ITALY: War Games & Mothers

Last year Benito Mussolini truculently held Italy’s war games on the country’s North frontier. Last week he staged this year’s war games in mid-peninsula among the mountain crags near Naples, which was about as near as the stormy Dictator has ever come to a Peace gesture.

As usual King Vittorio Emanuele lived in his “World’s Most Luxurious Royal Train” during the week of maneuvers, while Il Duce dashed about at the wheel of his car. As the games opened the “Red Army” under General Amedeo Guillet drove before it the “Blue Army” of Crown Prince Umberto. This was described as a “strategic retreat” and few doubted that His Royal Highness would regain the offensive with success against General Guillet, an officer insufficiently known to the Italian people to make his army’s fate of national interest.

The game was only a game, but His Majesty and Premier Mussolini, together with foreign military attaches, watched with grave attention the performance of several Italian novelties in war. The so-called “ground clearing tank” duly swept all obstacles before it, thundering forward to make a path 25 feet wide on which followed less Gargantuan motorized equipment. By a characteristic dictation of II Duce, the traditional rivalry of artillery and infantry corps was squashed by compressing the two arms into integrated units, and Fascist newsorgans declared: “For the first time the artillery fought in infantry units, not merely with them!”

Though Dictator Mussolini in negotiation is one of the coldest and most self-possessed statesmen in Europe, he always leaves a rattling war display in high exuberance. Last week he sped from the games to the most fecund little town in the Kingdom to expound his favorite rabbit philosophy of Empire. As the fathers & mothers of Potenza and their highly numerous offspring thronged around him with cheers, Orator Mussolini cried: “Those who have a right to Empire are the fecund peoples—those people who have the pride and the will to propagate their race on earth—VIRILE PEOPLES in the strictest meaning of those words!” In what appeared to be a slap at France, the Dictator contemptuously declared: “Peoples with empty cribs cannot create an Empire—and if they have an Empire the time will come when it will be extremely difficult for them to keep or defend it.”

In a reduction of such rabbit oratory to extremely practical terms, Il Duce by decree last week extended to pregnant women workers on Italian farms the same pre-natal benefits he long ago provided for pregnant proletarians in Italian factories.

About 60,000 expectant peasant mothers will immediately benefit, receiving cash compensation for pay lost while they must stop work, and something besides for the midwife. However, Italian farm mothers of the type to whom Il Duce geared his oration last week are apt to consider the calling in of a doctor or midwife no more necessary for a healthy woman than for a healthy sow or cat.

Next reported last week by United Press was another of those incidents concerning a Dictator which make disbelievers shout “Baloney!” A small child was sprawling at play in the middle of the street as II Duce came driving along. He pulled up sharply, got out of his car, picked up the bambino and carried it indoors to its mother, saying: “You must be more careful. Babies are the dearest things in the world.” “Because my husband is serving in East Africa, Excellency, I have to work so much harder I have scarcely any time,” timidly explained the woman.

Extracting from his Dictator’s black wallet a 100 lire ($8) bill, Mussolini said: “At least for one week you will now be able to devote all your attention to your child,” handed her the note, climbed back behind the wheel and sped away.