Waste Not, Greet Not

A pre-Christmas communique lay ready for signing, last week, on the massive desk of Signor Benito Mussolini. With logic, reason and curt common sense he was about to strike at a custom that is old, endearing, hallowed. Dipping a pen in ink, Il Duce dashed his scrawly autograph upon the document: a command to all Italians that they must not send to him any form of Christmas or New Year's greeting.

Lest persons anxious to gain even his disapproving notice should persist in sending greetings, Signor Mussolini informed the Fascist press that some 20,000 messages of this character which he received last year were "burned without being read."

Approving Fascist editors exulted, last week, that each unsent greeting will conserve to the nation "not less than half an ounce of high grade paper pulp," and will release the price of stamp or telegraph fees for "more constructive expenditures."

Scurrilous persons who might have called Il Duce a Christmas niggard forebore to do so, last week, when he despatched 300 tons of food supplies and clothing to gladden impoverished citizens of Albania, troublous Adriatic ally of Italy.