ITALY: Answer to Sanctions

Of stratagems peculiar to Benito Mussolini, most typical is what he calls “changing the guard.” A Finance Minister at the zenith of successful budgeting is abruptly returned to his private business, as was Count Volpi. A national hero like Atlantic-soaring Italo Balbo is swept off to rule an African province. Last week such a jolt came even to one of the “Four Men,” the original Quadrumvirs who led the March on Rome while Mussolini gave orders from 400 miles away in Milan.

The Quadrumvir jolted last week up to the Army’s highest rank of Marshal and into retirement was goat-bearded, rheumy-eyed but able and sagacious old General Emilio de Bono. Under this Original Fascist the flower of Italy’s hottest-headed youthful volunteers have gone out to Africa, avenged the 19th Century “Shame of Aduwa” and occupied some 10,000 sq. mi. The combination of young hotheads in the van with a very old Fascist behind them has been either extremely odd or touched with genius. Enemies of the Dictator have accused him of sending first to fight in Africa mercurial youths whom it was becoming difficult to control at home. And if the adventure had gone badly the Italian Army could have borne with equanimity the disgrace of Old de Bono.

Trailing his glory Old de Bono is now replaced by the Army’s idol and the King’s close friend. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, greatest of Italy’s surviving World War commanders and in 1928, when Mussolini had been Dictator for six years, created Marquis of the Sabotino, the mountain he captured in August 1916 during the Battle of Gorizia. In November 1917 he was made the public goat of Italy’s most inglorious rout at Caporetto, but within the Army his Kudos as a commander did not evaporate and he became sole Sub-Chief-of-Staff under Italian Commander in Chief General Diaz.

General Badoglio is said to have telegraphed allied Generalissimo Ferdinand Foch, in November 1918, in a code to which he knew the Germans had the key, a bluff proposal for a terrifying offensive on five fronts. Three hours after Foch telegraphed his approval in the same code, the Germans sued for Armistice.

Notice to Mutineers. Marshal Badoglio was sent to Africa last month by the Dictator to inspect particularly the Northern Front under Old de Bono’s command (TIME, Oct. 28). He also visited the Southern Front on which General Graziani has been forging up toward Harar and Ethiopia’s only railway, returned to Rome fortnight ago. Gossip has had General Graziani vexed by Old de Bono’s reluctance to send him as many troops as he has asked for. What the dashing General in the South might not listen to from the Qtiadrnmvir, he will presumably, as a professional soldier, listen to with greatest respect from Marshal Badoglio, who was named last week Commander in Chief of all Italy’s forces in East Africa and High Commissioner for her colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Two days after his appointment Marshal Badoglio and his two officer sons, Paolo and Mario, took ship for Africa.

Naturally the Italian public hopes for more rapid and sweeping conquests under Marshal Badoglio, particularly since the hot youths of Italy’s first contingents have now been joined by large forces of regular Army troops, but strategists and tacticians agree that the only practicable course in Ethiopia is that of comparatively slow advances followed by much weary roadbuilding. In Eritrea last week Italian road-builders read in the Fascist daily of Asmara, Il Quotidiano Eritreo: “Those who would give even the slightest thought to mutiny must be informed that their identification and deportment cards would receive black marks and that police and the authorities at home would be notified of their impending return to Italy before their arrival there.”

Picturesque Old de Bono used to be the focus of highest-powered anti-Fascist accusations in which he figured as a grey-haired Hell-raiser who was one of the murderers of the Socialist millionaire Matteotti and in 1927 was only prevented from deposing the King by the arrival of four regiments sent by Marshal Badoglio. Formal inquiry by the Italian Senate cleared him of complicity in the Matteotti affair and the “plot” against the Throne could be considered a figment of anti-Fascist imaginations last week when His Majesty raised Old de Bono to the rank of Marshal.

The fact that “Mussolini’s war” is now to be conducted in the field by perhaps the King’s most trusted Army friend meant that the Throne, the Army and the. Dictator chose to demonstrate last week their extremest solidarity as Italy’s answer to Sanctions.