FOR WOMEN DUCE'S LOVE NEST

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 84, 10 April 1945, Page 3

FOR WOMEN DUCE'S LOVE NEST

A TEMPLE OF LUXURY NOW A HOME FOR WAIFS LONDON. Mussolini's love nest now houses waifs and orphans. The Italian authorities are intensifying their round-up of Mussolini's hoarded wealth and property, and today I went to look at some of it, says a Daily Herald special correspondent from Rome. I drove through the mimosa and cypress groves of Rome to a secluded white marble and glass villa on the grass-clad Monte Mario. In the villa's bizarre Hollywoodish garden the hedges bordering the rising terraces are artificial ones, made of glass, and the steel trellis of the roadside fence is stainless. This property is the one selected by Mussolini for dark-eyed Claretta Petacci, most permanent of his many mistresses. To-day 60 excitable Italian three to seven-year-old waifs and orphans, dressed in checkered smocks, play and squabble on the marble floors and sleep in . the glass-Walled reception room bordering the blue-tiled swimming pool. But the Arabian Nights atmosphere of luxury remains. You can still see the black marble Pompeian-style bath into which the Duce lowered himself. It is square and let deep into the floor. Next door is the guest room, which was used by Mussolini. Its doors and walls are built entirely of mirrors. Everywhere the finest marble and hewn stones proclaim the millions of lire spent by Mussolini on this "temple."