New Commandments
When he struts forth in a black shirt, his round eyes wide and straining to flame like II Duce's, Signor Francesco Marini, Director General of the Milan Schools, is a terrific sight at which small Marias and Beppos quake.
Zealous, he has ordered that in school hours they must all wear shirts as black as his. Fanatic, he commanded last week that every day they shall recite three new commandments, brief, pagan and patriotic.
Little Eddas and Peppinos have been so used to rattling off: / am the Lord thy God. . . . Thou shalt have no other gods before me. . . . Honor thy father and thy mother . . . that last week their tongues tripped and stuttered as they repeated :
"I am Italy, thy mother, thy sovereign, thy goddess.
"Thou shalt have no other mother, sovereign or goddess above me.
"Thou shalt honor the Government and Fascismo."
Puffed and prideful, Signor Director General Marini telegraphed news of his superpatriotic Commandments to II Duce at Rome, In reply came the silence of consent. Other school superintendents throughout Italy hastened to command little lips and tongues to drill as at Milan. . . .
Justly, His Holiness was perturbed. From the thin Papal lips came a rebuke austere and measured: "The principles of the Fascist party are being enforced and interpreted in many cases by men who, under new names and new banners, remain enemies to the state and to religion "
Even non-Catholics were conscious that the new "Commandments" of Signor Marini transcend in blasphemy any utterance ever ordered to be pronounced in the schools of an avowedly Christian country. Not in all the Soviet Revolution has the like been heard in Russia.
Recreation and social work carried on among the youth of Italy by the Knights of Columbus, the Y. M. C. A. and various Methodist organizations are coming rapidly to a halt as the new "Young Fascist" organizations, the Balilla and the Avanguardia, are forcibly superceding them. Youths join the Balilla at 8, the Avanguardia at 14 and, if approved, the Fascist party at 18.