Golden Age, August 21, 1929
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crtie Golden Age
A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE ANDZ COURAGE
in this issue
* International Broadcast
ITALY AND MUSSOLINI
SHAMS OF CALIFORNIA
ALUMINUM POISONING
AT HIS TEMPLE
eighth of a series of radio lectures by Judge Rutherford
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EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY 5c a copy - $1,00 a year- Canada &. Foreign $ 1.50
Volume X - No, 259 August 21,192 9
Contents
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Labor and Economics There Is Plenty for All
Social and Educational An International “Public Meeting”
World’s Northernmost P.adio .............. 749
Straws in the Wind
Heading and Writing in Thirty Lessons
300 Schools Teaching Fascism
A Little Word About Health Articles ........... 756
A Busy Paper in a Quiet Town . . . .
Harry Miller Works Fast ....
Civilization a l’amekicaine .......
F i n a x c e— Commerce— T r a n s port at i o n Wilkes-Barre Refuses to Pay Water Bills ....
Political—Domestic and Foreign Shams and Shames of California
Italy and Her Master Politician ........... .
The Bishop of Gloucester .....
Uses of Pennsylvania State Constabulary
Agriculture and Husbandry Sixty Bushels of Pigs ....
Science and Invention
Lethal Power of the New Poison Gases
More Traces of the Giants
Home and Health Bo Aluminum Kitchen Utensils Have ‘1A Clean Bill of Health ” ? . 754
Religion and Philosophy
Why Bishops Are Well Paid
Infidelity Among Rabbis .............-. . . 753
A Colporteur Experience in Wales
Bible Questions and Answers
At His Temple
The Children’s Own Kadio Story
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Golden Age
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Volume X Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, August 21, 1929 ■ Number 259
* An InternationaliS Public Meeting n
AGAIN the voice of Judge Rutherford, president of the International Bible Students Association, will be heard here, “over there,” and in parts of everywhere! We reproduce, by courtesy of the Association, an announcement that appears widely at this time in newspapers and other publicity channels.
Since the early days of last May Judge Rutherford has been “over there” filling lecture engagements in the principal centers of England, Scotland, France, Switzerland and Germany, as well as conferring with managers of the Association’s European offices. Those who know him will tell you that while abroad his keen powers of observation and analysis have undoubtedly brought together some highly interesting material, which the millions of listeners who hear him on August 25 may expect to share.
This address, by the way, will be his first after returning to America. His subject has a flavor that smacks of something very tasty, something everybody wants! “Health and Life for the People.” What will he say this time? Let’s listen!
It will be observed in the accompanying list of United States and Canadian stations that among the seventy “and others” to be linked together for distribution of the address is included W2XAF. This odd set of call letters is recognized as the “name” of the powerful short-wave transmitter of the General Electric Company, Schenectady. Its operating channel is 9530 kilocycles (31.48 meters). W2XAF is heard regularly by listeners in Europe, Central and South America, Cuba, Panama, and other regions often designated as “foreign”. Now, however, all these hitherto remote corners of the globe are strangely brought, simultaneously, within the range of instant communication. So when Judge Rutherford speaks on August 25 he will truly be
Ayes, any one who desires to copy any or all of this article, for the purpose of newspaper publication or microphone announcement before August 25, is welcome to do so.—Editor, addressing an international “public meeting”.
Those two small words at the very bottom of the accompanying list are enough to arouse anybody’s curiosity!
Maybe you ask, as we do, How many others?
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Shams and Shames of California
THE governor of the state of California, and everybody else in California, knows perfectly well that Thomas J. Mooney has been in prison for thirteen years, and is still in prison, for a crime which he not only did not commit, but could not have committed, because he was a mile away at the time it happened. It is the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti all over again.
All Californians, including the judge who sentenced Mooney, and the jury before whom the case was tried, now know and have expressed themselves as fully convinced that the evidence that sent this man to prison for life was all perjured evidence (paid for by the California branch of the saintly Power Trust). California is as bad as the impossible Massachusetts.
The chief of the San Francisco Detective Bureau, the police captain detailed on the Mooney case, the district attorney of San Francisco, and other police officials and officers of the prosecution, have united in their requests for the release of this man; but the Power Trust stands pat, and one of its governors after another fails to do a thing to please justice.
California is about as rotten as it can be, but those who are interested in making it worse are hard at work. The legislators have now passed a bill, and it has been signed by Governor Young, that would give a year in jail and a fine of $5,000 for saying over the radio a single word reflecting on Calvin for burning Servetus at the stake, or a like penalty for each offense of mentioning the hypocrisies of any other clergyman, living or dead.
Probably the most tyrannical railroad company in the United States dominates the state of California. One of its hobbies is to keep all other railway lines out of the state. A subscriber writes us that he found his daughter signing n ames of business firms to a stack of cards given her by the railroad’s employees. The cards petitioned against the building of additional railroads into territory which they served. The girl had obtained the names out of the telephone book. Her father threw them all in the fire.
Just how rotten California politics are may be seen from the following expose of the contemptible practice by which hangers-on manage to gouge $1 apiece out of almost every man or woman who goes to get an automobile driver’s license. This is done by opening bogus offices on each side of the office of the state itself, where, of course, only the legal fee is charged, and in California that fee is nothing. The subscriber says:
You can get license to drive free from the State, but if you go into one of these places you pay $1.00. When a person is looking for the License Department he sees one of the following places and goes in, thinking, of course, that it is the State License Department. South of the State License Department are the offices of:
(1) Southern California License Service,
(2) Auto License Service,
(3) City Auto License Service,
(4) Thames Auto License Service.
North of the State License Department are the offices of:
(5) California Auto License Service Co.,
(6) Operator Application Service House,
(7) California Auto License Service Co.,
(8) Southern California Auto License Service, all in a row.
I do not know why Mr. Hearst does not investigate this, but I have not seen a thing about it in any paper. Neither have I seen anything about the cards the S. P. are sending out. These reporters must be dumb.
