All Highest Duce

All-Highest Duce

There are still too many people who boast to have gone to school with Mussolini, or to have shared a meal with him, or to have offered him a cigaret in some railway compartment. There are still too many people, who, in speaking of the "Duce," call him simply Benito. There are jar too many who assert to be on terms of intimacy with him. It is high time to declare before all the world that Benito does not exist any more. Today Mussolini must be known as the "Duce" and only as the "Duce." Nobody has any right to speak of him in the ordinary manner that one refers to common human beings. He is above all. Even his title is not to be taken in vain. It should only be pro nounced with awe and reverence.

Thus last week groveled and fawned Signer Riccardo Forster, editor of the largest news organ in Southern Italy, Il Mattino of Naples. Meanwhile, however, a very slight and cautious reaction from such typical abasement was setting in at Rome. There, a diligent official dared to criticise pampered Mario Carli, editor of L'Impero and prime favorite of Il Duce. Recently, Italian wives have been told by Signer Carli that they must bear a son every two years (TIME, Jan. 21); and intending tourists have been called "fat drones" (TIME, Jan. 28) and warned that they are not wanted in Italy, since they are "more of a nuisance than a benefit." The daring rebuker of Il Duce's favorite editor was Signor Ezio Maria Gray, President of the Italian State Tourist Bureau. Wrote he, apostrophizing Editor Carli: "Perhaps, as you say, there are travelers who would like to transform Italy into a large scale gaming house, have jazz bands playing under the dome of St. Peter's, or turn the Coliseum into an amusement park. You may berate such people all you like, but for heaven's sake don't exaggerate, and at least have the courtesy not to ignore the fact that there are serious-minded persons who have a conception of tourists as fitting in perfectly with our national program. "I beg you to consider for a moment that the tourist from beyond the Alps and beyond the ocean is a consumer, is a purchaser. Perhaps they don't buy many shoes or clothes, but they buy a great deal of luggage and many things, including Venetian shawls, Roman scarfs, alabaster, coral and tortoise shell. Perhaps they don't buy steamships, but they are passengers therein, and thereby they enable us to construct big de luxe liners. They don't buy locomotives or coaches, but they use them and thereby enable us to build* them. . . . "To whom are you going to sell agricultural products and the fruits of noble in dustry? Only to Italians? Never to foreigners? Do you want to make Italy a closed market?"

*In his capacity of Minister of Marine, Il Duce announced, last week, the impending construction of two new Italian 10,000-ton cruisers, two scout ships, four destroyers, five submarines.