ITALY: Engine

Dictator Mussolini who in 1922 covered the abortive Conference of Cannes as an ordinary journalist received in Palazzo Venezia last week Webb Miller of the United Press who was also at the Cannes Conference, last year covered the war in Ethiopia. The two men had not met for five years and Mr. Miller found Dictator Mussolini “more mild . . . more genial. . . . His hair has thinned noticeably. . . . Commenting on his obvious appearance of health, I asked Mussolini to permit me to publish his personal rules for conserving his mental and physical health under constant strain.”

Understanding readily from Mr. Miller that a majority of his countrymen much prefer to read what a Dictator eats and whether he is constipated, to dissertations on the problems of Statesman Mussolini and his country, Il Duce, who was wearing his ski costume plus a shirt, sat down and played the great U. S. news game of Ask Me Another Personal Question:

Q. Have you suffered from illness lately? A. I was sick in 1925. Since then I have not lost a single day. At the first symptom of any kind of indisposition I fast for at least 24 hours. Out of my organism I have made an engine, constantly supervised and controlled, which runs with absolute regularity.

Q. Do you follow a fixed diet, and if so, what? A. My rules of diet are fixed in the sense that I am almost exclusively vegetarian.

Q. Do you make use of alcohol or tobacco? A. I consider alcohol damaging to the health of individuals and to collective health. I am not against the moderate use of tobacco, but as far as I am concerned, I never drink hard liquor. I sometimes drink a little wine at official dinners, but since the World War I have never smoked.

Q. Do you take tea or coffee or any stimulating drink? A. I do not take tea or coffee, but sometimes drink an infusion of linden leaves or tilleul. For those who labor physically the moderate use of wine is useful.

Q. What are your habits regarding sleeping? A. I sleep between seven and eight hours a night regularly, between 11 p. m. and 7 a. m. I fall asleep at once, no matter what I have done or what has happened to me during the day. I use no expedients to invite sleep and take no siesta during the day. Siestas are the consequence of overeating at lunching.