Our friend can disabuse his mind of the idea that the reporters are dumb. They know all about these things, and have probably written about them, until they found that those offices are part and parcel of the scheme of things in California, a part of the graft that is associated with “all the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them”, and therefore not to be criticized or even mentioned.
Sixty Bushels of Pigs By B. W. Howe
A FARMER at Ballantine, Alberta, after storing the season’s crop of potatoes, left the overhead door open to dry out the potatoes. He closed the door a few days after and covered it heavily with straw. About sixty bushels of potatoes were in the cellar.
The cellar was not uncovered until early in January. You can surely imagine the surprise of the two persons on finding two pigs and no potatoes. The pigs were blind, and in another day would have died of starvation. They were about one hundred pounds each in weight.
Italy and Her Master Politician
IN A territory only slightly larger than New York state and New England Italy supports a population twice as great. Next to Switzerland it is the most mountainous country in Europe. The Alps and the Apennines cover two-thirds of its surface, and one-fifth of the land is wholly unproductive of vegetation, from natural causes. The skies are almost always bright.
In the Old World Italy lies opposite to New England, New Jersey and Virginia, and has all the extremes of climate that mark the temperate zone, with all its great variety of agricultural products. Everything that grows anywhere in Europe is to be found somewhere in Italy.
The Apennines, which run the length of the country, have a chain of peaks running from 5,000 up to 9,595 feet at Monte Corno, and are, for the most part, barren, and are wanting in the glaciers, perpetual snows and rich vegetation that cluster about the Alps in the north. They are also wanting in the fearful and wild grandeur of the Alps.
Italy is divided geographically, racially and politically into three parts. The continental portion lies between the Ligurian Sea and the Gulf of Venice and is cut off from the rest of Europe by the Alps. It is the granary, the workshop and the educational center of Italy, the home of its finest people.
The peninsular portion, lying between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Adriatic, is of about the same size as the continental portion. It is approximately a hundred miles wide, and four hundred miles long from northwest to southeast, with Rome and Naples not far from each other, near its center.
Insular Italy comprises the large islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica on the south and west, fourteen 2Egean Isles, taken from Turkey in the Avar of 1912, and the colonial possessions of Eritrea, Somaliland and Libya, all situated in Africa and not at present desirable habitations for whites. The total population of the colonial possessions is about two millions.
A Singularly Favorable Location
When earth’s family was small it spread out around the edges of the Mediterranean. As it gradually spread westward Italy came to be its natural geographical and political center. As it continued to move northward and westward Italy continued to play an important part in human progress, often accelerating, often retarding, and does to this day and hour. No other country in Europe can compete with Italy in historical memories.
There are long stretches of coast-line without natural harbors, but Venice and Genoa are world-famed for their shipping interests, and the Bay of Naples is considered one of the most beautiful and one of the most important harbors anywhere, rich in natural attractions, a center of great agricultural and fishing industries.
The gateways into Italy from the north are such as to make it easy to enter the country rather than to leave it. The northern passageways through the Alps are by long valleys of easy ascent. On the south they are precipitous. For this and other reasons most Italian rivers are torrents. The River. Po, though only 261 miles long in a straight line, carries more water in proportion to its length than any other river on earth. It is unnavigable and almost uncontrollable.
In two thousand years the Tiber has brought down and deposited a beach two and a half miles wide; while the Arno, in the same length of time, has brought down and laid a beach five miles in width. From a geological point of view, Italy is considered a young country, still in the making.
When its moutainous nature is considered, it has very little mineral wealth. It does mine considerable zinc, but, having no coal, has had to send the ore to Belgium to be treated. Some of this ore is now being treated at home by electrical methods, water-power being used. Iron ore is found in Elba, and beautiful marbles in Tuscany and other places.
In relation to soil and climate, Italy has been a great sufferer from malaria; but this is being corrected by improved sanitation. The lakes of Lombardy, the art in stone, canvas and music, and the jewel spots of beauty in the Alps and Apennines, make Italy a natural Mecca for tourists; but the tourist trade is noticeably falling off.
A Glimpse at Italian History
From the time of the break-up of the Roman Empire the effort of the political group centered at the Vatican has been particularly directed toward the disunion of Italy, and this policy met with surprising success. A disunited group of petty states could offer no resistance worth white to the preposterous claims of the ‘hegemony of all the earth (and of heaven as well)’ there centered*
For hundreds of years the Italian people, sick of the continual civil wars, and wars between the petty states, settled down to home comforts, arts and literature, and engaged mercenary troops to do their fighting for them. These troops hired out to the highest bidder, and sometimes fought alternately against and in defense of the same city.
Before the French Revolution, the territory which now comprises the kingdom of Italy was inhabited by about 17,000,000 people and was composed of nine petty states. There was unification then for a time, but the old conditions obtained afterwards; and it was not until 1860 that the Italian patriot Garibaldi invaded Italy, rallied all Italians to his standard, and made it one united country, finally taking over Rome itself in 1870.
The Italian People
Italy presents the curious phenomenon of a people all speaking one language and yet widely different from one another along other lines. So different are the North Italians from the South Italians that the United States government keeps them separately classified in its records.
At different times various parts of Italy have been overrun by Phoenicians, Greeks, Arabs, Spaniards, Gauls, Germans and Slavs, and all these have left their impress upon the people, so that Italians vary greatly in character and physical type, the northern ones more than the southern ones.
The Italians are natural musicians and music lovers. The mere mention of Italian opera, of Verdi, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Stradivarius, and Paganini, of Puccini, Palestrina, Tetrazzini and Caruso is enough to make the dark and handsome features of any Italian light up with happiness. Instances have been known where Italian mobs, bent on destruction, have been quieted and calmed and sent home in peace by the beautiful playing of a single violinist. Such an incident occurred at Lucca, Italy, in March, 1920. The violinist was a Bohemian lad of 18, Vosa Prikoda.
