The Wilmington morning star., 1943-08-24
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER

came around and said friend of his named
Jack Bozio, an ambitious and ingratiating
second string blackshirt with a press rela-
tions job at the foreign office. had been or
dered to roust out some foreign and prefer
ably, for some reason, American journalists
early the next morning and deliver them
down to a resettlement project on the coast
where The Bum, then known as II Duce, had
drained swamp, allotted certain plots of
land to his subjects, built houses and created
town called Pontnia. 1t was to be an
early morning getaway in the dark, and
sounded unappetizing but Gervasi "a i d it
would be chance to see II Bum doing his
stuff in the paternal mood and he felt sorry
for Bozio who was having hard time round
ing up talent and therefore had promised to
go, himself, and would admire for to have
someone to sneer with.
We tied loose before dawn and arrived
around, say, nine and found there, among
the foreign journalists Sonia Tomara, Rus
sian with an almost unbelievable history of
adventure in the Bolshevik revolution who has
since become an American and one of the
great journalists of great age of journalism.
This girls modesty is no less startling, in
cidentally, than her record of enterprise and
courage and she can sit all night in room
full hearing one after another tell Of the time
he scopped the town on a love-slayer's diary
or kidnappers arrest and you would never
know she had missed a meal or slept in
culvert in all her life
Sonia was there, cumming around with
Bozio who had an English education and
twittering manner, and there were some odds
and ends of continental journalism, Nazis
and hand-to-mouth Frenchmen and a rusty,
flat-heeled English number who didn't brush
her hair but kept blowing it out Of her mouth.
Bozio had funked his assignment in quality
for we were all journeymen and not editor
or magnate in the crowd; but on numbers
he had made a etter-than-passing grade so
all was reasonably merry.
First they took us to a sort Of community
center still smelling of fresh plaster, with
Fourth of July platform out front, draped
with the colors and symbols OF fascism and
tributes to II Bum, for a very solemn (and
by God it was solemn and sadder than any
one could find words to say demonstration
of the degradation of people and the exalta-
ton OF the state. They were collecting gold
wedding rings from wives and even puckered
old widows in poor black dresses and big
muddy shoes, and all sorts of poor little gold
and gilt trinkets which these people h d
treasured, to be boiled down for gold to back
up the lire which then worth, I believe,
about four cents in the black market and
about six cents in the regular exchange. There
when the parade started up the steps, across
the scaffold, past II Duce and down the steps
on the other side, they came up with old
World war helmets heaped with this pathetic
trash which they handed to Mussolini, who
took the offerings in his dainty, black-gloved
hands and handed them to a flunkey who
dumped them into the hamper.
Some of the collections were brought up by
little girls, others by little ball, the innocent
baby blackshirts others by very old women
or hobbling cripples of the Isonzo. Several
DID, old women came up and personally with
their knobby fingers, placed in the Duce's
gloved palm gold medals for which their seas
or husbands had died and he blinked and his
soft eyes got wet as he said a few WORDS
Each woman received an iron ring in ex-
change for her wedding ring, inscribed with
some patriotic motto. All this was a fraud
of course, because the gold in the whole
catch wasn't enough to pay for the gas which
brought our party down from Rome, and buy
the lunch.
Then a blackshirt brought out big stacks
of paper money and, following some
band music, II Bum began awarding cash
prizes to certain residents of the new COM
munity for raising the most potatoes, the
most eggs, the most babies and pigs AS
each winners name was read off that one
would mount the platform to receive several
hundred lire from II Bum, himself, and throw
a snap of the heels of his expensive black
leather boots. They didn't believe in the hand
shake, the greeting of the effete democracies
Say what you will about the unwillingness
of the Italians to live under fascism but
will say that these people were loving it.
Some of them were hysterical in their cheers
for the posturing little punk on the platform
and I tell you there were kids of 16 or so in
the local militia detail who put their hats
on their bayonets waved them on high and
shrieked "Duce! Duce! Duce!'' with tears
running down.
All told, this development wasn't patch
on Miami beach any one OF a hundred
lesser projects of private enterprise in this
country and yet great it was in the fascist
scale of achievement that it's dedication was
a bosterous national event. And, though it
is true that many of our citizens were swim
died in many such deals, their liberties and
their lives didn't go with their money and
the Italians were swindled, too.
I mentioned that English number. Soni.
and Gervasi said she had fascism real had
and when, to cap the show for us we uJare
given a private glimpse of the great NAV ~
the new office of the local boss blackshir+
she took off her own wedding ring and VII,
drooping head. handed it over to the Bun Sln4
Of Buns ~