Scandal After Birthday

"I ORDER THAT THERE BE NO PUBLIC OBSERVANCE OF MY BIRTHDAY."

So read a memorandum boldly scrawled by Benito Mussolini last week, shortly before he achieved age 46. Next morning, spruce and whistling, he stepped from his Roman residence, slipped behind the wheel of a low-slung Alpha Romeo roadster. Venturesome, a correspondent asked why there would be no public birthday observance, received for his pains a blasting, withering glance.

"Rest assured it is not because I dislike being a year older!" flashed II Duce as he engaged the gears. "No--my reason is that nothing must interrupt the ordered rhythm of Fascist work. There are enough holidays on our Italian calendar already --in fact too many!" and letting in his clutch the Dictator vanished, inconsistently, for a birthday holiday. Speeding to the seacoast he boarded a waiting seaplane, was soon soaring around the toe and heel of Italy, headed at last up the Adriatic in a flight of over 1200 miles.

Waiting at sheltered Riccione on the Adriatic seaside were Donna Rachele Mussolini and 22-month-old Babe Romano, indisputably Il Duce's favorite son, often called by him "the first child of my second series." Waiting also was a spandy new speedboat. So far as observers could see, the birthday celebration proper was in two parts: 1) Donna Rachele sat placidly on the beach; 2) Dictator Benito and Babe Romano went out morning and afternoon in the speedboat, dashed thrillingly through spume-flecked waves.

Toward evening Babe, Donna & Duce motored inland to spend the birthday night at their rustic farm, the Villa Carpena. Lights were doused early. Next day the dutiful Duce bade his spouse a crisp farewell, sped back to his chosen busy bachelorhood in Rome. There, after buying a red carnation--just now his favorite boutonniere--the Dictator settled down to work, found an appalling piece of work to do.

On his broad, carved desk in the gloomy Palazzo Chigi lay incriminating documents, the report of an investigation which Il Duce had ordered into the affairs of one of the Fascist Government's leading fiscal advisers, the Chemical & Dye Tycoon of Northern Italy, potent Deputy Ernesto Belloni, recently Mayor of Milan, repeatedly assigned as an Italian expert at the War Debt aid Reparations conferences. Evidently the report on Signer Belloni was damning. With characteristic decision Il Duce dashed on paper an order dismissing the Dye Tycoon "from every political and public activity, indefinitely."

Fascists dismissed for scandalous cause have always been dropped into a well of silence. If the press were allowed to expose the rascality of ex-Fascists, sooner or later the public might suspect that some Fascist in good standing is a rascal top. Last week the press gag was crammed in tight, as Dictator Mussolini dismissed Tycoon Belloni in disgrace. But rumor cannot be stifled. Soon it was believed that:

1) Tycoon Belloni was guilty of gross malfeasance as Podesta (Mayor) of Milan two years ago, when Manhattan's Dillon Read & Co. lent the city $30,000,000 and sold the paper to U. S. investors at the attractive bond yield of 6 1/2%.

2) It now appears that several million lire of the money loaned cannot be traced, seem to have disappeared in the direction of Signer Ernesto Belloni.

Even so Il Duce faced a major scandal-crisis. With $400,000,000 of U. S. money invested on the Italian peninsula--and mostly paying 7%--charges like those made against Tycoon Belloni, last week, cannot but affect the World's opinion of the Fascist regime as a whole. In the 47th year of Signer Mussolini's age, in the seventh year of Dictator Mussolini's regime, how do his achievements stack up against his failures? Last week it seemed especially pertinent to examine both in ordered sequence:

Trade Success. Prior to the War, imports to Italy exceeded her exports by 51%, and as late as the period 1921-25 the average "adverse balance" was still more discouraging, 57%. Credit for what has been accomplished since rests with the Fascist Regime exclusively. In 1927 the adverse balance of trade had been pared down to 33%.

"White Coal" Success. Since Italy has no coal mines it is an impressive achievement that in recent years her constantly increasing demands for power have been met by installing half a billion dollars worth of hydro-electric machinery, not by importing more coal from abroad. Today Italy leads every other European country in the amount of energy she niches from ''white coal"--water power. Of actual coal she burned but 10,700,000 tons last year, approximately the same as her 10,600,000 tons consumption in 1913.

Employment Success. Italy and Great Britain have approximately the same population--circa 40 millions. Today most Englishmen phlegmatically regard the long standing existence of some one and a quarter million unemployed as a sort of necessary evil. Neither British Conservatives nor British Laborites have been able to do anything about it. Not so in Mussoliniland.

Starting with 500,000 unemployed, the Dictator has steadily cut down this figure--by no matter what methods--until to-day 250.000 Italians are idle. He is now pushing forward a huge, perhaps top-heavy. Land Reclamation Program, asserts that it will wipe out the unemployment bogey utterly.

Wheat Failure. Despite Farmer Mussolini's energetic example in growing wheat by the most advanced methods on his own estate; despite his clarion propaganda calling Italians to fight the "Battle of the Grain" (TIME, Oct. 24, 1927); it is a fact that Italy still buys abroad a third of her wheat, as she has done for decades. More discouraging still, the "improved farming methods" constantly mooted by Fascismo have absolutely not increased the average yield per acre. As yet there is no victory in the "Battle of the Grain."

Birth Failure. Taxes on bachelors, subsidies to prolific parents, even the inspiring gift of the Dictator's signed photograph to mothers of twins and over, have not produced the desired result. The birth rate in Italy continues slowly to decline.

Revalorization? Why do so many bambino-loving Italians find that they cannot afford to have more bambinos? Why does the Italian worker complain with justice that "prices are high and wages low"?

Answers to these and many another question about Italy are to be found in Dictator Mussolini's "successful" revalorization of the lira (TIME, Jan. 2, 1928). He took a coin quoted at 3.27-c-, jacked it up to 5.26-c-, and stabilized it there on a gold basis.

Unquestionably this coup dazzled the Italian populace, favorably impressed financiers abroad, and stiffened the country's fiscal backbone. But since then the road of readjustment has been hard. Prices have not fallen to anything like equibalance with the inevitable fall in wages. Paralyzing strikes have been avoided only by Fascismo's abrogation of the right to strike. It is still a question whether the Italian test tube will stand the strain of the experiment.