The present population of Italy is about 40,000,000. Every Italian who leaves his homeland hopes to be able to return some day; and a third of them do so. A common salutation of the people is, “God give you a good day.” Even the profanity sounds musical, but descends to levels unapproached elsewhere.
The Italians love speed in everything, and many speed records in various lines and at various times have been made by them. The Italians are a hard-working, sober, dignified, reserved people, not easy to rouse to laughter. Bathing is more common in northern Italy than in the south, where it is regarded as a luxury of the tourist class, according to the report of a traveler.
Before Introducing the Master Politician
Before introducing the master politician, we wish to mention some of the really great things he has been accomplishing in Italy, but let these things speak for themselves. After mentioning the man himself we have no ambition to applaud him in any way. He stands for tyranny, the thing America most detests, but for which, alas, America is headed at breakneck speed, willy-nilly.
Ten years ago it was said of Italy that it “is the land of art and fleas, sunshine and stench, degradation and poverty, filth and immorality”. Naples was described as a center of “filth, poverty, and dirt in its worst stage. The streets are used as sewers and public toilets. The children run naked, and modesty is unknown. No one can imagine the stench, and all the streets are alike”. Now this has all been changed.
In 1928 another writer said, “Naples, once famed for its dirt, disorderliness and backwardness, no less than for its beauty, is-now unrecognizable to those who knew it six years ago. The ■ city, once one of the dirtiest in Europe, has become one of the cleanest.” Paderewski only a few months prior to the above remark wrote, “I have seen Italy before. The difference is tremendous. Before, I saw dirty streets, thronged with beggars, and disorders and chaos were apparent everywhere. I have seen Italy again. Streets, railways, even autos, were spotless. And even in Naples, famous for its beggars, I saw only one man asking alms.”
Another writer, who visited Italy this year after being away twenty years, said: “Twenty years ago, one frequently had to complain about the unreliability of trains, the post and deliveries of mail. The civil servants who came in contact with the public often made an impres-
n. QOLDEN AGE
sion not in keeping with their office. Even the best cities looked neglected and frequently uncle? ’ as if their streets had been unswept for days. And the villages and rural districts—oh I All this has been changed through and through. Trains are on time, the streets of the cities are clean and well cared for, the civil servants and the police have really an elegant appearance, the country makes an impression of increasing prosperity, and traffic conditions are satisfactory in every respect.”
Solid Progress on Many Lines
Italy is now embarking on the most ambitious road-building program of all European states. Fifty thousand men are at work on a system of new motor highways that will make every corner of the peninsula accessible to motorists. Forty thousand miles of concrete highways will be laid.
In the last five years Borne has grown, in proportion to its size, more than any other city in the world. Italian currency has been reestablished on a gold basis. Millions of dollars’ worth of debt certificates have been burned. Treaties of conciliation and arbitration have been concluded in the last five years between Italy and Great Britain, Jugoslavia, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Spain, Rumania, Albania, Hungary and Chile.
The powerful and dreaded Mafia, which ruled over Sicily and southern Italy, has had to give way, and its leaders are in prison. Adultery has been made a crime punishable by fifteen years’ imprisonment. Holidays have been reduced to a minimum. The handshake has been abandoned for the salute. Subways have been built in Milan. Motor traffic is very large.
Just now a great effort is being made to grow in Italy all the food the Italian people require, a very great undertaking the results of which are not yet specially noticeable. This involves the reclamation of 5,000,000 acres, at a cost of $420,000,000, and the employment of half a million men. A new kind of wheat is grown which ripens three weeks ahead of other varieties and thus escapes the harmful influence of the hot Italian summer.
The country is now covered with a dense network of electric lines, penetrating into the most remote villages. Immense water reservoirs have been constructed to offset the dry season in lower Italy. All this has been done in five years. The artificial silk industry employs 65,000 workers.
Hours of work are long, nine a day; and wages are low, $13 a month for agricultural workers in summer and half that in winter. The country’s principal exports are grapes, olives, cheese, live animals, anchovies, tuna-fish, sardines, sponges, coral trinkets, agricultural products and art objects; also young Italians.
Mussolini—Master Politician
Mussolini is but forty-six years of age, having been born in Bumagna, July 29,1883. His father was a blacksmith; his mother, the village schoolmistress. He has large, dark, lustrous eyes, and a big, bulging forehead, and in his school days was considered especially mischievous.
In his youth he was in the navy; later, a journeyman stone-mason, a teacher and an editor. Rejected by a Masonic lodge ‘on account of his bad reputation’, he took up socialism; and as editor of Avanti he broke away from socialist traditions, and in 1915 joined with d’Annunzio in a furious demand for war.
Long before the war many a fascia had been organized for one purpose or another. A fascio is merely a club of men devoted to the accomplishment of some definite purpose. In 1915 Mussolini organized such a club which had for its objective the forcing of Italy into the war on the side of the Allies. The idea spread over Italy. It was the due time.
After the war Italy was overburdened with a huge debt, socialism was strong in the land, and capitalists feared the country would go Bolshevik. Mussolini, in the spring of 1919, reorganized the Milan fascio to assure the returned soldiers congenial employment and the control of the country. Again the idea spread. Again it was the due time.
In his new paper, Popolo d’Italia, in the fall of 1920, Mussolini was still congratulating the workers on their general railway strike of the previous spring and their occupation of the metallurgical industries, when he became convinced that they could not handle the situation that was developing. As the government itself was in a weak condition, Mussolini determined to make himself master of Italy, and the march on Borne was started from all parts of the country.
Italy’s Unchallenged Master
We do not share the frequently expressed view that, in the recent settlement with the pope, Mussolini surrendered to Batti. Either one of them would commit any crime in the calendar to obtain what he wants, and both of them want power; but Mussolini has an uncanny power of knowing when to punch, and the ability to give a knockout blow when he strikes. He selected the right time to settle the so-called Roman question, and settled it in the way he did so as to get more power for himself, not less. Moreover, he is a young man, with boundless ambitions, while the old pope is but two jumps from the black wagon.
