"Journalism Is Life."

Taking after their father, Master Vittorio Mussolini, 14, and Master Bruno Mussolini, 12, have tackled journalism as their first big job. At Rome they publish La Penna del Ragazzi (The Boys' Pen), weekly.

With his boy's pen Master Bruno dashed off a short story, "The Vessel of the Dead." Hair raising, it resembles (except for lack of sex motive) Il Duce's own lurid serial The Cardinal's Mistress,* penned while he was helping to edit a Socialist sheet.

Master Vittorio last year completed a gripping novel, The Blackhand, which dealt with combats in New York between the U. S. Coast Guard and blackhanders. Now older and wiser, he pens improving editorials, weighty leading articles.

" . . . Journalism is life," he pontificated last week in No. 16 of the weekly. ". . . This new number, which makes a step ahead ... is a great journalistic advance on all our previous issues. . . . There are 5,000 high-school students in Rome alone, and it is right that they should have their own organ. . . . Therefore you should help us."

For the best set of guesses by high-school students as to which Italian football team will win which games, Master Vittorio will award prizes. He is his own movie reviewer, conducts a stamp collectors column, prints jokes and puzzles.

In Shanghai, China, big Sister Edda, Countess Ciano, is the wife of the Italian Consul General. In Milan, doughty Uncle Arnaldo Mussolini edits the family paper, Il Popolo d'ltalia. Also in Milan, little Sister Anna Maria teethes.

"I Knew Mussolini When. . . ."

Fresh from a "conversation," not a quoting "interview' with Dictator Benito Mussolini, a U. S. journalist wrote as follows in a letter received last week:

"This time, meeting Mussolini was like being granted an audience by a King. . . . He looked tired and worn. His clothes were wrinkled and he needed a second shave. . . .

"Just ten years before we were both reporters on the same story. It was at Cannes during the famous Cannes Conference. He was covering the story for Popolo d'ltalia of Milan, of which he was then editor. I was manager of the Paris bureau and was covering it for the United Press. At that time Mussolini was practically unknown outside Italy. He scurried around with the rest of us with notebook and pencil, gathering items from Lloyd George, Briand and Lord Riddell. None of us paid him any attention. Certainly none could have foreseen that in a few years he would be one of the world's outstanding figures. He had already started organizing the Fascists, but little was known of the organization abroad.

"I recall once when we were gathered around Lord Riddell, who was British press liaison officer, a British correspondent asked Riddell what was the nature of the new organization called Fascists in Italy. Riddell said: 'Oh, so far as I know, just a gang of roughs.' Mussolini was on the outskirts of the group and glared at Riddell. Someone jogged Riddell's arm and whispered that the chief of the Fascists was there. Riddell looked disconcerted and added: 'But I suppose they are all right in their way.'

"When I reminded Mussolini of our Cannes meeting he laughed, put his arm around my shoulder and said: 'Times have changed.' He speaks English rather well now. . . ."

The U. S. journalist was Webb Miller of United Press, famed for his candid coverage of Gandhite salt riots and police beatings in India (TIME, June 2).

Sold: $132,000

When two great & good friends of Mayor William Hale Thompson were named receivers for the moribund Chicago Evening Post some weeks ago, it was popularly presumed that the Post would become a Thompson-yawper (TIME, Feb. 16). Put up at public auction last week, the Post became no such thing. It was bought for $132,000 by youthful, personable, go-getting Knowlton Lyman Ames Jr., publisher of the Chicago Journal of Commerce. Only other bidder was Hearst's Evening American.

The Journal of Commerce was to be moved into the Post building on West Wacker Drive, but there was to be no merger of the papers. Publisher Ames planned to continue the Post (which for 30 years had lost money for Chain-publisher John Charles Shaffer), as a clean conservative daily with perhaps more emphasis than before on financial news. Its 48.000 circulation is trifling compared to the others in the evening field--Hearst's Evening American (530,000), Walter A. Strong's News (422,000), even the infant tabloid Illustrated Times (153,000). But it is almost wholly "class."

About ten years ago the Journal of Commerce was acquired by young Ames' father, a second cousin of Ambassador Charles Gates Dawes, a utility tycoon and president of Booth Fisheries Co. To college men of the Golden Nineties, short, wiry Ames Sr. will always be known as "Snake" Ames, for the way he would slither, eel-hipped, through whole Yale football teams for dear old Princeton. Young Knowlton, 37, tall and rangy, is sometimes called "Snake" by his father's friends, but more often "Junior." He too played football at Princeton ('17) but did not star; he did shine at baseball. A second son, John Dawes Ames, 27, associated with "Junior" in the Journal of Commerce and Post, was a Princeton golf captain.

A terrifically hard worker, Ames Jr. has been almost entirely responsible for the success of the Journal of Commerce, of which he was made president last October. Without previous publishing experience, he applied himself rigorously, for years rejected practically all social invitations to spend his evenings at the office, seeing his paper to bed.

Two years ago "Junior's" ability caught the eye of John Daniel Hertz, taxicab tycoon, who persuaded him to take the presidency of Yellow Cab Co. of Chicago upon Mr. Hertz's retirement. For a time, while a bitter and somewhat bloody war was being waged between Yellow and Checker Cab drivers, Ames was driven about by a huge chauffeur, armed to the teeth. But in a very few months after Yellow was taken over by Parmelee Transportation Co., "Junior" resigned. He became Chicago chief of a financial wire service, but the Journal of Commerce needed him, and he returned to it.

Ultraconservative, even reactionary in editorial tone, the Journal of Commerce is to the Midwest what the Wall Street Journal is to Manhattan. Its columns are leavened by condensed general news des patches, sports and dramatic reviews, but it does not attempt to compete with comprehensive dailies. Advertisers like it as an economical medium for reaching a definite class of high purchasing power (circ. 24,118).

*Purchasable at all good drug stores; Bonibooks, 50-c-.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.