MUSSOLINI TRIBE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 31 August 1925, Page 7

MUSSOLINI TRIBE.

STRANGE CULT IN ITALY. One of my reasons in visiting Italy •vas to see Mussolini (writes a special correspondent of the Daily Mail.). I nave teen.; amply rewarded. The frontier had only just been reached when iie entered the train, that youthful, upright,iniiddle-sized, broad-shouldered figure, yvith the prominent, eleanSiiaien dhin, the piercing, dark eyes, the broafl, bald forehead. I knew him at a glance, j n spite of his surpiising .tenth —th e Duce, the alert, sleepless leader of ,the Giovanezza.

I raised mv hat—he raised his, which is; how‘i saw that his baldness was less- than I had supposed. He bad two ’companions with him, doubtess his Brothers, fo r the resemblance was striking. Before;/ we reached Turin I was astonished to see Signor Mussolini enter the ;trai n again—not once, but several times. Tnere could be no mistaking liis identity, and yet there were several of him—young men with heavy clean-shaven jaws and bald foreheads, wearing ■ dapper English c.othing, inluding light-coloured spats. At Milan the Fascist leader became positivelyinbiquitous. He sat in front of the cafes or strolled about the Gal’eria Vittore Einanuele—twenty, a hundred,r.a thousand of him, all Musolinis, .V.oung men, with piercing dark eves, heavy chins, and spats—always spats—and. wonder of wonders always bald. I could ..understand the bright, alert eyes, the clean-shaven chins, and the spats,-but I confess the baldness, t-lie broad-shovilderedness, the prognathism, puzzled me. It puzzled me until I recalled the mira-'ulous physiological effect of national hero or heroine worship: how the example of the youthful Queen Victoria crowded English society with plump, tiny women; how the changed aspect of-the American male dates fr< m Roosevelt; how the stature of th e Belgians, has noticeably increased uncle- the six-foot-six King Albert. So to-day the traveller coming to Italy to see Mussolini will be amply rewarded.- ' He may be seen everywhere. Even the Italian babies thrust out their] plump little chins and their right arms in the antique Roman fashion and babble Giovanezza. And they, too, are wonderfully bright-eyed—and bald!