If we are to believe the papers, Mussolini is a regular visitor to Countess Maria Pranzetti, clairvoyant; and if he is such a visitor it may be settled that he is getting advice direct from the Devil as to what to do to make the biggest hit with humanity. But the pope is getting similar aid; so it is just a question of which man or which system will serve his own purposes better. It seems to us that Mussolini is more his favorite than the other, but we are not sure. We wait to see.
Mussolini believes that his successor is not yet born, that he is a man of destiny, that some mystic power is protecting him from assassins, and that the time will come when he will bear rule over all the earth. Looks like the Kaiser Wilhelm all over again, does it not? Reporters have said that he cast a hypnotic spell upon them when they were in his presence. One of them said:
From the moment I entered his amazing office I had this feeling, a sensation I remember having only once before. That was when I interviewed Mme. de Thebes, a celebrated sorceress of Paris, now dead, in her mysterious room hung all around with black velvet and lighted only by the glow from crystal globes used in the practice of black magic.
Mussolini holds eight government portfolios, more than half of the cabinet; and has so much work during the day that he can attend the Chamber of Deputies only at night. He is described as the most polite of men, yet affecting a profound scowl. Moreover, he is accused of being in deadly fear of truth and determined at all hazards to suppress it. In all this he reminds one of the Kaiser.
Like the Kaiser, he is excessively vain. While he still lives his admirers are erecting to his memory one of the greatest obelisks of pure marble ever chiseled out. It took the equivalent of ten thousand working days to move it the first thousand yards.
The following is the oath which Mussolini administered to the Fascist! before their march on Rome; it specially appeals to the Italian mind:
We, the Black Shirts, by the blood of 2,000 martyrs whom we evoke as witnesses and judges, hereby declare that we will not wear on our persons any gold, silver or precious metals or stone. We will work ardently and without pay for the good of our country, will give all superfluous ornament to a fund for supporting enterprises having goodness, civilization, beauty and Italy’s improvement as their objects.
The March on Rome
The march on Rome was one of the best organized and one of the strangest marches in history. At the appointed hour on the night of October 27,1922, little Fascist squads met at their accustomed gathering-places and proceeded to their agreed-upon mobilization center just outside of Rome. The face of Italy was covered with them.
When the king, who had been away, returned to Rome, there were 50,000 Fascists surrounding the city, streets were barricaded and machine guns ■were ready to defend it. The prime minister met him and asked his signature to an order proclaiming martial law. He refused, and virtually abdicated in that instant, for his government ended right there.
At noon on Sunday, that same day, he wired Mussolini to come to Rome and form a cabinet. Mussolini hopped into an airplane and came immediately. Since then Italy has been in his hands. Now it is in his pocket.
Those who opposed the new administration ■were dealt with ruthlessly. The castor oil campaign sounds very funny to those who have no sense of humor. But wherever any man or even any woman wanted to carry on by constitutional methods, he or she was forced to declare for Fascist! control, under penalty of having to drink a pint of castor oil. The Fascists stood about and waited until their victim, deathly sick, was covered with excrement, when they left him, shouting with laughter, to go on to the next victim.
The murders of the Masons and the socialists followed as a matter of course. Not a voice could be lifted in protest. The noble Matteotti was done to death in a taxicab because he dared to speak in parliament in defense of the commonest rights of the people. His body, frightfully mutilated, was discovered in a canyon weeks later. Mussolini has many times been accused of having given the order to the murderers. The crimes that took place in Florence were the work of devils in human form. Nothing that unbridled force could do to destroy life, freedom of speech, of action, or even of thought, was left undone. Masonry in Italy was destroyed.
A 'i of Murder
Fascism does not deny, and can not deny, that it is a rule by force and that it does not stop at murder to gain its ends. The Tcheka, or secret committee for doing away with opposition leaders, was organized in Mussolini's private home in the year 1924, according to former undersecretary of the Foreign Office, Signor Finzi. Mussolini has remained president of the Tcheka during the entire time that the reign of murders has been under way. According to Finzi, these murders of Matteotti and others were agreed upon in advance and sanctioned and legalized "For reasons of State”. Nietzsche all over. The Kaiser out-kaisered.
Today a boy who wishes a chance to make his way in the world in Italy must get the permission of the police before he can leave his place of birth. Could any slavery be more complete? Hundreds of professors and other well-educated people are completely restricted in all their movements during the day, and especially after dark. Such a land is a living hell.
Blackshirts are everywhere, railway blackshirts watching passengers and railwaymen, frontier blackshirts preventing Italians from leaving Italy and foreign anti-Fascists from entering Italy, and shipping blackshirts keeping tab on seamen and everything that goes into or out of Italy. Whenever two Italians meet a third it may be depended on that the third is a spy. Servants report regularly to the police all they see and hear in the homes where they work. What an intolerable situation!
Working men must join the Fascist! or be without employment, as a government order compels employers to apply to the Fascist LaborBureau for employees. If an Italian abroad writes or speaks against Fascism, his property and that of his family, if he has either in Italy, are objects of Fascist attack. Residents of Italy have smuggled out letters to their relatives abroad begging them to quickly become Fascisti so as to save their loved ones from ruin.
The Island Hells
Italy has become a land where every man is spying on his neighbor (as it was in the United States during the World War). If anybody is known as a confirmed enemy of Fascism he is arrested, given no trial, is not even questioned, but is simply held in jail until the time of deportation comes. He is then marched handcuffed to the nearest station and taken away. There is no appeal, and often the deported man’s family is not allowed to see him.
The victims are sent to the small volcanic islands around Sicily. These islets are tiny, barren, wind-swept, without running water or vegetation, and are among the most dreadful places of confinement on earth. At last reports over two thousand men and women were in these horrible places.
