SOUTHERN THEATRE: Death for Balbo

In a long, camouflage-dappled touring car Benito Mussolini last week ventured, four days after fighting ceased, into the thin slice of Alpine territory which the French, retreating before the Germans, yielded to his soldiers. It was his first visit to French soil since becoming a dictator 18 years ago. More daring last week —and less lucky—was bronze-bearded Air Marshal Italo Balbo, one of Mussolini’s original Quadrumvirate in 1922, “exiled” since 1933 (when he won great publicity for a mass seaplane flight from Rome to Chicago) as Governor and Military Commander of Libya.

Ladies of Lake Forest, Ill. and Long Island, where he was lavishly entertained in 1933, well remember Balbo’s flashing eyes, his bold gallantry, his gladiator physique. He had come a long way, in the social graces, from the fearless ruffian who helped D’Annunzio occupy Fiume and, after Mussolini took Rome, became chief of the Fascist militia, reputed inventor of the castor-oil treatment for obdurate opponents too important to be clubbed or assassinated. When Mussolini let him be Under Secretary for Air in 1926, he modernized Italy’s Air Corps, developed mass-formation flying. For the Chicago flight, Mussolini made him Italy’s only Air Marshal.

Personally piloting a heavy bomber last week on “an official mission,” accompanied by the Consul General of Tripoli, the editor of Il Corriere Padano (Balbo’s newspaper), a Balbo nephew and a brother-in-law, Marshal Balbo was suddenly attacked by machine-gun fire over Tobruch, Italy’s coastal base near the Libya-Egypt border. High in the bright blue African sky his crew of three returned the fire. Holes were sewn down the fuselage of their ship and it caught fire. Down it slid, trailing black oil smoke. It crashed, killing all occupants including the 44-year-old Marshal, most popular candidate to succeed Mussolini as II Duce.

Next day the British Air Ministry solemnly announced that no planes of theirs did any shooting that day over Tobruch. Thus the Italian people were left free to wonder if one of the most popular candidates to succeed II Duce fell under the fire of an Italian Fiat.

The German radio commented: “Balbo’s death . . . occurred in the same spirit as that of Fritsch (the German Army Chief of Staff who, after opposing Hitler and being demoted, died mysteriously in action on the Polish front).”

Whatever happened, Mussolini ordered two days of national mourning. All over the Empire Italy’s armed forces half-masted their flags. In a “revenge” raid on the British base of Mersa Matruh, the late, great Balbo’s men claimed the destruction of 20 British planes.

To succeed Balbo as Governor and Commander in Libya, Mussolini sent fierce Marshal Rodolfo Graziani.