DICTATOR OF ITALY

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 November 1931, Page 8

DICTATOR OF ITALY

MUSSOLINI’S IRON RULE. ' “If I wanted to commit a murder 1i would do it in Italy, because there they take into consideration artistic temperament,” said Madame Aileen Johns, at Auckland. Formerly of Wanganui, she went to Italy to study music, and spent a year there, leaving Milan in the early part of this year. Madame Johns said that people outside Italy had no idea what life was like under Mussolini’s rule. It was something of an ordeal for English people to live there, owing to the many strange restrictions placed on the popnLoe. She lived in a flat. and. not being able to s_peak the language sufficiently fluently to engage a maid, did her own housework. During the course of her work she shook a mat. out the window and there was an instant chattering of senoritas below. It was somewhere about 10 a.m.. and she found that she had broken one of Mussolini’s rules. No one is allowed to beat carpets in Italy after 9 a.m. Everywhere she wont Madame Johns saw Mussolini’s picture, and she soon got tired of seeing it hanging on a wall of her flat. She announced her intention of taking it out. but a friend warned her against such a . slip. It was Mussolini’s decree that, his picture must hang in everv bank, place of business and house. It was Mussolini, Mussolini. Mussolini all the time. Everything was stamped with his crest’ and in the State theatre his arms wore emblazoned beneath those of the King. One could not even speak of Mussolini for fear of being overheard by one of the Fascisti and punished.

Necessity is the mother of invention and Madame Johns and her friends made it their practice, when speaking of the Dictator, to call him “Mr Johnson.” Madame Johns said another regulation was unwittingly broken by her husband, and had he been seen by one of the Fascisti he would have been imprisoned. Walking in the street one day, he took a penknife from his pocket and opened it. The blade was slightly bent. An Italian friend told him to put it away immediately. A knife is classed as a dangerous weapon under Mussolini’s law, if it is longer than the width of the palm of the hand and if it has a bent blade, and the penalty for carrying such a weapon is imprisonment. As another instance of the iron hand w’*h which the Dictator rules, Madame Johns quoted the ease of a friend who sent her chef oyt one. morning to do shopping. He did not return. Inquiries were made, and it was found that he was in prison. While walking through 'the streets with a parcel under his arm he had accidentally knocked one of Mussolini’s placards, which were place' 1 all over the town, and it had fallen down. One of the Fascisti had seen the incident and the chef was gaoled. The dictator had a very effective way of providing employment.' If he saw a building whose.’beauty, he did somewhat dilapidated, he ordered it to be pulled down and rebuilt. Madame Johns said she never saw any poverty in Italy such as there is in England and other countries. “WOMAN IS NOTHING.” There is no women’s emancipation in Italy, the New Zealander found. A woman is nothing, a man everything. When a woman marries she gives up everything. A man does not. write to his mother. His letters are addressed to his father—the head of the house. Any woman walking alone in the streets is liable to be talked to by every man she meets. The Italian nature is different, from the English. They are a fiery pebple, and Madame Johns said that if she entered a tram or some- -such conveyance she knew that the men were appraising her. After she had gone, every one of them could describe what she had worn. The contrast was more than marked when she entered a tube in London, to find every man with his nose buried in a newspaper. Opera, she said, is one of the features of Italian life. For six months of the year people are starved for music, but when the opera season opens the people live for it. The artists are more or less revered, and if one commits a crime he-gets a lighter sentence than anyone else. Consideration is made for their artistic temperament. Radio has not reached the same standard in Italy as it has in England and there is not much mechanical music. The moving pictures are silent, and arc mostly American. The Italian screening, however, is often interpreted differently from the English version. The customs of Italian life at first seemed strange to Madame Johns. In English countries the feature of any evening entertainment is the supper, but in Italy supper is an unheard of thing. Immediately on arrival at the host’s house, however, the guest is given a small cup of coffee. That is all.

Shopping presented its problems, humorous and otherwise, to the visitor. For instance, salt is a national product and can only be bought at a tobacconist’s. Bread is sold by the yard and is chopped off a long round roll as it is sold. The people do not eat cake or sweets, and baking powder is unknown.