For singing on the street a song which criticized the government a Milanese stonecutter was first kept twenty months in prison without trial, and then was fined four pounds and sentenced to five additional months. His light sentence was given because he pleaded that he was drunk at the time.
Blackshirts have the right to stop any persons on the street at night and demand to see their papers. Refusal to comply is insubordination to the police. On the other hand, when a foolish fifteen-year-old boy attempted to shoot at the dictator he was instantly knifed to death and his body was stamped beyond recognition. Violence of this kind is considered 0. K.
In the Tyrol the Germans have been deprived of all their rights. Parents may not even teach German to their own children in their own homes. Recently when a champion of the German tongue was buried and the discovery was made that the funeral wreaths were in German the Fascists invaded the cemetery and destroyed the floral pieces at once.
When two thousand German farmers in the Tyrol sought to cooperate with Mussolini’s new agricultural program, Italian Fascists drew up a new program, the government condemned the property for the public good, paid each German a small amount for his land, and ejected him from his home to provide for himself and his family elsewhere.
Blackshirts must show their zeal for the cause, or they are in trouble right away. A year ago the membership of the various Fascist organizations was 6,814,703. Eighty thousand youths •were added to the number during the year, and thirty thousand were expelled for lack of zeal.
No Limits to Ambition
There are no limits to Mussolini’s ambition. He is at one and the same time holding positions which, in the United States, would make him president, vice president, secretary of state, secretary of war, secretary of the navy, secretary of the interior, secretary of commerce, secretary of agriculture, secretary of labor, chairman of the National Republican Committee, delegate to the League of Nations, a patron of the arts and of archeological research, a gentleman farmer and a violinist.
He had proposed to give the Grand Council of Fascism the right to alter the succession to the throne (thus paving the way for him to crown himself); but at the last moment the Grand Council weakened on this, and it was for the time omitted from the Fascist program. Nevertheless, the man who caused this diversion from the Mussolini plan, Federzoni, has been demoted from his position as Minister of the Colonies and Mussolini has taken that job too.
Voting has become a joke. Under certain conditions you can vote “Yes” to a slate that is made up by the Fascist Council. In most instances the judges of election gave out only the “Yes” tickets. If any did vote “No” they were in danger of beatings. If they wrote “No” on the “Yes” ticket, the ticket was counted “Yes” anyway. As a consequence, at the last elections the Fascist ticket was elected by a vote of 8,663,412 to 135,761. The Grand Council of the Fascismo has by this vote been made the supreme national and state authority.
“The Shouting Millions”
Mussolini knows the shouting millions have not one particle of common sense, and is holding them in line by the same methods in use from time immemorial. Though they are always the sufferers, they are easily fanned to enthusiasm by every movement away from peace and toward militarism.
Military service is compulsory for all citizens between 20 and 39 years of age. Service in peace-time may run as high as thirty-four months. When Mussolini recently asked 70,000 veterans if they were ready to fight for Italy again, they all roared “Yes”, just as the Kaiser’s troops would have done.
Both Italy and France have strongly fortified the border-line between the two countries, all the way from the Mediterranean to Mont Blanc, and there is bad blood between the two nations.
The passes bristle with cannon and are closed with barbed-wire blockades. .
By a financial trick state expenses have been transferred to the municipal budgets. In Italy every acre of land is in some municipality and every municipality has a mayor. Every municipality is therefore a state within a state; and this is so true that the officers of these 9,200 municipalities issue passports to those who wish to go from one to another.
Every municipality in Italy is to have its own aviation field, while Rome already has what is claimed to be the finest airport in the world. Municipalities will be kept enthusiastic by distributing 1,000 free planes to reserve flying officers. The government will supply free hangar space, and gas and oil at cost. This officer must fly a minimum number of hours each month, when, where and with whom he pleases.
Mussolini has patterned his govermnent after the Vatican. He has his own “Sacred College of Cardinals”. He nominates members of the Grand Council, and, in turn, each of these is supposed to name his successor when the post becomes vacant, thus perpetuating the Fascist regime.
King Victor Emmanuel III might as well hire out as a farm hand. In a recent edition of the Italian Who Is Who in Italy? his biography was the shortest one in the book, while Mussolini’s was the longest. Perhaps this was accidental; but hardly. Mussolini wrnnts to be the whole show, and is.
Fascism in the U. S. and Elsewhere
Following the same method of reasoning that led Kaiser Wilhelm to' think he could become ruler of the world, Mussolini has stretched out his hand to Italians in other lands, and has sought and does seek, by methods similar to those used in Italy, to eventually gain the dominance he previses.
Like the Kaiser, he has some basis for his dreams, because there are now 9,118,593 expatriated Italians living in different parts of the world, of whom 7,674,593 are living in the Western world. Should this large number become thoroughly impregnated with Fascist rules and ideas, they would be a formidable force indeed; and extreme efforts are being put forth to make every Italian everywhere fall in line with the program.
We have had a chance to see how this works in America. All Italian emigrants are registered as voters in Italy and are urged to avail themselves of the chance to vote for Fascism. Bulletins have been issued ordering Italians abroad to send their children to Italian schools whenever that is possible, and warning of Fascist displeasure, with all that that portends, if the rule is not obeyed.
Great numbers of Fascist agents in the guise of business and professional men have visited America from Italy and have gone throughout the country spreading the doctrine wherever Italians live or work. All Italians are warned to join up. If they do not do so, their relatives in Italy are threatened. It is a new Mafia on a greater and grander scale than was ever dreamed of by the old one.
A petition of liberty-loving Italians in this country has been presented to PresidentTTIoov-er, setting forth that Fascist agents here have destroyed the free Italian press in America, created an espionage system over Italians residing here and continually invaded their rights. He has been urged to make an investigation.
