Potent Proconsuls

Like stern proconsuls* of Imperial Rome, four Italian Colonial Governors make almost 2,000,000 natives smart with commands backed by steel. Two/- of the four colonies have no native parliaments; and the other two** seemed about to lose theirs last week. At Rome the doom of every sort of native autonomy in Italian Colonies was sealed when Colonial Minister Luigi Federzoni published, last week, the text of a law approved for enactment by Dictator Benito Mussolini.

Text: "The moment has come to organize the colonies in conformity with the superior exigencies of the Fascist regime, destroying the vain and dangerous Democratic-Liberal superstructure, with its puerile imitations of parliamentary institutions based upon universal suffrage. Co-operation of the populations with the government of the country must be confined within those prudent special limits which their present actual historic evolution permits without damage to themselves or our sovereignty. "Cooperation of the metropolitan and indigenous populations with the government of the colony is, according to the present decree, exclusively consultative through a government council formed in its majority by responsible functionaries called to assist the governor in his civic administration work, and through a general advisory body which on the request of the governor can express its wishes or give opinions on questions of a general nature. All the members of these two bodies are exclusively government appointees, without any direct or indirect designation." De Bono. First to profit lustily from this decree will doubtless be that ruthless martinet, General Emilio De Bono, Governor of Tripolitania, and until now ever restive under the slight restrictions imposed upon his sway. It may not be true that this tense, compact, dynamic man once flogged with his heavy riding whip a Jewish maid-of-all-work who was caught dallying with her Mohammedan lover in the Governor's Palace at Tripoli--but the tale is typical of the man. He expects his servants to be ceaselessly industrious. To him, moreover, the 550,000 natives of Tripolitania are less than slaves when a Fascist plow is to be driven and all the land made fertile against an inspection visit of Il Duce (TIME, April 19). When the reputed plot supposed to have been engineered by General De Bono to make Mussolini Emperor was rumored (TIME, Feb. 28), tongues asked if now at last the General would not be demoted in disgrace. Instead Signor Mussolini has officially announced that no such plot ever existed. He with General De Bono led the Fascist march to Rome which made Benito Mussolini the Duce of all Italy. Such old friends and comrades do not part because the lesser wants to make the greater Emperor. General Emilio De Bono remains easily the First Proconsul. Other Proconsuls: Goveror Ernesto Mombelli of Cyrenaica, a milder martinet; Governor Dr. Jacopo Gasporini of Eritrea, perhaps "The Good Proconsul"; and Count Cesare de Vecchi, a noble turned Fascist, Governor of Italian Somaliland. From the arid waste of Somaliland a caravan of armored desert cars and toiling Italian soldiery emerged, last week, after a campaign in the remote interior. Stern Fascist censorship concealed and conceals any reverses this expedition may have suffered; but, last week, the desert-weary soldiers were hailed as conquerors of the remote Sultanates of Obbia and Mijertin.

*The Consuls (akin to consulere: to deliberate) were the Chief Magistrates of Ancient Republican Rome; and Pro-("For the") Consul was the title of Colonial officials who governed in the Consuls' stead. Under the Empire the Roman Consuls were debased in their authority to insignificance ; but the Proconsuls grew more and more powerful as the favorites and personal representatives of the Emperors.

/-ltalian Somaliland (extending on the East African coast from British Somaliland to Juba) ; and Eritrea (on the Red Sea).

**Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, called jointly Italian Libya, and extending from Egypt to Tunis along the African Mediterranean shore.