Foreign News: Greatest Triumph

When the blame for the atrocious murder of the millionaire Socialist Deputy Giacomo Matteotti, was laid by public opinion upon prominent Fascists and nearly wrecked the Fascist Party (TIME, June 23, 1924), Mussolini uttered a prophesy pregnant with meaning: “When the slayers of Matteotti are tried, the trial will be the Fascisti’s greatest triumph.”

After 18 months of delay the Crown Prosecutor has now completed his case, “having assembled more than 30 large volumes of evidence.” He asserts that the murder was “unpremeditated”; therefore three prominent Fascists* who were being held on charges of having “instigated the assassins” are automatically to be freed as incapable of guilt.

Of the six men who are alleged to have kidnaped Matteotti and murdered him, five have been captured by the police. The Crown Prosecutor appears to consider that the sixth man has permanently vanished, and he has announced his intention of trying the other five for “unpremeditated murder.” Presumably they will all swear that the sixth and missing man is the real murderer.

As the legal preparation of the defense begins only after the Crown Prosecutor has “completed his case,” a delay of many months must ensue before the actual trial can take place. And as the day of reckoning is put off, public resentment is dwindling and the guilty stand an even better chance of going free.

Observers remarked that the progress of the trial thus far is already a great triumph for Fascismo.

*They are Cesare Rossi, onetime head of the Press Bureau of the Ministry of the Interior ; Giuseppe Marinelli, onetime Treasurer of the Fascist Party; and Filippo Filippelli, onetime editor of the Corriere Italiano, Fascist newspaper. All are close friends of Mttssolini.