Word: il
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Rome went that swarthy, thick-lipped, beady-eyed onetime butcher boy, His Excellency Pierre Laval, French Foreign Minister. There was nothing democratic about his reception. In Il Duce's opinion the sloppiness of Democracies leads to tragedies like the assassination of French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou at Marseille (TIME, Oct. 15). It was with Barthou that Mussolini began the secret negotiations which came to a climax last week. The two men never met, dickered through ambassadors. To ensure that nobody should be able to assassinate Pierre Laval on Italian soil last week, his train clicked over tracks guarded every...
...Italy Has No Future." Since the vein of Benito Mussolini's policy lies deep,. Pierre Laval's visit was best viewed after a flashback to last March, when Il Duce unfolded before the Fascist Quinquennial Assembly of 4,000 prominent Blackshirts his 60-year plan (TIME. March 26). After making his favorite ironical remark "Our relations with Switzerland continue to be friendly." the Dictator challenged Frenchmen thus: "Reality demands that I state that none of the problems which have existed between France and ourselves for 15 years has been solved...
...Il Duce then indicated that his policy does not run counter to the interests of France. "Italy has no future in the west and north!" he cried. "Her future lies to the east and south, in Asia and Africa. The vast resources of Asia must be valorized, and Africa must be brought within the orbit of civilization. . . . We demand that the nations which have already arrived in Africa do not block at every step Italian expansion...
Since U. S. radio listeners also thought the crowd laughed, scant attention was paid when Il Duce's son-in-law and press chief Excellency Count Ciano protested: "If Americans heard Mussolini on the radio they heard no laughter, much less 'gales of laughter.' When the Duce mentioned France they heard an expectant hush among the people-a hush awaiting what he had to say-and after he said it they heard unanimous applause...
Another monument to Il Duce on which Italians had their eyes last week was the so-called Lira Monument in the little town of Pesaro. There, eight years ago, when statesmen of the world were unanimously convinced that the gold standard is the only honest monetary standard and must be defended as such, Benito Mussolini uttered the words now cut deep into the marble slab of Pesaro's monument: I SAY TO THE WHOLE CIVILIZED WORLD THAT WE WILL DEFEND THE LIRA TO THE LAST BREATH, TO THE LAST DROP OF BLOOD...