Bread fot Skeptics

In his own Press Benito Mussolini is the Benevolent Dictator who sees all, knows all, weighs every complaint and is never wrong. Last week Italian papers reached Manhattan with accounts of the "challenge to Mussolini" flung down by an oldster named Pietro Savio of 25 Via Calabria, Rome.

Wrote Pietro Savio to the Dictator: "Duce:

"In your address to the Chamber of Deputies in which you touched on the decrease in the cost of living you said that in Rome one may buy bread for as little as 1.30 lire per kilo [about 5-c- per pound] and you added I have bought it myself.'

"Now for my own economy and for that of many, many others, could you be so kind as to let me know who sells bread at such a price--or better yet, to make public his address?"

Day after this question testing Benito Mussolini's veracity was received, his son-in-law and Chief Press Officer, Count Ciano, retorted with the following release to all Italian papers:

"As soon as the letter from Savio had been read, the Duce sent out one of his secretaries, ONE ENTIRELY UNKNOWN TO THE GREAT MASS OF THE PUBLIC, who came back with the following report to the Duce: 'To Signor Pietro Savio. 72 years of age, born in Turin, ex-contractor, unable to work because of advanced age, now living at 25 Via Calabria, there has been communicated that the bread at 1.30 per kilo was bought by the Duce from the bakery of Antonio Menichini, at No. 78 Via Alessandria.

'' 'There has also been presented to Savio a sample of the bread in question and there have also been indicated to him three other places near his home where he can buy his bread at the amount stated.

" 'Savio is a widower and enjoys a small pension for the loss of two sons during the war. He has six children, five of whom live by themselves, each giving him some small assistance. The sixth is an unmarried girl, unemployed, who lives with her parent. Pays his rent regularly. Is of good conduct.'

"We believe that a series of major and greater satisfactions could not have touched Mr. Savio: he has been able to find that, first, his letter reached the Duce and was read by him; second, that bread is really sold at 1.30 lire per kilo; and third, that Mussolini--and this is said for the benefit of all the doubting thomases, great or small--makes no statements, especially on subjects such as these, that he does not personally rigidly verify.

"This points a moral to all the skeptics, the incredulous, the vociferators, and to sum up, the eternally dissatisfied."

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