The Fateful Hills

It was almost like old times. The post cards had gone out, demanding attendance at another "spontaneous" rally. Students and party hacks clustered before a cheer leader directly under the lofty balcony.

The chant "Doo-chay, Doo-chay, Doo-chay I" urged Mussolini to make an ap pearance. He did. For the first time since Dec. 11, 1941, he lifted up his chin and spoke in the Piazza Venezia.

"It was seven years ago," he boomed, "that we were gathered here in the square to celebrate the conclusion of a campaign during which we defied the world and opened new avenues of civilization."

That was the time--May 5, 1936--when Italian legions completed their conquest of Ethiopia. Then Mussolini had bidden his proud followers to "lift up their standards, their weapons and their hearts and greet the new empire which after 15 centuries again reappears upon the fateful hills of Rome."

Now Mussolini admitted "hard times." In just seven years, his new empire had disappeared again, perhaps for centuries. Once again the King-Emperor was only a King. The Via Mussolini in Addis Ababa had already been renamed Churchill Road. But Mussolini did not speak of that.

As "God is just and Italy is immortal," said Mussolini, the Italian empire is not dead, it is "simply interrupted." "I say, I feel," he said, "that millions of Italians suffer from an indefinable sickness that one calls the African illness."

The 100,000 Fascisti chanted "Doo-chay, "Doo-chay, Doo-chay I" as before. But they were not distracted from the ills at home. At week's end Mussolini's new party secretary, Carlo Scorza, sickeningly aware of impending invasion, offered the Italian people a prescription to be taken internally. Said he:

"Should we fall, we must fall with dignity and honor."

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