Gentlemen & Guttersnipes

Last month 350 graduate students from 26 assorted Italian universities arrived in the U. S. for a grand sightseeing and goodwill tour of U. S. colleges. Before they sailed back to Italy last week, they had visited no less than 35 campuses and provided the country with an interesting litmus-paper test on the political and educational ideas of Benito Mussolini.

Prevailing official opinion on each campus was that the visitors should be received as guests, regardless of their political views. Most U. S. students who were interested enough to have any attitude at all accepted this gentlemanly one without question. In sizable cities there were usually four or five hotheads who bawled "Down with Fascism!" in the visitors' hearing, but no smalltown collegian so far forgot his manners.

At Princeton a lone townsman cried "Down with Mussolini!" in the midst of a reception, was jostled by students, escorted off the campus.

At Harvard the pinko National Students League protested to President Conant, but allowed the visitors to tour Cambridge in peace.

At Yale three radical clubs addressed a long protest to President Angell. But there were only eleven antiFascists waiting outside University Dining Hall to chorus "A basso il Fascismo!" These the Italians proceeded to pummel into silence.

Not until the visitors reached Manhattan last week did their political creed make really riotous headlines. At New York University a crowd of students gathered outside the Hall of Fame, yelled "To Hell with Fascism!" The Italians marched out, cheerfully drowned the hecklers with a chant of "Il Duce! Il Duce! Il Duce! II Duce!" Policemen prevented more than a few mild fisticuffs.

At teeming College of the City of New York there were loud boos and hisses as the Italians marched into a convocation of 3,000 students. Snapped President Frederick Bertrand Robinson: "The conduct of some of you is worse than that of guttersnipes!"

A student stood up on the platform, began: "I only wish to bring a message to the enslaved Italian students who are being tricked. ..." A professor shoved him from the microphone. While the guttersnipes joyfully rose to join battle with their gentlemanly fellows, the visiting Italians were quietly led out a back door. The brawl lasted 15 minutes. Afterward 1,000 students met in the college stadium for a rousing Fascist-cursing rally. Eleven ringleaders were suspended from college.

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