General Out of Range

Long accustomed to getting in and out of trouble on battlefield and lecture platform, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler U. S. M. C. dodged out of danger last week, popped back to safety. In a letter to Secretary of the Navy Adams he deplored that his remarks before Philadelphia's Contemporary Club--in which he told a story of Prime Minister Mussolini's streaking heedlessly on after running down a small child with his raceabout (TIME, Feb. 9)--had "caused embarrassment to the Government." He had understood, he said, that his talk would be "confined to the limits of the four walls." Instead of court-martial, the Navy Department then decided to administer this small slice of humble pie: ''You are informed . . . that the Navy Department cannot express too clearly its disapproval of the conduct of any officer of the naval establishment in making remarks which tend to embarrass the international relations of the Government. Such action on the part of an officer of your rank and length of service merits and receives the unqualified condemnation of the Navy Department and for their utterance, which you admit, you are hereby reprimanded." Observers thought they perceived the hand of the State Department in this outcome. A court-martial would inevitably have raised the unpleasant question: Did Mussolini or did he not hit & run?

Meantime, pictures of Mussolini in his raceabout appeared all over the world last week, except in Italy. Manhattan's hotly anti-Fascist 77 Nuovo Hondo published a letter from an unnamed Italian fixing the time of the alleged accident at 2:30 p. m., Sept. 14, 1930. Excerpt: "Everybody knows about the case at San Quirito, yet no one has the courage to speak of it.

. . . All present had been cursing II Duce, but all observed a politic silence before the officers save Pullucca and Pazzerini, who stupidly repeated that they recognized II Duce. . . . The child died the next day, but of the men not 'hide nor hair' has been seen since that time."

Having already evidenced its satisfaction at the State Department's prompt apology for the Butler speech--although General Butler has yet to apologize personally--the Italian Government continued to consider the incident closed.

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