"There Are No Saviors"

"I can sum up the United States in two words," declared Premier Benito Mussolini last week to a correspondent of Baron Beaverbrook's enterprising London Daily Express. While the Englishman scribbled, Il Duce continued: "The two words are Prohibition and Lindbergh! . . . Dry America will never find herself. She must go Wet to find herself! In the meantime Europe is drifting toward disaster and Bolshevization."

"Democracy is nothing!" the Dictator went on. "The people are nothing and can do nothing. In every country they are weary of talk. They need men of action. They cannot save themselves--they need saviors!"

"Where are those saviors?" asked the Englishman politely. Scowling, Il Duce shot back: "There are no saviors!"

"What then of the future?"

"I foresee a long series of political, economic and military wars," answered Italy's Fascist savior darkly. "There is war now."

"What of America's policy?"

Slowly, bitterly Benito Mussolini answered: "America has no policy."

Presumably this black fit of pessimism was induced in Italy's normally optimistic Premier by his Government's inability to balance its budget (TIME, May 23), coupled with the refusal of the U. S. Congress to sanction cancellation of German Reparations and the War Debts of Italy and her Allies.

"The era of Reparations is ended," was Il Duce's parting shot. "If Germany says 'No,' [see p. 16] then Italy will say 'No!' All that belongs to the dead and buried past."

Authentic? When a premier "explodes." speaking his real mind incautiously to a journalist, his henchmen have to tidy up. Thus, after the late, great Premier Nikola Pashitch of Jugoslavia "exploded" to Correspondent Dorothy Thompson (now Mrs. Sinclair Lewis) it was denied not only that he had spoken as quoted but that he had ever seen her in his life. Last week the Italian Foreign Office called II Duce's statements as quoted by the Daily Express "so obviously absurd as to be unworthy of an official denial."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.