Whenever a man high in Fascist favor dies, the procedure of His Excellency Benito Mussolini is the same. Dressed in braided morning coat and black silk Fascist shirt, he marches into the presence of the dead, stands stone still at Fascist salute for two full minutes, then turns on his heel, departs. His Excellency behaved thus a little over a year ago on the death of Marshal Luigi Cadorna, Italy’s Wartime Commander-in-Chief, disastrously defeated at the battle of Caporetto (1917). Last week he gave his mortuary salute again at the bier of Minister of Public Works Michele Bianchi, first of the Quadrumvirs (Fascist corps commanders of the famed March on Rome of October 1922) to die.*
“I pay tribute to him!” wrote Il Duce in a special foglio d’ordini, Fascist order sheet. “Before you, oh shades of our unforgettable martyrs who await him, I bid him farewell. A true Fascist, faithful to order, he died serenely.”
Fascist orders concerning the funeral of Quadrumvir Bianchi were that there was to be no music in the procession but the rolling of oilcloth-muffled drums, no flowers on the coffin or at the grave except two wreaths, one from the King, one from Il Duce. Wreath money, it was ordered, should be given to charities in Calabria, home of Quadrumvir Bianchi.
At the actual funeral last week the King’s wreath, if it lay upon the coffin, was completely obscured by a floral tribute 18¾ feet in circumference, inscribed only with the two words in giant capitals BENITO MUSSOLINI. To make up for the King’s oblivion there walked beside Il Duce in the funeral procession a figure never before seen at a Fascist function, sleek white-bearded Johann Schober, Chancellor of Austria.
Startled at the presence of an Austrian Chancellor in Fascist Italy, the Chicago Tribune (“The World’s Greatest Newspaper”) headlined in the argot of gangland: ITALY GRABS UP AUSTRIA AS ALLY IN BALKAN RING.
Such was far from the case. Chancellor Schober did sign a treaty with Prime Minister Mussolini last week, strictly a treaty of friendship and arbitration. He also visited Pope Pius and received the Grand Cordon of the Order of SS. Maurice and Lazarus from King Vittorio Emanuele. His presence in Rome was to thank the Italian Government for lifting the ban on Italian loans to Austria, for Italy’s help at The Hague Conference in proving Aus-tria’s inability to pay War reparations. It is no secret that both of these favors came in return for Austria’s pledge that anti-Italian propaganda in German-speaking South Tyrol would cease.
To rid the Chicago Tribune and anti-Italian Austrians of fears that an Austro-Italian alliance is brewing, Chancellor Schober, on his way back to Vienna, crossed the tip of Jugoslavia and was received at Ratkersburg by a pompous representative of Dictator-King Alexander, whose people are avowedly the bitterest enemies of Italians.
*Triumvirs remaining from the original Quadrumvirate are: General Emilio De Bono, Minister of Colonies; General Italo Balbo, Minister of Aviation; Count Cesare Maria De Vecchi, Italian Ambassador to Vatican City.
ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9ubWxiaIFwtdOao7JlnaS%2FtcHAq7Bmq5GhwrWxjg%3D%3D