Foreign News: National Rice Day

Not content with waging a ruthless “battle of wheat” (TIME, Oct. 24), Premier Benito Mussolini ordered a “national rice day” for Nov. 1. Apparently, on that day all good Italians must live like Chinese—on rice. For the edification of the spaghetti-eating populace, Il Duce explained that rice day was in reality a supporting attack in the “battle of wheat,” which is being fought to make Italy a cereally self-sufficient country, by reducing the imports of that grain. Rice, he went on, can be raised in Italy on large tracts of land now available.