
The project is the greatest public
work undertaken by the Fascist re-
gime since the draining of the Pom
tine marshes near Rome. Fifty mil
4AOll dolldlo 10 Ool maj hCu 1ol lll-
effort, which has just begun. and as
much again will be needed to carry
the program through when ItalyS
strained resources permit.
About l250,000 acres, now held III
vast estates, are to be broken up
Corner stones for 2,405 cottages have
already been laid over these prop
critics for families of peasant farm
ers who will dwell as tenants on the
ground they cultivate More impor-
tant still, the island is going to be
made fit to farm.
Heretofore the problem of Sicily
has seemed insoluble. To farm prof.
water, to dig wells and put in re-
tanning dams. 1t was necessary to
build roads, and before roads could
be built it was necessary to wipe out
malaria. 1t was vicious circle. The
small farmer could not solve the
problem of water that must be cap
tured and held in a wide-flung sys-
tenn of small reservoirs. The great
landlord could not solve the prob
lens of roads and malaria and the
low productivity of peasantS-pic-
turesque paupers clustered together
in villages seven and eight miles
away from the fields they titled.
Sicily an Ancient Granary.
The state hopes by its interven-
ton to restore Sicily to the pros
,,or;t,, IL ly,,ou, IL, Por,,o,, tir,,oc Union
it was an ancient granary. OF the
100000 being spent Immediate
", S40000,000 will reimburse land
owners for their own expenditures
in carrying out the Fascist program.
Mussolini warned them bluntly that
Fascism knows how to deal with an
individual who forgets to cooperate.
The landlord has no choice. The
party leaders have taken charge,
and their decisions will be arbi-
trary. The landlord failed, and his
feudal system is being smashed. He
retains title to the land-if he CO.
operates-and the peasants who
farm it will be his tenants.
This is the war Mussolini planned
for Sicily as Hitler invaded Poland,
and it is one of the more ANUS
ing aspects OF Fascism that this
great social reform, comparable only
to the peaceful revolution being eff
fected in Mexico. should be de-
scribed in the language of war.
Dramatized as Battle.
just as Mussolini dramatized the
effort to increase wheat produc-
ton as the Battle of the GRAIN"
so now the effort in Sicily is being
headlined as offensive Against
Latifunda." Action" is reported on
various fronts-the housing, the
road building, the irrigation fronts"
The arrival of the uniformed bu-
reaucracy that started this often
sive found the people skeptical and
apathetic If the war in Sicily is
won, it will do more than provide
Italy with additional foodstuffs. 1t
will breathe new life and hope into
a peasantry that the centuries have
beaten down, but that not even
poverty and disease can rob of
generosity that makes the Sicilian
famous as man who will divide
his last crust of bread with any
stranger in the land.
copyright. 1889, Chicago Daily News, Ync.)