Shots at H. R. H,?

The black-gowned judge of the Brabant Court of Assizes sat in his Brussels courthouse last week to try one Fernando de Rosa charged with attempting to assassinate Crown Prince Umberto of Italy during H. R. H.'s visite de fiancallies to his present wife Princess Mane Jose of Belgium last year (TIME, Nov. 4).

During the visit, while sound cameras buzzed expectantly, Prince Umberto had arrived at the tomb of Belgium's Unknown Soldier to lay a wreath. Pistol Man de Rosa wiggled his way through surrounding guards, fired two ineffectual shots, was immediately knocked senseless. Almost as though he had expected the shots, Prince Umberto coolly proceeded with his wreath laying. The affair looked strange to reporters when it occurred. Last week as the trial progressed, it looked stranger still.

On a table before the judges were the exhibits in the case: books, anti-Fascist pamphlets belonging to de Rosa, and the ridiculous little nickel-plated pistol which he had fired. Prisoner de Rosa, 22, stood in the dock. Blond, pink-cheeked, he wore an expensive grey suit, had employed his year in jail by growing enormously fat.

A rumor which Europe's political gossips insistently repeated last week was that fat Fernando had not really tried to kill Prince Umberto at all. Fernando de Rosa is obviously, admittedly an antiFascist, might have logically shot a Fascist prince, but many an Italian has heard that no one loathes Benito Mussolini more wholeheartedly than slender aristocratic Crown Prince Umberto. Thus the shooting might conceivably have been a fake, staged by friends of H. R. H. to increase his popularity in Italy before his wedding. Fat Fernando did his best to deny all such rumors on the witness stand last week.

"I wanted to kill the Prince," said he, "because I knew he was a Fascist* and I thought the attempt would draw attention to unhappy Italy. I thought it would be an intellectual murder. There was such a crowd around the Prince that I fired the first shot in the air. I hoped that in the resulting confusion I could get a clear view of the Prince and be able to kill him with a well-aimed shot. The second shot I missed. Suddenly my hat blew off, I felt so ridiculous that I threw my gun away."

A Colonel Ketelle, eyewitness, testified that this was so.

Whether or not anti-Fascist Fernando attempted in good faith to shoot H. R. H., he was defended in good faith last week by none other than fiery anti-Fascist Francesco Nitti, fugitive onetime Prime Minister of Italy, commonly referred to by Fascist editors as "Nitti the Pig."

"I met young de Rosa in Paris," said Signore Nitti, while fat Fernando blushed modestly among his chins, "and he impressed me as an honest, moderate, loyal and well-educated young man. When I read the details of his act of last October I was convinced that his intention was not to kill but to attract public attention to the deplorable state of affairs in Italy. . . . Everywhere men of different beliefs and shades of opinion are allowed to assemble except in Italy. Deprived of liberty and hearing lots of talk about violence, what shall youth do?"

"Your remarks, Signore Nitti, seem to be irrelevant to the de Rosa case," said the presiding judge peering over his spectacles. Signore Nitti brushed this aside as immaterial and spoke for another ten minutes on the bitterness of life under Mussolini.

No sooner was he finished than the defense produced yet another star witness, Belgian Senator Louis de Brouckere, President of the Aviation Commission at Geneva.

"While on an official mission for international disarmament," said Senator de Brouckere impressively, "I became convinced that the Mussolini government is preparing for war on both sides of the Albanian border as well as along the Alps. The German nationalists (see p. 23), would not behave as they are doing if they did not feel themselves supported by the Fascists in Rome."

Weakly retorted Public Prosecutor Cornil:

"If Fascism is so much to be despised, how is it possible for the Pope, the highest moral authority in the world, to enter into negotiations with Mussolini?"

Droning on in totally irrelevant vein the trial seemed headed for acquittal of fat Fernando. But newsprophecies to this effect were unfair to Belgian justice. Fat Fernando was abruptly found guilty, sentenced to five years in jail.

*Last October Crown Prince Umberto gave the Fascist salute in public for the first time: on the balcony of the Royal Palace immediately after his return from Belgium. He neutralized this on his wedding day by standing rigidly at attention while the Royal March was played, turning his back, leaving the Palace balcony as the band blared Fascismo's Giovinezza.

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