"Who? Who?" "You! You!"

ITALY

"Who? Who?"

"You! You!"

Completing his swing around northern Italy (TIME, May 26) Signer Benito Mussolini drove his roaring Alpha Romeo into the small town of Sesto San Giovanni last week, removed his dusty cap and goggles, was soon addressing a throng of workmen.

"To whom belongs the Italy of Labor and Fascismo?" he cried.

"To us!" shouted the workers. "Very true," agreed the sagacious Duce, "and therefore Fascismo teaches you this!--never to consider your interest as separate from the national interest! If the nation were poor the working class would be poor. But the nation is powerful, and our working class is respected throughout the entire world!"

Warming to his speech, he fired another question: "Who in 1923 established the eight-hour day as the fundamental law of the state?"

The workers knew the answer: "Il Duce! IL DUCE!!!"

"Correct! " cried the Dictator, then asked who had increased old age pensions, created the subsidy for working women about to have children, established obligatory worker insurance against tuberculosis. To his "who? who? who?" they answered in effect "you! you! you!"

"Open your newspapers!" was Il Duce's next sally. "Open this morning's newspapers and read how . . an English Minister in the Labor Government resigned because he did not know how to solve the most tormenting problem of potent Great Britain: unemployment! They have nearly 2,000,000 unemployed!

"Italian workers! If anybody should tell you that elsewhere, beyond our frontiers, there is a reign of abundance, he would be a liar, and knowingly a liar!"

At Milan, where Fascismo was founded, where his wife lives, where he once edited the family newspaper Il Popolo D'ltalia (now edited by Brother Arnaldo Mussolini), Il Duce cried:

"When we Fascisti were few we had to fight in the public squares. Before the people knew us we needed much moral and physical courage. From this glorious past we are emerging to realize a more glorious future. Europe, tormented, uneasy and disheartened, will not find its salvation except through the coming of Fascism."

In a final Milan speech of the week (to cheering War veterans) Benito Mussolini clawed his French critics tooth & nail, flayed the Paris newspapers which objected to the speech fortnight ago in which Il Duce cried, "though words are beautiful things, muskets, machine guns, ships, airplanes and cannon are much more beautiful things!" (TIME, May 26).

Referring to the French he observed, "never was a clearer spectacle of human hypocrisy seen. It would appear that only in Italy are there airplanes, because elsewhere quite obviously there are only innocent tissue paper kites. Only Italy is so arrogant as to possess a fleet for war purposes, because other nations have ships only for fishing or for taking pleasure trips.

"You know that the truth is profoundly different. If all other nations are armed, one cannot understand why only Italy should remain unarmed, or should not arm within the limits of reason."

In another Milan speech, on the 15th anniversary of Italy's declaration of war on Germany, Il Duce flayed M. Aristide Briand's scheme for a European Union (formerly called "United States of Europe") (TIME, May 26). As master of Italy he alluded to the French peace prize winner as a tiresome old after-dinner speaker, and so worked upon his 100,000 Fascist hearers that they made the Milan welkin ring with shouts of "Down with France!"

By frowns and gestures the Dictator tried to change this bellicose tune, but the crowd only yelled louder. Gem of the speech (delivered amid frantic huzzahs): "I am Chief and Creator! Let fly your flags and muskets!"

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