The Daily Worker

MATTEOTTI MURDER IS JUSTIFIED

Fascist Lawyers Admit Classes Unreconciled

BULLETIN.

CHIETI, Italy, March 24—Amerigo Dumini and two of his co-defendants were tonight sentenced to two years imprisonment for the murder of the socialist deputy, Giacomo Matteotti.

(Special to The Daily Worker)

CHIETI, Italy, March 24—A brazen justification for the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, socialist deputy, and an inferred admission of the defeat of fascism in its efforts to reconcile all social classes, were made today in the six and a half hours of speeches by the attorneys for the defense of the fascist thugs Poveromo, Viola and Volpi who are on trial here for the murder.

Fascist Foes Must Go!

The fascist attorneys brought out the fascist theory that those who "torment" fascism must without question be done away with.

"You must consider," said one of the lawyers, Decicco, to the jury, "Dumini and his companions as personifying one crowd. Matteotti as personifying another. This explains the moral and juridical provocation. The two factions were fighting. One conquered: the other should have resigned itself.

Time was given for the latter to demobilize. But if the conquered refused to lay down their arms, why should the conquerors have done so?

"Instead, the conquered continued to torment the victors. One day the blow of a fanatic killed. Whose fault was it?"

Mussolini's legal prostitutes find it convenient to forget that while the revolutionaries fought with their arms under great duress, but in honorable battle, in the open, the murderers of the anti-fascist deputy killed him like thugs and cowards in the night.

"Matteotti's death," continued the lawyer, "coming after that of so many martyrs (!), should have brought about peace and love between fascism and its opponents, but instead, it kindled new hatreds and rancors."

It does not seem as tho M. Mussolini has quite succeeded in abolishing the class struggle in Italy!