Acting through its regular diplomatic channels, and with inconceivable cheek, the present Italian government has levied taxes upon bachelors now living in America, and if they do not pay, or furnish proof that they are married, the tax is collected from their relatives in Italy. It has gone further and in cases of persons dying intestate and without heirs has boldly claimed their property, contrary to all United States law and all precedent. It has done this in furtherance of the Kaiser’s idea that "once a German, always a German”; but the Kaiser found this did not work in America, and it remains to be seen if it will work for Mussolini.
Nevertheless, Professor Marx, of Stanford University, California, predicts that, at the present trend, Fascism will rule America in ten years. American financiers are helping to put this across, and look with favor upon the whole scheme, as a means of keeping the common people down and themselves for ever on top.
In the days of the general strike in England blackshirts appeared in England boldly marked B. F. (British Fascists) and issued a proclamation stating that their purpose was to preserve law and order and prevent a revolution and Bolshevism. Strange how these financial Bolsheviks fear Bolshevism!
That was all right. Anybody can do anything he likes in Britain so long as he does not interfere with British liberty. The second day the blackshirt group started the cudgel and castor oil methods that had been so successful in Italy, when government and people alike turned upon them and beat them into unconsciousness. Then and there British Fascism disappeared from off the face of the earth.
A Campaign for More Babies
One of the tenets of Mussolini is that the more Italians there are in the world, the greater will be the power of Fascism, and the quicker it will be able to gain its objective of taking control of the whole world. Hence he has inaugurated a great campaign for more Italian babies. For practical reasons, as well as reasons of state, it has been necessary to make Italian women enthusiastic about his plan.
Women are treated well under Fascism. In factories they receive the same wages and conditions of work as men, maternity insurance is provided for, and two months’ vacation at time of childbirth. Participation of young women in marksmanship contests has been encouraged, and thus a love of and belief in war has been inculcated. Thus, by various devices, Mussolini has become extremely popular with the women. In this he imitates the papal system, which aims to control the men through the women, and succeeds.
In some towns married people have been divided into ten classes. In the first, called the ‘category of honor’, are couples with seven children and upward. These have been favored with income tax concessions, cheap tram fares, free cinema seats, and general social precedence. Musicians turn out when twins are born. Childless couples are bullied and badgered.
The Fascist press has boldly urged the sending of childless women to the penal islands for a year, in the hope that sheer boredom may lead them to long for children. When the question is asked why Italy should desire great increases in her population when she already has more than she can feed, the answer is made that Italy will make war to take from others such parts of the earth as it needs to locate its excess population, and that if the people sought to be dispossessed resist, the war will be their fault, not Italy’s. The tax on bachelors is popular with the women of Italy. It exempts only Catholic priests, soldiers, prisoners, foreigners and cripples.
If women like to be bossed, they are getting plenty of it in Italy. They are told what they may wear and may not wear, and the length of their garments. In the southern provinces they are not even taught to read and write, or were not until recently. However, women are being given greater opportunities for education than formerly, and in the universities can follow the same courses as the men.
Mussolini and the Vatican
For political purposes Mussolini is a Catholic, but for no other. The man worships himself, and any homage he extends to others is done for reasons of state. There are some millions of Italians who believe the pope has power to send them to hell or get them out of hell. So long as they think that way it serves Mussolinis purpose to have friendly relations with the system which holds them in bondage. He can make use of the pope, albeit he may get bit occasionally in handling him.
Mussolini says that Italy is a spiritual nation. The “Americana Encyclopedia”, on the other hand, says cautiously: “There are some who say that in Italy there is not now and never has been a true religious spirit, but on the contrary a constant and universal indifference: that the official religion and the rites of the Roman Catholic Church are nothing but a travesty of pagan ceremonies: that everything in worship is external and superficial and is a reflection of the sentiment of classic art and of the political traditions of the Latin races.” We take a third position, which is that there are among the Italians a few real Christians, and mighty few at that.
Fascism boasts that it has restored the crucifix to schoolhouse walls and court-rooms. Now a deal has been fixed up by which the pope is a little monarch on his own account on a little plot of ground 100 acres in extent, and has received a present of $37,500,000 in cash and $50,000,000 in bonds which he never would have had if United States financiers had not put up the money to finance Fascism. When the deal was fixed up all Catholic priests on the penal islands were freed.
No one yet knows or can know which of Italy’s two bosses will conquer the other; but it is a safe bet that the fur will fly between Mussolini and the pope, and it does not look to us as if even the clever politicians of the Vatican will be able to prevent Mussolini from making use of them to carry out his own dreams of power. At present they are fighting over the question as to who shall educate the youth of the land and who, therefore, shall control its future. Mussolini has the youth in his hands, and we doubt very much if he will give them up to anybody or anything.
Present Status of Education,
In the last fifty years the percentage of illiteracy in Italy has been reduced from 69 percent to 27 percent. There are now thirty state universities, free universities or institutions of university rank in Italy, 'with a total enrolment of 34,580 students.
Fascism is now doing to education in Italy what the Power Trust is doing to it in the United States. The children may be taught and may believe what Fascism and the Power Trust approve, and nothing else. All school textbooks are being overhauled with that end in view.
In the universities in both countries the same principles prevail. Professors holding liberal ideas are not allowed to remain. They must either fall in line with Fascism and the Power Trust program or they may retire and raise chickens. The percentage of male teachers in the schools and colleges of Italy is constantly falling off. It is hard for a real man to debauch the youth by teaching them what he himself does not and can not believe.
The Fascist press is circulating a Mussolinian Decalogue which is being taught the children in some of the schools, notably Milan. It is said that one of the commandments taught is as follows: “I am Italy, thy mother, thy sovereign, thy goddess. Thou shalt have no other mother, sovereign or goddess above me. Thou shalt honor the government and Fascismo.” Other commandments are: “Know thou that the Fascist, and especially the militia members, should not believe in perpetual peace. Mussolini is always right. One thing should be dear to thee above all, the life of the Duce.”
