Alarming Candor

Potent U. S. financiers, from Thomas W. Lament down, journey to Italy only to return and hymn the praises of Fascism (TIME, Feb. 1). Established authors, especially such contributors to the Saturday Evening Post as Irvin S. Cobb, return to pronounce like benedictions upon Premier Mussolini and all his works. Last week, in Paris, Louis Bromifield, 30, author of three financially and artistically successful novels* recounted to newsgatherers with the alarming candor of youth impressions gleaned on a recent visit to Italy:

"From my own experience, I should advise every foreigner to avoid Italy unless necessity takes him there. . . . The attitude toward all foreigners at present is hostile and arrogant. Toward France it is not quite sane. . . . One must see the mobs rushing through the streets shouting: 'Down with France!' to understand the hysteria of feeling.

"To an American, a believer in democracy, it is not a refreshing spectacle to find that a once sane nation has substituted violence for justice and has no longer the faintest vestige of a free press, and a government which imposes injury and poverty on the smallest official who speaks a breath of criticism against it. ... Conditions are not growing better. My total impression was one of impending disaster. The country cannot continue under such a state of nerves and under such a dictatorship indefinitely. Something must happen--assassinations, wars or another revolution. It is not only that the conditions menace Italy, but in the passion of their present irrational attitude the Italians certainly threaten to create a sore spot on the face of the Continent. . . .

"There are already signs of a split in the Dictator's government and the withdrawal of the element which cannot approve of what in plain fact is simple tyranny. Something is certain to happen. The interesting question is what and how soon."

*The Green Bay Tree; Possession; Early Autumn.