Comforts to Come

Fortnight ago Secretary General Achille ("The Panther Man") Starace of the Italian Fascist Party prowled through the halls of the Palazzo Littorio, Fascist headquarters in Rome, in an ugly mood. He called in the Party's trained mob-prompters and furiously dressed them down for an event which might have passed unnoticed by the outside world had Signor Starace not made such a fuss.

The incident occurred during a Mussolini speech to the pick of his Blackshirts, assembled in Rome from all over Italy's knee, shin, heel and toe. The Blackshirts were on a jaunt. All expenses to and from Rome had been paid. In their pockets were fine crisp bank notes, "prizes" for Fascist merits, ranging from 500 to 2,000 lire. All this conspired to confuse them when Il Duce rhetorically touched on the subject of self-sacrifice. Confidently expecting a negative answer, he threw back his head and bellowed: "Do you want riches? Do you want glory? Do you want honors?" Their eyes bulging with the prospect of more booty, the Blackshirts cried as one man: "YES! YES! YES!"

Taken aback, Orator Mussolini cleared his throat, changed the subject and went on, but the heart had gone out of the act. The speech over, the Blackshirts, innocent of their error and still warm with the thought of comforts to come, hurried out and treated the town to a mass souse such as Rome has not seen since the days of Caligula.

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