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To give Italian Deputies something to talk about last week Benito Mussolini, who has served notice that he will abolish the Chamber next spring, put on a sensational parliamentary show about George V's Island of Malta.

Technically the Dictator was only listening to interpolations, but in Fascist Italy no deputy can interpolate until his question has been submitted in advance to the Government and approved. Star interpolators last week were Chief Inspector of State Railways Deputy Mario D'Annunzio, son of the posturing poet, and Deputy General Ezio Garibaldi, black-shirted grandson of Italy's red-shirted Liberator.

Shouting at Dictator Mussolini, who sat with folded arms on his Government bench, the dramatic deputies asked him to investigate Great Britain's "pernicious activities" in Malta--i. e. the London Government's suppression of Malta's parliament when Italian-blooded Maltese, who are perpetually in ferment, grew too yeasty (TIME, Nov. 13). Rome correspondents knew better than to try to cable abroad what answer, if any, II Duce made to this provocative request that he investigate the acts of George V's Government. The Chamber show was private, for home consumption. Italian papers were filled next day with reams of charges against Britain by Scions D'Annunzio and Garibaldi. They fastened chiefly on the natural British disinclination to permit the teaching of Italian in Maltese elementary schools, denounced this as "evidence of British odium for the Italian tongue" and "an evident violation of the canons of national reciprocity."

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