Orders of Attorney General Biddle and Lt.-Gen. John L. DeWitt, effective last Monday, in removing the majority of Italian aliens from the status of enemy aliens, appears amply justified by the findings of the FBI.

Watsonville and the Pajaro valley - although we have a fairly large number of Italian people - are not affected as greatly by the new order as are Santa Cruz and Monterey, where there are large numbers of Italian fishermen who hope to return to their main occupation soon.

Out of a total of 600,000 Italian aliens in the United States, there has been cause to intern but 228, or less than one-twentieth of one per cent. This one-twentieth of one per cent which constituted itself Mussolini's cheering section in our midst is now in detention, paying the penalty for its raucous rhetoric and disloyal activities. The vast majority, in the words of Attorney General Biddle, "have well earned the exoneration" which is now being granted them.

It is no military secret that Italian citizens in this country, like their fellow-countrymen in war-sickened Italy, want the axis to lose this war and the United Nations to win it. Italy's people don't want to fight us. Their quarrel is with the ruthless nazi mob which has swarmed down through the Brenner Pass and, in the name of "collaboration," taken over the running of Italy. Nazi industrial managers and economic advisors have carried out the legalized plundering of Italy's food and raw material supplies on behalf of hungry German stomachs and war plants.

Arrogant nazis, convinced of their mission to subjugate and rule the world's non-nazis, have trapped Italy in a paralyzing web thanks, in large measure, to the perfidy and folly of Mussolini himself. Deluded by dreams of empire, he joined a peace-loving people and a land far from rich in war material resources, to a ruthless warrior nation which lost little time in reducing Italy to a puppet kingdom, bereft of true sovereignty.

Small wonder her people would like to see Germany crushed, Mussolini thrown out, and the United Nations victorious. Italy's enemy in the main is ours."