Terror in our time; the secret service of surprise attack (1941)

O.V.R.A, SECRET DEFENDER 133 sity of Sassari, published abroad an anonymous series of clever and inquiring articles which criticized the Duce's regime. To any student of finance the failings of Fascism were brazenly apparent; but so, it seems, was the origin of the articles to foreign agents of Mussolini's secret police. Doctor Pesenti's candor cost him twenty-four years' imprisonment. Doctor Michele Giua, World War veteran, professor at the Institute of Technology and at the Military Acad- emy of Turin, refused to take the Fascist teachers' oath and resigned his position. His eldest son, a student, was charged by the Oyra with anti-Fascist propaganda and arrested. But through the connivance of friends the youth managed to escape. He fled to Paris, where the anti-Fascist colony had powerful roots. Doctor Giua and his wife persisted in corresponding with their exiled son, the father even daring to visit France to see him. Both parents were arrested and imprisoned. Doctor Giua re- ceiving a sentence of fifteen years at hard labor. The misfortune of the Giuas was quickly spread by vigilant agents of the Ovra. Doctor Augusto Monti, fifty-five years of age, a veteran with a distinguished army record, was a poet, novelist and professor of Latin and Italian at the Liceo D'Azeglio in Turin. When both Doctor and Signora Giua were in prison. Professor Monti took to school and occasionally to a motion- picture theatre the two younger Giua children; which act was given official Fascist interpretation as an "expres- sion of solidarity with the political ideas of the children's criminal father." Monti was arrested. "Then you sympathized with Michele Giua, their father?" said one of his accusers. "Yes, and I am proud of it!" Monti replied. "I am only ashamed that in a country which boasts of being