Home Sweet Home

The first news in five months brought by American correspondents from inside the Axis reached the U.S. last week. It came from correspondents, diplomats and other citizens caught in Axis countries on Dec. 7. They sent their cables from Portugal, where they were awaiting exchange.

Both Your Houses. Diplomats, news correspondents and their families were in the first of three trains bringing 132 U.S. citizens and 120 Latin Americans from concentration points in Germany. Hungry, dirty, bedraggled, they were impressed by the blow to German morale that the U.S. entry into the war had caused; cheered by briefly caught evidences of goodwill among French peasants. In a field, as their train sped past, a lone man had stood merrily waving the Stars & Stripes.

Converging on Lisbon at the same time were 125 Americans from disillusioned, heartsick Italy. The two groups, exchanged for Axis nationals rounded up in the Americas, were soon to sail for home. By then the argument over which country it was best to be out of might be settled. First accounts last week gave the edge in dullness to Germany, the lead in human misery to Italy.

Hitler's, Blunder. Completely isolated from all news of the outside world, those who had been interned in Germany had picked up only odds & ends of information. A.P.'s balding Louis Lochner deflated the myth of the effectiveness of German propaganda. The ''greatest blunder" of Hitler's career, Lochner said, was when he "took upon himself the odium of declaring war upon the U.S." Having for months told the German people that "we won't let ourselves be provoked" by the U.S. pre-war attitude, Hitler then had to confront his people with war against a nation whose entry into World War I had once before turned the tide against them.

No longer, says Lochner, do the German people believe that their leader is "out smarting" the rest of the world; no longer do they believe in "great victories." The 2,500,000 German casualties, of which 750,000 are dead (Lochner's estimate), is too obvious a sign of German vulnerability.

Fascists' Abortion. U.P.'s Rome Bureau Chief, rotund Reynolds Packard, in his first dispatch from Portugal, reported an abortive attempt by extreme pro-German Fascists to kidnap Mussolini and "elimi-nate" his son-in-law, Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano. The Fascist regime, said Packard, is split by one group demanding closer collaboration with Germany and Vichyfrance and another fearful that the closer Italy works with both the slimmer are the chances of Italy's claims on French Tunisia, Djibouti, Savoy and Nice.

Mussolini's "Cratoplutes." A "sadder and wiser" Italy than the one he had known when he marched with Italian troops in Ethiopia was what New York Timesman Herbert Matthews left behind. He minimized the chance of revolt in Italy, but found it "difficult to conceive of a Government with less popular consent than Fascism has today."

The Italian people, said Matthews, have been shocked out of the complacency with which they entered war against Britain. Greatest shock has been the sell-out of all the fine-sounding ideals with which Benito Mussolini once used to charm his people. The most powerful men in the country are the great industrialists who run the Fiat (autos, armaments), Montecatini (mining and chemicals) and Snia Viscosa (ersatz textiles) monopolies. Along with them has been created a new class of wealthy men in high Government office. Italian peasants, remembering Mussolini's attacks on Democratic plutocrats (men who grew powerful through wealth) have coined a new phrase for the wartime wealthy: "Cratoplutes" (wealth through power).

Matthews quoted one estimate that there are 250,000 German troops scattered throughout Italy, tampering with internal Government offices, and prepared to crush uprisings. Naples "swarms" with Nazi troops. So embittered are the Sicilians that the notorious "Black Hand" has been reborn, leaves its mark on the knifed throats of German soldiers.

Three years ago Mussolini was still popular in Italy. Today, said Matthews, he is the butt of crude jokes. More cynical than Anglo-Saxons, the Italians scorn Mussolini for the unforgivable Italian sin: making a fool of oneself. On May 9 their attitude was bored or ominous silence when Mussolini stalked to the reviewing stand on the Via Impero to celebrate the tragic farce of African Empire Day.

Farewell Salute. Of all the homefarers, Colonel Norman Fiske, U.S. Military Attache, gave America's classic farewell to Italy. Accompanied by Italian detectives, Colonel Fiske drove into sight of Mussolini's Palazzo Venezia, stopped at the tomb honoring Italy's Unknown Soldier. Before his guards could intervene, Colonel Fiske hopped out of the car, stood smartly at attention and said:

"I salute you as one who died in the last war--fighting as an ally."

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