Benito to Balboland

ITALY

A dowager decked with diamonds is like a Great Power decked with colonies, because she is convinced that she has to have them and it often makes her angry to be asked why. Arid as diamonds is most of the Italian colony of Libya, for most of it consists of desert sands (see map, p. 23), but no Italian would dream of not defending this colonial diadem in case of need, and to Libya steamed last week nearly half the Royal Italian Navy to escort suitably and later be reviewed by His Excellency Benito Mussolini, Leader of the Party and Head of the State.

When Rome correspondents are asked by editors abroad to scratch their heads and name an Italian who might be considered "Mussolini's rival" they generally name the Governor-General of Libya, His Excellency Grand Councilman Italo Balbo. Reason: Balbo led a mighty mass formation flight of Italian planes in 1933 to Chicago's Century of Progress Exposition and it is logical to suppose that the Lindbergh publicity he thus won "made Mussolini jealous," had its sequel when Il Duce packed him off out of the world's limelight to rule Libya. Last month Colonel & Mrs. Charles Augustus Lindbergh flew to be guests of Airman Balbo in his sand-strewn Balboland--and nearly escaped all publicity. In Rome the school of opinion close to Mussolini has it that the Dictator thought what Balbo needed was not more publicity and a swelled head but tough, responsible, empire-building work likely to forge his wild daring into the mold of a mature Italian statesman. The typical Sunday supplement story has Balbo "banished to Libya," whereas Tripoli is only seven hours from Rome by the daily Italian air service and Governor Balbo continues to set foot in the Eternal City every few months, recently attended the Roman wedding of Son Vittorio Mussolini (TIME, Feb. 15). Last week the Dictator's inspection trip to Balboland again made the life of Balbo news.

Italo Balbo was born of prosperous parents June 6, 1896 in the ancient city of Ferrara. A hothead from the first, Italo enlisted at only 19 to fight for Italy during the World War, soon collared medals for "conspicuous valor." When Gabriele d'Annunzio defied the Peace Conference and President Wilson with his quixotic move to seize Fiume and make it Italian, one of the practical young fighters who enabled the poet to succeed in his at first foolhardy, then brilliant coup was Balbo.

In 1919 Balbo took to Fascism and the leadership of Mussolini with verve and recklessness, organizing Fascist locals and presently leading Blackshirts to storm and capture the then-Socialist stronghold of Ravenna. At the time of the decisive March on Rome in 1922 he was only 26 but already a Fascist Militia General, one of the historic Quadrumvirs who entered Rome in the actual March, directed by Editor Mussolini by telegraph from the office of Popolo d'ltalia which is still the Dictator's family newspaper. Queerest thing about the entire coup was that, like Hitler's in 1933, it was "perfectly legal," with popular votes and delegated representatives of the people supporting in Chamber & Senate the new Cabinet presently formed by Mussolini as Premier.

In 1924 the too-violent Balbo resigned command of the Fascist Militia. Il Duce tucked him away as Undersecretary of National Economy, and he might have stayed in this sackcloth & ashes of atonement indefinitely had he not managed to wangle over to the Ministry of Aviation with his same rank of Undersecretary. Aviation and Balbo being what they are, this fiery Fascist soon got up so much momentum in the Air Service that in 1928 he skyrocketed to the rank of full "General of Air," next year entered the Mussolini Cabinet as its youngest member (33) as Air Minister. New Minister Balbo immediately removed Italy's three greatest air heroes of that time--de Bernardi, Ferrarino and de Pinedo--entirely from the public eye and from feats of air prowess, assassinated their fame to such an extent that today who remembers their names?

Under the new Air Minister, aviation's fighting arm, as well as Italian commercial aviation, took giant strides. In mass formation flights, personalty led by the Air Minister, Italy began to excel more spectacularly each year. The name of Italo Balbo made headlines everywhere, and Dictator Mussolini figured it was about time to give him a taste of what he had given the three Heroes de Bernardi, Ferrarino and de Pinedo.

Nothing proved the mastery of Mussolini in Italy more completely than the way in which he managed to dominate Balbo, loading him with the rank of Air Marshal in reward for his Century of Progress flight, embracing him publicly while ecstatic Romans huzzahed, and then packing him off to be Governor of Libya, puncturing the world bubble of his fame, so that today not everyone remembers Italo Balbo. This sort of abrupt shift Il Duce constantly employs as a method, calls it ""changing the guard," keeps even Fascism's greatest dignitaries ever on the qui vive, for no Cabinet Minister can be sure the next ring on his telephone may not mean promotion, transfer or eclipse.

Libya is more than twice, as big as Texas, seven times larger than Italy, but it has not a single river, and the poor people live mainly on dates and date paste. Of the 700.000 inhabitants some 500,000 are Mohammedans, about a third of these Negroes. Jews number about 27,000, Italians some 36,000, and sporadic nomads account for the rest. That Italy owns Libya she owes to her famed Socialist, the late Giovanni Giolitti, who was five times Premier, staged the Libyan War in 1911. He was hotly accused by moderates and conservatives of "unconstitutional conduct in declaring war without the consent of Parliament," but nothing succeeds like success. After Socialist Giolitti had annexed administration of Libya, from Turkey by the Treaty of Ouchy, enthusiasm in Italy was such as to go a long way toward doubling the Socialist vote in Italy's next election.

When Italy had to spend every lira she could scrape together on the World War, she virtually abandoned Libya and at times enemy German submarines made so bold as to operate openly out of at least one of its harbors.

