IL DUCE KEEPS FIT

Waipa Post, Volume 81, Issue 3691, 29 November 1935, Page 2

IL DUCE KEEPS FIT

SWIMMING AT SEA. Swimming, as a sidelight on history at the height of a European crisis will prove an interesting subject for the classrooms of future generations. Anyone who walked on a September afternoon along the beach of swarthy sand stretching south-west from the ancient Roman port of Ostia, which Mussolini has made into the Lido of the capital, would have come eventually to a lonely little cottage standing on the dunes between the stunted pine woods and the sea. A tiny place—two bedrooms, one main living-room; not another house near.

That is Mussolini's beach bungalow, an English journalist writes. And, if he had looked out from the shore, this walker would have seen a big, sun-burned head, shaven almost bare, and mounted on a powerful neck, progressing strongly through the warm, pale green waters of the Tyrrhenian sea. That was Mussolini.

"I have been for a long swim," he told his chief Government officials when he summoned them to his office in the Palazzo Venezia.

On my way back to Ostia I met the Italian Minister of Finance, Count Thaon di Kevel, taking a stroll in bathing trunks before his swim.

On the same beach, also in bathing costume, was the restlessly energetic young Minister of Commerce, Signor Alfieri.

AH these members of the Italian Government were doubtless hard at work in their offices an hour later.

The shipping of troops from Naples goes on with increased speed. Though work continues all round the clock, complete orderliness prevails in the port, and the usual trade and tourist traffic continues uninterruptedly.