Efforts to encourage the buying and reading of books, by a so-called “book festival” each year, when special rates are offered to bookbuyers, have not met with much success. The people of Italy, purposely degraded and neglected for centuries, are unprepared as yet to enjoy much of real liberty.
How Long Will Fascism Last?
The thinkers of the world, the liberty lovers, are asking how long this thing can last. But who can answer the question? The answer is in God’s Word, but God does not reveal the secrets of His Word to everybody, and we are waiting upon God to see how He will show His hand in this whole device for riveting upon the Italian people one of the worst forms of slavery ever conceived, a slavery which, under the guise of law, is lawlessness itself.
Writers who have been in Italy say that, when nobody is around, chauffeurs, working men, guards and guides, without a single exception, denounce the insufferable tyrannies of the present regime, even though they themselves are wearing black shirts. On the other hand, the well-to-do, the more prosperous professionals, are for Fascism.
An observant novelist analyzed the existing condition as hysteria, rather than a healthy enthusiasm. He gained an impression of impending disaster. The necessity of having domestics report regularly to the police what they have overheard discussed in homes where they work is a confession of fear. Suppression of Masonry and of freedom of the press confesses the same terror.
Mussolini thinks that people nowadays are tired of liberty; but there are many who do not agree, and in their exile in Paris and elsewhere the former statesmen of Italy and their friends are doing what they can to help their fellow Italians to see what is being done to them.
It is claimed that these liberty-lovers are smuggling twenty thousand papers into Italy weekly and distributing them, and that there are presses in Italy itself, hidden in cellars and haystacks, which are trying to carry on. But what can these do under such conditions as now obtain? Only Christ’s kingdom can ever free Italy from the tyrant’s grasp.
Violence will do no good. Fascism itself is violence. In the Slav districts taken over by Italy after the World War, arson has been tried. But what good does that do? People are already tired of the dramatic show. Probably Mussolini is at heart tired of it himself. Before they get through with it the Italian people will be so sick of the present reign of violence that when Armageddon does come and the Devil is really bound and Christ’s kingdom is reigning in full force and power, they will say from the bottom of their hearts, ‘Lo, this is our King, we have waited for Him, He will come and save us; and the former things shall not be remembered nor come into mind.’
The Bishop of Gloucester
A BRITISH subscriber has sent us a clipping from one of the national journals (probably John Bull, but name of paper and date of publication were inadvertently omitted) which has the following remarkable statement to make regarding the bishop of Gloucester. Here, at any rate, is one bishop that seems to know why he is a bishop and who made him a bishop and of what the duties of a first-class he-bishop consist. ■
He has publicly stated from the pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral that he finds no grounds in Christianity for condemning “Imperialism,” that the basis of human society rests upon the power of the sword, and that a big Navy is necessary to keep society from dissolution. He asserts that a “small knot of malicious armed men” are more powerful than a whole unarmed people, “however meritorious they may be,” and that no League of Nations, Federation of Mankind, or what not, is strong enough, without plenty of guns, bombs, and poison-gas, to retain what it holds.
Go to it, Bishop! There is no use to “bish” unless you “bish” properly. While you are at it you might as well get out of the business all there is in it. That is what the rest of them are doing, and you have just as good a right to your share of the swag as they have. And you better get it now, while the getting is good, ‘ere the evil days draw near when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.’ But, oh how you will enjoy the overalls and the alarm clock when you finally get used to doing something honest!
World’s Northernmost Radio
/^VN FRANZ JOSEPH LAND the Russian the entire world by data regarding weather con-government is establishing the world’s most ditions, immensely valuable in making weather
northerly radio station. It is expected to benefit forecast.
Straws in the Wind
Over Two Million Under Arms
HE Armaments Year Book of the League of Nations shows that France has 569,000 men under arms, Russia has 562,000, Great Britain has 520,000, Italy has 251,000, Japan has 199,000, the United States 136,000, and Germany 99,000. The total number of men under arms for the six great countries of the world is 2,336,345.
No Longer Safe to Kill Negroes
IT IS no longer safe for ■white men to murder negroes in Florida. A white man of Jacksonville recently lured a black man into the woods and killed him with an axe because he wanted his woodyard. Now he has been hanged, the first white man in Florida to be hanged for murdering a negro. Surely the world does move.
Electrocution Is Painless
A DENVER electrician came in contact with
2,200 volts, gave one yell, and dropped twelve feet into a pile of sand. When rescuers reached him his face wras black, his jaws were set, and he had swallowed his tongue. To all intents and purposes he was dead. After frantic efforts he was resuscitated, and now says that the entire experience was painless.
The Eight Most Tyrannized Cities
THE American Civil Liberties Union reports that during 1928 police broke up four times as many meetings as were banned or broken up in the previous year. It states that the cities where police interference with liberty is most habitual are Boston and Taunton, Mass., Philadelphia, Pittston and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and Bellaire and Martin’s Ferry, Ohio.
Peter Up to Date
THOSE who have read the Bible and have seen what a plain wholesome kind of man Peter was will feel sorry to see how things have gone to his head. The way the situation now is, according to dispatches, no one is even permitted to talk to his “successor” (or should we say, alleged successor) without kneeling, and in his presence only kings may wear gloves. According to that, every American citizen ought to wear gloves all the time when he is in Rome and in the little toy 100-acre city of the. Vatican.
Costa Rica Wants No Jesuits
ECLARING his purpose to retain civil and religious liberty in his country, President Dr. Cleto Gonzalez Viquez, of the republic of
Costa Rica, recently said: “I believe the return of the Jesuits into Costa Rica, whence they were expelled several years ago, would be a national calamity.”
United Fruit Company
Minor Keith, founder of the United Fruit
Company and virtual builder of Costa Rica, is dead. The United Fruit Company has 50,000 workers, owns most of the railroads in Central America, together with many of its ports, and boasts that it has never called for a marine or a battleship to protect it.
How Like a Mother!