"New Protector of Islam!" With Dictator Mussolini to Libya last week on his first visit since 1926 traveled among other Italian Cabinet members Minister for Press Dino Alfieri, and every dispatch was thoroughly censored. Significantly passed by this Fascist censorship was New York Herald Tribune Correspondent John T. Whitaker's immediate observation that Libya is "a colony ridiculed, even in Italy, as a 'sandpile.' "

This tart remark did not vex Dictator Mussolini for the reason that Libya in his mind, as he showed clearly in his acts and words last week, is important only from a strategic point of view. In the new Italian Empire's naval, military, aeronautic and political relations with Great Britain and the Islamic world it is vitally important.

Italy has not the money to match Britain's sudden $7,500,000,000 rearmament play on the European board, but the Mediterranean off Sicily is still narrow, and Italian operations from Libya, from the recently strongly fortified Italian island of Pantelleria, and from Italy itself can attempt with some prospect of success to cut, in these "narrow seas," the important British direct sea lane to India via the Suez Canal. The 500,000 Mohammedans in Libya are a lever handy to Il Duce for stirring up anti-British agitation in India, Palestine and other British lands heavily Mohammedan. During the Sanctions period this kind of Italian propaganda scored to such an extent that in Rome some of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's most earnest protests through the British Ambassador were about this, rather than about the wrongs and sufferings of Ethiopia. Finally, during the Sanctions period, Governor Italo Balbo-- rushed work on several Libyan highways from which Italian troops massed for months at points menacing British positions in Egypt and the Sudan. It was a serious matter for Britain last week that, as the Italian fleet bringing Il Duce neared Tobruk (which is only 60 miles from Egypt), the 500,000 Mohammedans of Libya were plentifully supplied with a Balbo proclamation in which their governor exhorted: "Hail and give cordial greetings to the Grand Protector of Islam . . . His Excellency Benito Mussolini . . . the Defender of the Prestige of Rome which is the Common Mother of All Mediterranean Peoples!" "Not One Cent for Tribute!" Awed natives, peering seaward & skyward, saw a shining fleet of fast Italian cruisers, none over seven years old, and as Italian bombers roared aloft the natives counted 100 war birds of the new Grand Protector of Islam.

Mohammedan reporters, permitted in Libya to wear the red fez banned in Turkey, found themselves the very people Benito Mussolini seemed most anxious to meet, handshake and take with him on his tour. Apparently Il Duce feared no such bomb as recently wounded his Viceroy to Ethiopia (TIME, March 1), for last week the Dictator, head thrown back, took several strutting walks along the fringe of great Mohammedan crowds which duly raised frantic cheers.

Next, popping into an airplane, Dictator Mussolini flew to Amseat on the Egyptian frontier. There, where a 200-mi. barbed-wire Egyptian boundary fence begins its southern sweep, he inaugurated the Balbo-built "Greatest Highway in Africa," 1,200 miles of macadamized strategic coastal road, over which Il Duce soon would drive back westward to Tripoli, the colonial capital. Before setting out he first inspected elaborate underground fortifications along the coast and flew from Tobruk to Derna, a name stirring to every historically-minded U. S. Marine.

U. S. President Thomas Jefferson 132 years ago decided to uphold the doctrine of "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" with reference to the Barbary Pirates, one of whose chief bases was Derna. These pirates made but a modest living out of Mediterranean shipping. The British & Continentals considered it cheaper to pay moderate tribute than to go to the expense of routing such reasonable pirates. Not so President Jefferson. While the importance of landing the U. S. Marines in 1805 at Derna should not be overemphasized, it was a bold stroke and gave Europe a foretaste of the kind of issue on which Americans will fight. Last week Benito Mussolini did not fail to stand at Derna in respectful, silent tribute at the monument of that onetime Connecticut schoolteacher who led the Marines in their glorious onslaught upon the barbarians of Barbary, a hero whose name many U. S. schoolchildren once knew, Captain William Eaton. Under his leader ship and the Stars & Stripes, the capture of Derna was made by 10 U. S. Marines, 38 Greeks and 400 Arab mercenaries.

In an instantaneous shift last week from Jeffersonian history to the Mohammedan present, Dictator Mussolini received the homage of an assemblage of tribesmen led by Mohammed Abd-el-Gheder who cried: "All peoples will declare that your visit to Libya has bound the East to the West and has united Islam and Italy! Allah, through you, is restoring peace and pros perity to mankind." Off in a motorcade of 60 cars whirled Mussolini & Balbo, the ten-day program including major Mohammedan homage at the Arch of Triumph* newly erected at the halfway point on the motor road, then opening of the annual Tripoli Sample Fair by Il Duce. a dash by air almost up to the French frontier, a performance of Oedipus Rex in the ancient Roman amphitheatre near Tunisia, and finally a second grand Italian day & night naval review with plenty of Fascist fireworks. Much as onetime Kaiser Wilhelm II used to angle for Islam's applause, Dictator Mussolini is making it a point to visit every important Mohammedan shrine, presenting handsome candelabra to each of Islam's more sacred mosques in Libya.

This week at Cyrene, while Benito Mussolini was reviewing a procession of Mohammedans who rumbled past in their peasant ox carts, cheers caused an ox to break over the traces, and bellowing it charged Il Duce. Italo Balbo and other Fascist bigwigs flung themselves upon the ox, twisting it over by the horns and holding it prostrate, sitting on its head until peasants ran up with ropes, hobbled the ox's feet. Scowling, the Dictator watched. Himself a peasant, he then scathingly reproved the peasant owner of the ox in choice Italian argot for being such a numbskull as not to know how to handle it.

*Inscribed: "Oh beneficent sun, Thou seest nothing greater than the City of Rome."

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