Word: duce
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Determined to go down in history as the Cupid of the Age, Benito Mussolini last week started firing wifeless mayors. Beginning alphabetically with Alessandria Province he appointed married men to replace the bachelor mayors of several towns ending in "o." Next day the last bachelor in Il Duce's Cabinet, elegant Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs Fulvio Suvich, hastily married at Trieste a widow with two children...
...Duce needed all his trust in armies as keepers of the peace last week, for away from the blank cartridges of the maneuvers, he was still playing with Austria's political dynamite. In the face of the surly, worried opposition of the Little Entente, owl-eyed Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg, new Chancellor of Austria, arrived in Florence for an interview like those that Benito Mussolini and the late Engelbert Dollfuss used to hold. At the railway station Il Duce met his guest in an all-purpose costume consisting of brown sack suit, riding boots and yachting cap. Most of his staff...
Quickly Dr. Schuschnigg was whisked off by Il Duce to the Villa de Marinis, to sit at a long elaborate luncheon with 14 Fascist bigwigs. At the same time Il Duce's son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, herded foreign correspondents into the Florentine prefecture, repeated over and over again that there would be no discussion of the restoration of Archduke Otto in Austria. He handed out an official communique. Excerpts...
...Duce has another object in this year's maneuvers. He wants to see how his Cabinet will behave in wartime. Every Cabinet Minister with the exception of Minister of Justice Pietro de Francisci was mobilized this week to serve with the troops. Minister of Communications Umberto Puppini will command infantry divisions. Minister of Colonies General Emilio de Bono will serve as a field judge. Minister of Education Francesco Ercole will head field telegraph and radio. Minister of Finance Guido Jung has a regiment of artillery. Hardest job goes to Under Secretary of Corporations Alberto Asquini who will be responsible...
...Duce himself will dash from post to post to see that all of them are on their toes. The first day of maneuvers caught him in the Futa Pass in the Apppenines just as a regiment of cock-feathered Bersaglieri, the corps in which he served during the War, was passing. Out of his staff jumped Benito to shoulder a rifle and stride along with the column for over a mile. Promptly he amended his orderto his Cabinetnot only to serve with the trrops, but to mix with the trops "to get into the spirit...