Retreat to Games

Back from the Austrian frontier last week Benito Mussolini withdrew the 50,000 troops, the tanks and field guns that he sent to prevent an Austrian Nazi Putsch after the murder of Engelbert Dollfuss (TIME, Aug. 6). Prince Ernst von Starhemberg, Austrian Vice Chancellor, had just reported in Rome to Il Duce that Austria is now quiet. This week the new Austrian Chancellor, Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg, is due in Italy to attend the annual war games as Premier Mussolini's guest. Last week the Italian troops which marched away from Austria did not march far. Most went back to their original bases at Trieste, Udine, Bolzano, from which they can reach Austria in three hours.

For his war games Il Duce threw two armies, totaling 100,000 men, into the barren rocky country between Bologna and Florence. There the Red army of attack began to hammer a Blue defending force. The object of Italy's General Staff was to test in the nearest approach to battle conditions that they could create all the elaborate mechanical devices with which munitions makers have been whiling away the quiet years. Troops will advance this week under shell barrages. There will be clouds of real tear gas to penalize those slow with their masks. Benito Mussolini is particularly anxious to find out if his newly organized celeri (speedy) divisions are really as efficient as they appear on paper or if the mass of electrically controlled machine guns, trucks, tanks, microphone plane finders and other gadgets with which they are equipped are too complicated for simple Italian soldiers to operate.

Il Duce has another object in this year's maneuvers. He wants to see how his Cabinet will behave in wartime. Every Cabinet Minister with the exception of Minister of Justice Pietro de Francisci was mobilized this week to serve with the troops. Minister of Communications Umberto Puppini will command infantry divisions. Minister of Colonies General Emilio de Bono will serve as a field judge. Minister of Education Francesco Ercole will head field telegraph and radio. Minister of Finance Guido Jung has a regiment of artillery. Hardest job goes to Under Secretary of Corporations Alberto Asquini who will be responsible for one of the still untried celeri divisions. Easiest goes to dapper, foppish Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Fulvio Suvich, whose principal job is to serve as Il Duce's messenger boy at international conferences. He will encase his elegant legs in the breeches of the King's own Lancers, the swank Vittorio Emanuele II Regiment, and spend his time galloping back and forth.

Il Duce himself will dash from post to post to see that all of them are on their toes. The first day of maneuvers caught him in the Futa Pass in the Apppenines just as a regiment of cock-feathered Bersaglieri, the corps in which he served during the War, was passing. Out of his staff jumped Benito to shoulder a rifle and stride along with the column for over a mile. Promptly he amended his orderto his Cabinetnot only to serve with the trrops, but to mix with the trops "to get into the spirit of the men."

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