Soundings by Mussolini*

Dictator Benito Mussolini and his brother, Editor Arnaldo Mussolini of Il Popolo d' Italia, both sounded off, last week, with characteristic belligerence-- the one against the World Temporal, the other against the Church Spiritual would-be-Temporal of Rome.

Big Brother Benito announced the incorporation of the Fascist Militia as an "independent unit" in the Italian Army, declaring at a Fascist rally in Rome: "I am sure the Fascist legions fully deserve this honor. . . . They must become our shock troops--daggers between teeth, grenades in hand and supreme contempt of danger at heart." Those who thought this sounded like the incorporation of a band of autonomous brigands in the Italian army were not reassured when Il Duce concluded:

"Many people hate us because we are Italians and because we are Fascisti. We must be ready to defend ourselves in both capacities." Little Brother Arnaldo wrote editorially in Il Popolo d' Italia (unquestionably with Il Duce's authority) : ". . . A solution of the differences between the Roman Church and the Italian State will be impossible for another half century." Thus was significantly trumpeted the disastrous breakdown of recent Italo- Vatican negotiations which had seemed at one time to be drawing very near an amicable agreement. Pope Pius XI and Il Duce were reported to have been in substantial concurrence on the proposition that the claims of the Holy See to temporal authority could be harmlessly satisfied by the recognition of a "Papal State" whose territories would include the Vatican properties and one or two remote hill towns. An alternative proposal was that all Roman Catholic churches in Italy should be given status as Papal State territory, thus dotting the land with innumerable but innocuously minute territorial islands. Although Il Duce's assent was never indicated in the case of the latter scheme, he was reputedly withheld from agreeing to the former only by the most persistent objections of the Fascist Grand Council, the one body in Italy which has sufficient political might to impose a modicum of restraint upon Big Brother Benito.

Meanwhile the Beatissimus Pater, Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti, Pius XI, continues his pretensions to be the sovereign of a State by permitting the daily unfurling of the yellow and white flag of the Roman Church Temporal -- a banner displayed even in the U. S., where few Protestants trouble to distinguish it from the crossed keys on a white field which is the standard of the Roman Church Spiritual. That "Rome" has indeed many of the attributes to a State was shown again, last week, when the Holy See concluded a diplomatic pact with that flourishing State Temporal, Czechoslovakia. (See below.)

*The plural of Mussolini is Mussolini.