865.4016/32: Telegram
The Ambassador in Italy (Phillips) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 24—8:58 a.m.]
182. Embassy’s telegram No. 175, July 15, 6 p.m. For several days the Italian newspapers have printed editorials on the racial question endeavoring to prove that the racial principle has always been a basic doctrine of the Fascist regime and demonstrating that the strength of a nation is lost when its racial purity is weakened through the introduction of other racial strains which cannot have the same consciousness of the local origins, traditions and essential characteristics of the nation.
In his second editorial on the subject last night, Gayda28 wrote, in answer to the London Times question why this particular time had been chosen to raise the racial issue, that the moment had been selected on all revelations [sic] which were becoming increasingly disturbing for European civilization of internal movements in certain great nations and the European disorder which they were creating.
In its editorial of July 2, the Tribuna stated that it was clear that the Jews did not belong to the Italian race, that they had never been assimilated and that the spirit of the Jewish race was absolutely contrary to the Aryan spirit.
The forthcoming publication of a weekly magazine entitled In Defense of the Race has also been announced.
On the other hand the Vatican organ the Osservatore Romano published on the same day the remarks of the Pope to a meeting of directors of the Catholic Youth Movement when he declared that the use of the word “Catholic” meant “universal” and was neither racial, nationalist or separatist. He said furthermore, “that it was necessary to state that there was something particularly detestable about this spirit of separatism and exaggerated nationalism”.
- Virginio Gayda, editor of Giornale d’Italia.↩