ITALY: Grandpapa

Birth of a son in Shanghai last week to Edda, Countess Ciano (nee Mussolini) made // Duce for the first time a grandparent. Parent Count Ciano is the Italian consul at Shanghai. In Rome last week virile, vigorous Grandpa Mussolini:

Stopped speculation for the decline on Italian exchanges by a decree empowering the Ministry of Finance to seize profiteering bear traders, send them either to jail or to hard labor on Lipari Island.

Boosted for Britain, with whom his relations are close & friendly, by stating:

“It is certain that with what others owe her and her great foreign investments scattered all over the world, England has enough to call herself safe. . . . Sterling is more likely to hold its own and return to normal than many other things in this depressed world.”

Liquidated the last remnant of the Vatican v. Fascism quarrel of last June by ruling that members of the Fascist Party may again belong to the Catholic clubs Azione Cattolica and vice versa. Spurred Italy’s rapidly expanding mer chant marine by inducing all the larger Italian lines to merge last week into a new operating trust, the Lloyd Orientale. The mammoth merged fleet includes Vulcania (Cosulich), the Conte Grande and Conte Biancamano (Lloyd Sabaudo). Rumor named Count Costanzo Ciano. Minister of Communications and father-in-law of Daughter Edda. as the destined board chairman of Lloyd Orientale, thus making Italy’s entire merchant marine a Mussolini-Ciano family affair. Expanded plans for the loth anniversary (next year) of Fascism’s March on Rome to include “the greatest assemblage of armed forces that the Eternal City has seen for two milleniums!” Grandiose, this expansion took place at a session of the Fascist Grand Council in that intoxicating chamber at the Palazzo Yenezia, Grandpa Mussolini’s “World Map Room.”