Word: merlin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...least one Roman senator, grey, motherly, left-wing Socialist Angelina Merlin, this situation was a "social disgrace." A year ago last August, she introduced a bill to outlaw houses of prostitution in Italy...
...awarded one free visit. The girls and the worried madam in a swank Naples house appealed to venerable Senator Benedetto Croce, Italy's foremost philosopher, to block the bill "so that they too might have a prosperous holy year." Letters against the bill poured in on Senator Merlin, who had herself toured Rome's brothels to collect ammunition for her side...
...soon, political factions lined up alongside Crusader Merlin. The Moscowliners, claiming that the bill was all their own idea, ordered all left-wingers to vote against "a typical plague of bourgeois society." The Communists found allies in their old adversaries the Christian Democrats. "We can't afford," said one Christian Democratic politician, "to give the Communists an opportunity to attack us on moral grounds." Of all the senators, only dissident Socialist Pieraccini spoke out against abolition with any real vehemence. "[The bill] would turn all Italy into the sex jungle of Europe," he roared. "We are all senators here...
...noisy try, but it failed. Interior Minister Mario Scelba himself rose to present the government's hearty endorsement of the Merlin bill. For the first time in anybody's memory the Communists joined in enthusiastic applause for a Scelba speech. The united front against vice would not be split. When the vote was taken, abolition of prostitution passed by a thumping 187 to 67. Passage by Italy's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, is expected within a few months...
Hitler's financial Merlin, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, who was acquitted of war crimes in Niirnberg, was back at the old stand with a sure cure for Germany's ailing finances. In a new book, Schacht called for a return to the gold standard and a billion-dollar U.S. gold loan to Germany to back the mark...