Recruits for Balilla

Before two members of the Dies House Committee investigating Un-American Activities who went to investigate in Manhattan last week, appeared a small, excitable Italian in grey shirt and black string tie. Girolamo Valenti's mission is to keep Benito Mussolini out of the U. S. He is chairman of the Italian Anti-Fascist Committee, was editor of La Stampa Libra, now defunct. Mr. Valenti told the investigators a startling story about how Mussolini is roping in U. S. school children.

Each summer since 1934, said he, the Italian Government has recruited thousands of boys and girls between 10 and 15, the U. S.-born children of Italian parents, for a trip to Italy. It packs them aboard drip at New York, pays all their expenses. When they arrive in Italy, the children are sent to camps and clapped into the black-shirted uniform of the Balilla, Fascist youth organization. They march in military drills, learn to give the Fascist salute and to sing the praises of Mussolini. After touring Italian cities, where they are banqueted and reviewed by Government officials, back they go to the U. S., devout Fascists all, to awe and convert their neighbors.

Mr. Valenti showed the investigators photographs to confirm his story. But that story was confirmed by records of the Italian Government itself. The Government boasts that today 80,000 children in foreign countries are enrolled in the Balilla. Last year it recruited 18,500 foreign children, of whom some 5,000 were from the U. S. (mainly New York City, Detroit, Pittsburgh and San Francisco), for the summer trip to Italy. Of its $6,500,000 annual budget for propaganda abroad, Italy spends nearly half to support, wholly or partly, some 800 schools, most of which are in the U. S., France and South America. In the U. S., these schools are usually conducted after public-school hours, ostensibly to teach Italian.

Head recruiter for the Balilla in the U. S., charged Mr. Valenti, is one Professor Mario Giani, U. S. director of the Dante Alighieri Society, Government-supported Italian cultural and propaganda agency. Mr. Giani, whose office is in the headquarters of the Italian consulate in Manhattan, has as assistant recruiters, according to Mr. Valenti, Italian consuls, teachers in some U. S. colleges and public schools, pro-Fascist Catholic priests.

New Jersey's Committeeman J. Parnell Thomas (Rep.), unenthusiastic, declined to discuss Mr. Valenti's charges with newspapermen. What really excited committee members who had gone to investigate in Manhattan, he said, was the Federal Writers Project. "It is," said Investigator Thomas, "a hotbed of communism."

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