Gentlemen of Verona

Clever at currying favor with Il Duce is Verona's obsequious Prefect Roberto Lops. Last week he industriously circularized the Fascist gentlemen of Verona, urged them to sign a petition conceived to tickle the vanity of all-potent Benito Mussolini.

"Something must be done to check the ever increasing indecency of women's dress," wrote Prefect Lops, and went on to declare that, although both Pope Pius XI and Queen Helena of Italy have condemned short skirts and bare arms, results have been meager if not lacking. "However, who can doubt," concluded fulsome Prefect Lops, "that an order from our beloved Duce would be obeyed UNHESITATINGLY by every woman in Italy?"

Unhesitatingly some 10,000 gentlemen of Verona signed last week Roberto Lops's petition begging Benito Mussolini to order that: 1) Women's dresses must not be translucent, close fitting or low cut. 2) Elbows must be covered. 3) Stockings must be some other color than "flesh." 4) Skirts for "young girls" must extend below the knee, for "young ladies" below the calf.

In Vatican City last week the sharp-eyed nuns who now inspect the costumes of women about to be received in papal audience,* refused to pass the wife and daughter of Panama's distinguished Foreign Minister J. Demostenes Arosemena. Flushed and embarrassed these ladies hastily sought a modiste not far from the Vatican, bought gowns with longer skirts and sleeves, returned, were passed by the nuns, knelt and received the blessing of Achille Ambrogio Damiano Ratti, Pontifex Maximus, Pope Pius XI.

*By a recent Papal decree, nuns have supplanted priests as inspectors of feminine attire in the Vatican in the belief that nuns would be "less indulgent of impropriety."