Word: il
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...intervals Il Duce's voice dwindled thinly. The excited crowd, eager to miss nothing, shouted: "Louder! Louder!" At one point Mussolini turned wearily to his aides, declared, "I am tired. If they wait until tomorrow they can read my speech in the newspapers." The superstitious lost no time in pointing out that it was the first time the Dictator had ever publicly admitted fatigue. Excerpts...
Playing opposite Leading-Man Franco were the Italian Generals Sandro Piazzoni, Attilio Teruzzi, former commander of Il Duce's Fascist Militia, eager to avenge the Italian rout at Guadalajara (TIME, March 22 et seq.), the ignominious chasing by Basque fishwives during the Bilbao siege (TIME, June 28). A horse laugh went through Leftist lines outside Santander when they read a purported order issued by General Piazzoni to Le Frecce Nere (Black Arrows): "As the Black Arrows were the first to reach Bilbao, so they will be the first to enter Santander. With proud heart and bayonets raised, be ready...
...Marchetti piloted by Lieut.-Commander Samuele Cupini and Captain Amedeo Paradisi, who covered the 3,800 miles in 17½ hours at an average of 219 m.p.h. Co-pilot of the third Italian ship, only half-hour behind, was none other than Lieutenant Bruno Mussolini, thickset second son of Il Duce. On his account, the crowds at Le Bourget had all been carefully frisked by police before admission. With scrupulous politeness and notable lack of enthusiasm, they applauded as each plane landed. That night the Paris press gave Pierre Cot his comeuppance, clamored for his resignation...
...Il Duce received the news in Sicily, where he had gone to review Italy's annual war games. On a triumphal tour of the island, he told cheering Sicilians that "the lush old days of the Roman Emperor Augustus" were the only fitting comparison with the Fascist regime. To the crowd jam-packing the public square of Syracuse he shouted that Italy was "ready for any struggle, prepared for any sacrifice & determined to snatch victory" at any cost. Then, remembering the recent improvement in Anglo-Italian relations, he stood on the prow of a dummy destroyer erected in Messina...
...week's end, as his soldiers & mules tugged at gun carriages under a sizzling Sicilian sun, Il Duce broke his strenuous trip with a swimming party at Syracuse. The barrel-chested Duce, nattily decked out in blue trunks, stood on a rock and umpired a free-style race among Cabinet members and undersecretaries...