Declaration Day

A single period of 24 hours was celebrated by Italians, last week, as War Declaration/- Day, Colonial Day, and the Fourth Centenary of the birth of Duke Emanuele Filberto of Savoy, doughty progenitor of bantamweight King Vittorio Emanuele III.

Soldiers and War veterans paraded and huzzahed in virtually all Italian towns and cities; but at Rome chief attention was focused on Colonial Day by Signer Mussolini in a dramatic effort to awaken what he termed "the nation's colonial conscience."

A rousing prologue to the "awakening" had been delivered two days previously in the Chamber of Deputies by Colonial Minister Luigi Federzoni. "One of the most brilliant pages in the world's colonial history," cried he, "is inscribed with the story of how Italian troops have recently occupied in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica an additional area one third the size of Italy at a paltry cost of less than 57,000,000 lira ($3,000,000)!

Concluding, Signer Federzoni boasted that during May 1928 the last wedge-shaped strip of territory formerly dividing Tripolitania from Cyrenaica has now been occupied.

On Colonial Day this same rousing theme was taken as a text by Dictator Mussolini, at Rome, where he proceeded to bestow a coveted medal on the corps flag of the Italian Colonial Air Force. In ringing tones Il Duce declared that during the four-month period of hottest fighting in the two African colonies, last winter, 4000 war flights were made, 100,000 rounds of ammunition fired, and 400,000 pounds of explosives were dropped upon native tribes foolish enough to resist the Italian colonizers.

Having thus clarioned to the nation's colonial conscience, Signer Mussolini pinned a bronze medal on Air Corps Flag Bearer Colonel Mario Stangani. Hugging and kissing the Colonel on both cheeks, Il Duce cried: "I embrace in you the whole Italian Colonial Aviation Service!"

Historians could not recall a gesture equally spacious since Catherine the Great of Russia was hymned in heroic ballads for calling in an entire army to assuage her ardors. Even in that instance, persons in a position to know reported that Her Majesty swooned after the first regiment. Meticulous historians place the number even lower.

While Il Duce was embracing and triumphing at Rome, last week, there was left to King Vittorio Emanuele III--who has just returned from a state visit to Tripolitania and Cyrenaica--merely the cold, staid duty of honoring at Turin the late Emanuele Filberto, Duke of Savoy, born in 1528. All that could pertinently be said about Duke Filberto was compressed into a trenchant oration by famed Senator Sem Benelli, author of The Jest, a grewsome play which Actor John Barrymore made a hit-show in the U. S. some years ago.

/-By Italy on Austria, 13 years ago.