Where is Toad?

Where was Benito Mussolini?

The Badoglio Government, which presumably knew, kept silent. But Europe's rumor factories labored overtime, putting the ex-Duce:

> In the comfortable Villa Torlonia outside Rome.

> In the uncomfortable Braschi Fortress outside Rome.

> In a hotel at Rome.

> In the royal villa at Viareggio on the Gulf of Genoa.

> In a seacoast town not far from the Isle of Elba.

> In Switzerland.

> In Spain.

> In Eire (but that was an English joke).

Benito Mussolini was under arrest and not under arrest; in solitary confinement and under house guard; seized while trying to flee Italy and seized in the Quirinal; held for his own safety and held for delivery to the Allies. If he dreamed of asylum somewhere abroad, President Franklin Roosevelt's warning to neutrals against such asylum shattered the dream.

Wherever Benito Mussolini was, he passed his 60th birthday there. A deflated Mr. Toad, no longer could he swell visibly and let himself go with uplifted voice before supposedly enraptured audiences. From his ex-colleague Adolf Hitler came an anniversary gift: the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, who had written: "I teach you the Superman. . . . Thou hast made danger thy calling; therein is nothing contemptible." But from his ex-people came only bitter remembrance. Milan's Corriere della Sera called him "an aged corrupter," now as good as buried.

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