WHEN a three-year-old child at Uniontown,
Pa., fell into an enclosure where a bear was chained to a stake, and the bear started to claw the child, over the railing and into the enclosure went the child’s mother and put up such a gallant fight that the bear left off clawing the child and went to clawing her. Eventually both were rescued.
Power of British Ecclesiastical Courts
THE British people have just received a considerable shock upon learning that an ecclesiastical court has sentenced a man to prison and that no civil court could interfere. The man was imprisoned for buying a property which included a church, and then refusing to repair the church. It seems that an ancient law requires such repairs to be made in such instances.
Priests Back on Job in Mexico
A FTER being on strike three years, and having learned conclusively that the Mexican people could get along perfectly well without them, the priests in Mexico have returned to their jobs. The so-called settlement was a complete victory for the Mexican government, and a complete backdown for the papacy. All the priesthood had to do at any time was to abide by the laws, and this they are still obligated to do. No changes in the laws nor in their administration have been made.
Reading and Writing in Thirty Lessons
A CAMPAIGN is on to teach illiterate mothers reading and writing in thirty lessons, and splendid results are being achieved. The work, which is under the general direction of the wife of Secretary of Labor Davis, has made the interesting discovery that the old learn much more quickly than the young and that thirty lessons are generally all that are needed to get a good start.
300 Schools Teaching Fascism
IT IS estimated that there are now 300 schools teaching Fascism to Italian children in the United States. From these schools 168 children have just been selected for a two months’ trip to Italy, there to get more fully inducted into the business of ruling by violence, so that when the time comes they can do their bit. There are 210 Fascist units in the United States, official figures.
Strange Ideas of Manhood
WHEN her boy fifteen years of age graduated from school, his mother, a widow, living and working in Paterson, N. J., made a special effort and bought him a wrist watch as a gift. Three young men of his city met him on the main street. One of them attempted to take his wrist watch away, on the ground that he was a sissy. When he resisted, the three attacked him and one of them kicked him in the throat and killed him. The ages of the young "men” range from 15 to 17, and they are now held for murder. They have strange ideas of what constitutes manhood.
Lethal Power of the New Poison Gases
REFERRING to the lethal power of the new
poison gases, Senator J. D. Millen, of the Island of Tasmania, is reported in The Launceston (Tasmania) Examiner, as having said in a public address in that city: "There is no use saying the world will not tolerate chemical warfare. This is no new thing. Two thousand three hundred years ago the Spartans made use of sulphur fumes in warfare, but sulphur fumes could not be compared with the poison gases of today. I have experimented with some of those little brown powders, and I will tell you this—• if you took one and put it in a sink of water, you would know no more. You would be dead before your body struck the floor.”
Taken the Stigma Away
rpiIE president of the International Society of
Christian Endeavor tells us that the Kellogg Pact is a crusade of honor, and not a pacifist program, and that it has taken the stigma away from those agencies which work for peace. Students of the Sermon on the Mount will be glad to know that the stigma heretofore resting upon the Beatitudes and other portions of that sermon are now officially removed.
Welcome, Ye Morons, to Our Shores!
THE Virginian Pilot, of Norfolk, in an editorial says very truthfully, “The higher a man rises in the scale of intelligence and the more thorough his education, the more independent he tends to become in his opinions. If we were to make conformity in all beliefs the test of eligibility for citizenship as we now seem to do in beliefs on the subject of war, it would not be long before only morons could hope to pass the required tests.”
Silly Clothes of the Men
AT THE Life Extension Institute, on a very hot day, the entire clothing of a dozen women and of a dozen men was weighed. It was found that the average clothing of the women weighed 2 pounds 10 ounces, while the average clothing of the men weighed eight pounds six ounces, or about three times as much. Not a man in the world but admits that the clothes of men are silly; but not a man in the world has time enough, or sense enough, or courage enough, to inaugurate a dress reform such as the women are carrying so successfully to completion.
No Way to Direct Directors
IT SEEMS that there is no way to direct directors of holding companies, no way by which these institutions can be held in check. The law provides that when stock is issued it must be offered alike to all. But one great holding company in New York has a by-law on its books compelling each of its directors to buy $100,000 of new stock every year at $50 a share (which is one-third its market value) and another bylaw compelling the company to issue a bonus of like amount to each director, so that he may have the wherewithal to buy. Just a plain case of stealing; and nothing can be done. The old-style holdup man has given place to the millionaire holding-company man.
POLITICAL PEACE
(Uncle Sam and his cronies admiring the Kellogg Pact)
Uses of Pennsylvania State Constabulary
A GENERATION ago the United States was an orderly and order-loving country and it was next to impossible to find a policeman or officer of the law even when you wanted one. Now armed officers are to be seen on every hand. Conspicuous among these in recent history have been the Pennsylvania State Constabulary, the uses of which have been ventilated in our columns from time to time. The Pittsburgh Coal Company has used them freely.
But it seems they have other uses, at least some of them. At a recent-funeral in northeastern Pennsylvania a resident of the community told the editor that when, some time back, the McHenry distillery at Benton, Pa., was broken into and sixty-one barrels of whiskey were stolen, four of the Pennsylvania State Constabulary helped to do the stealing, and when the truck in which the whiskey was being taken to Mildred, Pa., broke down, one of the members of the Constabulary stayed by the truck until assistance could be brought to make the necessary repairs. Some police force!
Why Bishops Are Well Paid
SOME might think it strange that bishops are so well paid when they have so little real work to do to help their fellow men; but the matter has been partially cleared up by the discovery that the leading light of the Methodist Church South has been for forty years a diligent bettor on the New York stock market. Moreover, he stated that he was buying stocks on the partial payment plan, when the books show that all but one of his ‘purchases’ were purely bets. Some of his low-salaried subordinates want the bishop to get out; but that would be cruel, because it would reduce his funds and he would probably not be able to buy any more stocks on margin. And, horrid thought! he might even have to get to work.
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