Toe

In Rome last week, strutting Crown Prince Umberto, flushed and bold in the new popularity which followed his escape from assassination (TIME, Nov. 4), was reported to have differed with Signor Benito Mussolini over a toe.

Both Prince and Dictator were received separately in audience by His Majesty, who afterward appeared flustered. Tiny in stature and nervous, the bleak King contrasts as strangely with his tall, debonaire, swashbuckling son as with the burly, curt Dictator. If, as seemed probable, one of them advised, "You should kiss the Pope's toe," and the other thundered. "Your Majesty must not!" the bantam monarch must have been in an awkward quandary. For on Dec. 5 next--it was announced last week--King Vittorio Emanuele III will pay his first visit to the Vatican. The toe must be faced.

Diplomatic dickering about the kiss and other ceremonials has gone on between Vatican and Quirinal for a month. The view of Signor Mussolini (no toe-kisser) remains that King should merely shake hands with Pope, denoting that they meet as temporal sovereigns of two earthly realms (Italy and the new Papal State). But Crown Prince Umberto (looked to by non-Fascist Catholics as the only figurehead they could possibly set up against Il Duce) lets it be known unmistakably that he thinks his father's lips should touch the toe.

In Vatican City last week one prelate firmly said: "Etiquette decrees that a Catholic sovereign must kneel to the Pope and kiss his toe." But among Fascisti belief was current that His Holiness will decree a special exemption in favor of Vittorio Emanuele, "King by the Grace of God and the Will of the People."