Patience, With Progress

Patience was the mainspring of Benito Mussolini's policy last week as his troops wormed forward through difficult terrain. First Japan, then Germany quit the League of Nations on a fraction of the provocation Geneva offered to Rome last week, but Il Duce kept playing the Geneva game. He scarcely expected, however, to take any tricks before the British general election is over.

As though nothing had happened, the Dictator sent his Ambassador to Great Britain, spade-bearded Dino Grandi. around to tell the British Foreign Office that, yes, the Royal Italian Government will be pleased to join at London this autumn in the great Naval Conference made necessary by the expiration in 1936 of the Washington Naval Treaty. Most Britons had forgotten last week that the Italians had been invited to this Conference, which may never be held, but urbane Italy's acceptance was politely if frostily received.

Event of the week in Rome was the awful squash of 6,000 royal and titled guests at the marriage of Spanish Alfonso XIII's third son Juan, heir-pretender to the Throne, in St. Mary's Basilica to his brunette Italian cousin, Princess Marie-Mercedes of Bourbon-Sicily who sobbed convulsively with streaming eyes during the ceremony. Sympathetic witnesses were that unhappy couple, sad Belgian Princess Marie-Jose and her gay Crown Prince Umberto of Italy. Once dashing Umberto was the hope of antiFascists, was said to have challenged Il Duce to a duel, never gave the stiff-armed, flat-palmed Fascist salute, saluting Army style instead. In the present crisis. Italy's Crown Prince publicly salutes like a Fascist.

Benito Mussolini, whose vexation with Pope Pius XI for not coming out for the War is great, again tested His Holiness last week by sending to the Holy See a new Italian Ambassador who asked Il Papa to bless not only Il Re, but also Il Duce. The Supreme Pontiff is never quoted, but his words to Ambassador Count Pignatti-Morano Di Custoza were in substance: "We bless His Majesty and his entire Court, granting that benediction in accordance with Your Excellency's desire."

The Dictator meanwhile witnessed a go-minute sham battle staged in one of Rome's great squares by 30,000 Fascist boys of sub-military age. Trained since early childhood to handle Army rifles, they blazed away with blanks last week, also fired full size artillery pieces from which sheets of flame leaped six feet into the air until the mimic battle reeked of smoke. "Make of your souls well-sharpened daggers!" The Dictator told his boys.

Fruit! Fruit! Fruit!!! Interview-of-the week was had by Newswoman Alice Rohe. She told the now stark-bald Dictator that he looked younger than he did 13 years ago when she first knew him, coyly asked his secret.

"That's the secret," came back Il Duce, pointing to a plate on which lay a peach, a pear and a bunch of grapes. "Fruit! Fruit! FRUIT!"

"You are the world's best advertisement for a fruit diet." said Alice Rohe. "Americans will. . . ."

"All right, here's the program," Mussolini was already saying. "In the morning I have a cup of coffee and fruit. At noon I have consomme or broth and fruit. At night I have fruit. No, I never touch meat. Sometimes a bit of fish."

"Tell me, Alice Rohe," roared the intense Italian later, "why you Americans are so hostile to us?"

She parried, told him: "Surely you must know that you are regarded as the most important public man in the world today."

Into this booby trap the Dictator fell. "I am a MAN--a MAN--just a MAN-- nothing more," was his reply. "No, you needn't say I am a great man. It's enough to be a MAN. Yes, to be a MAN in these days is the great thing!"

Having had her fun, Newswoman Rohe factually reported:

"The Mussolini of today resembles more in vigor and vitality the Mussolini I knew 13 years ago than he does the man of later years. In 1922 the two characteristics which impressed me as they do today were his force and power.

"When I saw him four years after his rise to leadership the change from the man in the ordinary business suit (obviously more interested in national than sartorial affairs), to the punctiliously correct Premier, was marked. Despite the suave, social manner he seemed a sick man, worried by cares. Five years ago, smart in riding togs, he was still the preoccupied frowning Dictator. Today in the white linen suit which revealed through his quick movements a strong athletic figure, he seemed again the man of 1922.

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