Foreign News: Maddest Exaltation

With brazen clatter a telegraph machine spat news of speed and Death, last week, into the dignified Roman sanctum of Editor Count Giuseppe Dalla Torre. The Count publishes L’Osservatore Romano, the sole daily newsorgan permitted to speak for the Vatican.

Speed! The wires spat that, near Milan, on the Grand Prix Course, famed Racing Driver Antonio Materassi is roaring to victory at 120 miles per hour. Death! The car swerves and plunges into the grandstand. Materassi is killed. So are 21 spectators. Cables flash to the U. S. that among the 26 injured was one Mrs. Dorothy Doherty, Bostonian.

When the wires grew quiet, Count Dalla Torre had leisure and opportunity to confer with Monsignors, Cardinals and even the Most Blessed Father respecting the Grand Prix whizz-smash. Two days later the patient, timeless Papacy made its Most High Opinion known through Count Dalla Torre. Printed he:

“Again human victims have been offered as a sacrifice to the greedy idol of a new religion, the religion of speed, which fascinates our youth to the extent often of replacing in their souls their ancient religion. . . .

“After the racing automobile had cast in the dust the body of its unhappy driver and continued to massacre innocent victims the race was not stopped and the motors continued their song of speed. . . .

“… The new goddess is exalted with the maddest and most foolish hymns to become a symbol of national power. . . . Meanwhile, true virtues . . . are forgotten. . . .

“… Many are no longer content to arrive, but find it necessary to arrive quickly. . . . This is the saddest profanation of human life. . . .”

Deep, no doubt, was the soul probing, last week, of Fascists, who are pious Roman Catholics. Daily, Signer Mussolini demands of the whole Italian Nation that it “arrive quickly” at his set goals. Yet last week the Papacy’s official spokesman not only contradicted Il Duce’s orders but clearly designated him by implication as “profane”−for Benito Mussolini travels about Italy chiefly and by preference at the wheel of his own low, rakish bellowing speed car.