Caesar, Virgil, Augustus

When Benito Mussolini marched on Rome, the only first-rate ports on the whole Adriatic (back seam of Italy's boot) were Venice and Trieste. In recent years the Fascist Government has spent millions of lire building another great new port at the medieval town of Bari, with elaborate warehouses, tracks, and a model town, to serve North Africa and the East.

Traffic at Bari has not kept pace with the development. Last week II Duce went down to Bari to open the town's newest publicity scheme, a great Levantine Fair with buildings and side shows put up by foreign governments.

Striding down the Fair's main street, he passed the empty buildings of Germany and Jugoslavia. Both countries at the last minute decided to send no exhibits. A little farther on he stopped at the French building, to grin and shake hands with the exhibit's director. Edouard Soulier, vice president of the Chamber of Deputies' Foreign Affairs Committee.

Il Duce had not forgotten the empty German and Jugoslavian buildings when he addressed a crowd of 75,000 swarthy Apulians:

"The Mediterranean is a southern sea, and yet it has created a philosophy, a religion, and an empire. This fact makes Italy impervious to criticism from abroad. We can regard with supreme disparagement those doctrines which come from elsewhere, from a people which did not even know how to write when we had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus!"

Below Bari, on Italy's instep, is the naval base of Taranto. There 50,000 people were waiting for Il Duce to hear what he had to say next. He was still remembering Caesar.

"The outlets of this sea," he shouted, "are in the hands of others.* If Italy does not wish to become a recluse in the Mediterranean she must ever increase her strength. . . . Taranto shall stand as a symbol to keep the Mediterranean open. . . . Our people must be ready for any event. If we should be obliged to take the field, I shall be at your head."

Hustling back to Rome, II Duce sent out a general call for all General Staff officers to assemble for a conference in the Palazzo Venezia. Meanwhile Italian papers were allowed to print something that they had known for many a week: Heavy drafts of Italian troops are being sent to Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to "guard" the Italian-Abyssinian border.

Roots for this last move reach deep into the rich manure of European diplomacy. Abyssinia is perhaps the last independent kingdom in Africa. Ever since the gaudy coronation of kinky-haired Power of Trinity I as Emperor four years ago (TIME, Nov. 10, 1930), the country has been a secret battleground for Europe's colonizing Great Powers. Only port of entry is Djibouti in French Somaliland. Otherwise Italy and Britain hem the country in on all sides. In addition Japanese tycoons who have been dumping cheap cotton goods and manufactures in the country, are negotiating for great tracts of land to grow their own cotton in Abyssinia. Foreign observers believe that France and Britain are now willing for Italy to "influence" Abyssinia in return for pulling France's chestnuts out of the Austro-Nazi fire, and for squashing Japanese competition in Africa.

*A reference to Britain's two-fisted grip at Suez and Gibraltar.

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