Caged Bravo

Signor Benito Mussolini, The Head of the State, The Leader of Fascismo, permitted a fair trial last week to onetime Socialist. Deputy Tito Zaniboni (TIME, Nov. 16, 1925 et seq.) who was arrested at his hotel bedroom window calmly puffing a cigaret and training a high-power rifle upon the balcony of Signor Mussolini's office, from which II Duce was shortly to deliver his Armistice Day: address. A special military tribunal sat upon the case last week in the grim Roman Palazzo di Giustizia; but the prisoner faced only the normal Italian criminal law. Recent legislation providing the death penalty for attempts on the Premier's life is not retroactive (TIME, Nov. 15, 22), and would-be-assassin Tito Zaniboni faced, last week, a maximum penalty of 27 years in jail. His bravado was prodigious.

The military judges, sitting in stiff gold braid upon the bench beheld a wiry, dynamic little prisoner who rattled the bars of his iron cage,* and hurled lightnings of defiance. "What more do you want? What more do you want?" he shouted as the presiding judge strove to compel at least an orderly confession. It was useless. Signor Zaniboni was not to be suppressed by an iron cage, much less by a gold-braided judge. Reporters gasped at his daring and wrote with racing pencils:

"Mussolini is an impostor! As the illegal Capo del Governor [Head of the State] he is stamping upon Liberty and the Constitution. . . .

Ah, Liberia Bella, you are trampled, you are ravished! . . . Will no one but Zaniboni cry 'Long live Liberty!'?"

"Signor Zaniboni," rapped the Court, "confine yourself to facts."

"Ha! Facts!" roared Signor Zani boni, "well, it is a fact that if the police, instead of arresting me at 8:30 had done so at 12.30 mY project would have been completed. . . . What more do you want?"

"Do you mean, Signor Zaniboni, that you would have fired with intention to hit and kill 77 Capo del Governo ?"

"Hit? Of course I should have hit him! ... I never experienced a moment of weakness or indecision. . . I am guilty, and I alone am guilty! . .

"[Quietly] Everything is being done to prove that there was a plot to revolt against the State. . . . That is a lie! ... I am loyal to the State and to the House of Savoy. . . . I alone sought to bring low this impostor, this Fascist! I hate Fascismo! I will always hate it! ... I wanted to restore the government of the State to my King by killing this impostor. . . . What more do you want? What more do you want? . . . I alone am guilty!"

The Court, unmoved, proceeded with the taking of testimony tending to prove that Tito Zaniboni had seven accomplices, one of them Gen eral Luigi Capello, and all subsidized by the Grand Orient Lodge of Italian Freemasonry, which Il Duce regards as the most pernicious force opposing Fascismo.

A witness, Signor Zaniboni's secretary, Signor Carlo Quaglia, who betrayed him to the police, insinuated during the testimony certain remarks about Tito Zaniboni's private life. "Spy! Agent provocateur!" cried Signor Zaniboni, "you lured me on! I swear by all I hold sacred, by my little girl, that you yourself begged the honor of firing a second shot at Mussolini. ... I thought you were a spy till then. Then I believed you! . . . Pig! You shall not attack my morals or my honor or the name of any woman dear to me!"

"You lie! You lie, knowing that you lie!" shouted Signor Quaglia. At length, after repetitions of such scenes, the Court adjourned to consider testimony already given.

*The usual "prisoner's dock" in Italy.