Salute

North-of-Europe cartoonists have been making sport of the Italo-Papal Treaty & Concordat ever since it was signed (TIME, Feb. 18). The idea that Dictator Mussolini purposes to use the Catholic Church as a sword of conquest was cartooned lately with savage power in Amsterdam's Notenkraker (Nut Cracker), much to the satisfaction of super-Protestant Netherlanders (see cut). Other cartoonists have drawn Pope Pius XI in a Fascist black shirt and Mussolini with the Papal Tiara perched on his rather bald head. The caricatured insinuation is always that His Holiness and His Excellency are reprehensibly in cahoots. Last week in the Vatican Gardens occurred a scene which made the scurrilous inkmen rub their stained hands with glee. Some 150 prominent Fascists, members of the Royal Automobile Club, had mo tored down from Milan to assist at the presentation to Pope Pius of a second new and sumptuous limousine (TIME, May 6). Senator Silvio Crespi, as President of the Club, raised the automobile's hood and briefly pointed out to His Holiness such mysterious gadgets as spark plugs, dual carburetors. Lastly came the scene which delighted cartoonists. Facing Pope Pius, all the 150 motorists simultaneously executed the Fascist salute, right arms upraised and ex tended rigidly at a 45DEG angle. While they stood thus. His Holiness extended his own right hand in the gesture of Apostolic benediction.