Absolutely Absolute

The final quintessence of absolutism was achieved by the Fascist Regime, last week, when Signor Benito Mussolini drove through the Senate by a vote of 181 to 19 the new Constitutional amendment (TIME, Nov. 21) which makes the Fascist Grand Council an integral unit of the State, with power virtually to decide who may and who may not run for election to Parliament.

While this super drastic measure has been germinating, Italian Royalists have grown constantly more suspicious and uneasy, lest the real purpose of concentrating supreme power in the Fascist Grand Council prove to be eventual abolition of the Throne.

The passionate address of Duce to the Senate, last week, was almost solely designed to vanquish this fear. Cried he, at the apogee of his oration: "Six years of loyalty and devotion to the King and Crown by all men of the Fascist Party and the recent dedication by the King himself at Bologna of a votive lamp in memory of those Blackshirts who fell in the creation and defense of the Fascist regime, make it unnecessary to give further demonstration that the rights of the Crown will not be endangered or touched by the special prerogatives given to the Grand Council, which legally thereby becomes the adviser to the crown and the regime."

Most distinguished and revered among the 19 Senators who voted against the Amendment was Signer Benedetto Croce, aged but foremost living Italian philosopher-historian and philosopher. His speech, boldly remonstrating with Il Duce, did not pass the Fascist censor.