Patient

Signor Mussolini has decreed a bachelor tax (See "Alalas"), assumedly with the deliberate purpose of increasing the pressure of already teeming Italians upon their frontiers. Does this mean that he envisions a war of conquest for new territory? Last week U. S. newsgatherers asked him this question as tactfully as they could. Instead of returning them a glare for their pains, II Duce, ruddy with health and vigor, seemingly in the best of humors, sketched his professed idea of how Italy is to expand without fighting. Said he:

"I am entirely in favor of the restoration of balance and equilibrium among international forces by a formula most adapted for maintaining peace. ... I believe that if we place two identical weights on the two sides of an ideal weighing balance, equilibrium, in theory, should be maintained indefinitely. But if we place in them a living organism in perpetual growth, the index of the scales will be changed with velocity equal to that of the difference between the development of the two organisms. The organism which is developing itself with the greater rapidity will soon surpass the weight of the other and will cause the scales to tip in its favor.

"Equilibrium between peoples, which are the most living of all organisms, must therefore be continually reestablished.

"In what I have said you will find the answer to the question so often asked of our colonial aspirations and desires. One must not describe Italy as though she were lying in hiding behind a hedge, ready to jump at the throat of the first passing nation, to tear a colony from her hands.

"Although our policy is not 'pacifist' in the Utopian sense of the word, it is essentially 'pacific'. . . .

"I have firm faith that the urgent problem of Italian expansion can be resolved ....

"I can almost say that this has become an international problem. It is international in fact because it is to the interest of everybody that Italians do not suffocate every hour in their narrow borders."

In a word: II Duce proposes to increase the might of Italy until other powers peacefully present her with colonies.