Word: mussolini
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...cordial, jovial Americans," he wrote of the momentous changeover in his early life, "the British were standoffish and haughty. I never learned to like them." He did learn to imitate their cool, diplomatic ways. As the years rolled by and Victor Emmanuel's monarchy gave way to Benito Mussolini's dictatorship, the village boy became a perfect embodiment of that superdiplomat-the diplomatic gentleman's gentleman. As a tactful and understanding embassy servant he was entrusted with all sorts of delicate missions by the well-born young Britons of His Majesty's Foreign Service...
...took them over to his Italian contact, smoked and drank in nervous anxiety for seven hours while they were being photographed, and had them back safe in the morning. That, Costantini did admit, "was a bad moment," but it had a telling effect on Fascist policy. After that. Benito Mussolini's breakfasts were made pleasanter by the fact that he could read reports from Whitehall to Rome often before British Ambassador Sir Eric Drummond himself had seen them...
...League of Nations imposed its sanctions against Italy, but, thanks to Costantini, the Italian dictator knew that they were largely a bluff. When the British home fleet came steaming into the Mediterranean, set on frightening the Duce, Mussolini's fear was considerably abated by the fact that he knew from Admiralty orders that the fleet had every intention of going peaceably home again...
...greatest coup was brought off in 1936, when he copped a copy of a highly confidential report of the British government, which declared that "no vital British interests exist in Ethiopia which would impose on His Majesty's government the necessity to resist by force the Italian occupation." Mussolini ordered the report printed in his official Giornale d'ltalia. There was consternation in Whitehall. But Whitehall's new vigilance did not uncover Costantini himself, who stayed on in the embassy, unsuspected, performing his tasks for another year before retiring to the lumber business...
...first 1912 Caproni monoplane set speed, altitude and distance records; of a heart attack; in Rome. Builder (in 1914) of the first multimotored airplanes to stay aloft, Caproni converted them to bombers, prospered during World War I on the side of the Allies, later became a Fascist and provided Mussolini with planes for his Ethiopian raids...