Cremonesi's Job

Surrounded by a resplendent guard of Fascist mounted police, a lavishly decorated coach slowly ascended the Capitoline Hill, famed cradle of Imperial Rome. As the coach drew up before the Capitol itself, Dictator Premier Benito Mussolini regarded it benignly, and extended a cordial welcome from a balcony of the Capitol itself.

Senator Filippo Cremonesi, who emerged from the glittering vehicle, looked a trifle abashed.

A few moments later the voice of Il Duce Benito boomed from the Capitol as he inducted Senator Cremonesi as the first Governor of Rome under the new Fascist law replacing popularly elected mayors throughout Italy with podestas (governors) appointed by the Central Government (TIME, Oct. 19 et seq.).

Il Duce's words:

"Governor Cremonesi, within five years Rome must appear as a marvel to all the people of the world--vast, ordered and powerful as it was in the time of the First Empire of Augustus. You will make open squares around the Augusteo Amphitheatre, around the ancient Marcello Theatre, around the Capitol, around the Pantheon. Everything that has been built around these monuments during the centuries of decadence must disappear. Within five years the Pantheon must be visible from the Piazza Colonna through a wide avenue.

"You will also liberate the masterful temples of Christian Rome from the profane parasitical constructions which now cling to them. Thousands of monuments of our history must stand out in their giantlike solitude. Then Rome will spread out above other hills along the banks of the sacred river even to the shores of the Mediterranean.

"You will remove from our streets graced by these monuments all this contamination of tramways, but you will give the most modern means of communication to the new city which will rise in rings around the old one. You will give schools, bath houses, parks and athletic fields to the Fascist people who work.

"You, full of sagacity and experience, will govern the city in a spirit mindful of its past and its future."