Roughshod Rotation

A so-called Doctrine of Ministerial Rotations was invented, at Rome last week, to explain the resignation of Finance Minister Count Giuseppe Volpi (TIME, July 16) and to forestall the panic which threatened to ensue.

Rumors of Italian panic were whooped up on the hostile Paris Bourse until even in Manhattan, where so many financiers are notoriously pro-Fascist, quotations on the most impeccably secured Italian bonds moved down as much as 1 3/4 points. As uncertainty grew to fear the Italian lira, which Count Volpi placed on a gold basis cf 5.26-c- last December, sank abruptly to 5.23 1/2, a low record for 1928.

Though such a movement would have seemed trifling before the lira was stabilized on a gold basis, it loomed ominously, last week, almost seven months after complete stabilization was supposed to have been achieved. With Volpi, the master stabilizer out of office, a serious slump might set in.

From Paris came a second wave of panic rumors--again with repercussions in Manhattan. Fascist censors were suppressing, it was declared, the fact that Italian bankruptcies have risen from 500 per month in 1923 to over 900 per month. Substantial Italian banks with capitalizations of between one and 600 million lira were stated to be going bankrupt at the rate of one such institution every fortnight. Finally bills to a total value of three and a half million lira were declared to have been dishonored during the past twelvemonth in the three provinces of Rome, Milan and Turin.

Though such rumors were obviously intended to produce a maximum shock from a minimum content of fact, they made it impossible for Signor Benito Mussolini to continue to pass over in silence the resignation of Finance Minister Count Volpi. The response of Il Duce, obediently voiced by unanimous editorials in the State dominated press, was that Fascist Italy has perfected as a substitute for the cabinet crises of more democratic states the Doctrine of Ministerial Rotations. Stripped of rhetoric, the Doctrine means that, while France gets a new set of Ministers every time her Cabinet falls, the fact that Prime Minister Benito Mussolini's Cabinet never falls denies to Italy the benefits of periodically infusing new blood and brains into the Government. This Signor Mussolini now proposes to do by "rotating" the Ministries among able statesmen--that is, by kicking out of office, from time to time, dignified statesmen who would ordinarily expect to hold their posts until the Prime Minister himself resigned

The blood and brains of Il Duce are, of course, assumed to be ceaselessly freshened and renewed, for he personally holds seven Cabinet*-- a majority of the total, 13.

Though uneasiness continued as to the ultimate effect of Count Volpi's retirement, panic rumors were virtually scotched by the ingenious "Doctrine"--which really amounted to assuring the public that Volpi had been sacked by Il Duce and had not resigned because he deemed the fiscal structure of Italy unsound.

The new blood and brains which were infused into the Finance Ministry, last week, are those of Senator Antonio Mosconi, aged three score and two, and scion of a noble line whose ancestors began to flourish two centuries before the discovery of America.

The motto of the Mosconi is Ever Prospering by God's Grace, and their ancient coat of arms displays two black two-headed eagles and two gold one-headed lions rampant, while from each of the six mouths of these four angry creatures darts a crimson tongue, barbed at the tip.

Briefly, Senator Mosconi, who assumed the portfolio of Finance, last week, is typical of the old, feudal aristocracy of Italy, whose descendants Commoner Mussolini constantly rallies to his own essentially feudal standard--a standard now ascendant over the Throne, as not a few were in feudal times.

Senator Mosconi is not, like his predecessor, a self made man or a titan of private finance. But he has served the new Feudal Duce with ready obedience as Prefect of Triest; and he was recently Royal Commissioner to the Venetian province ceded to Italy by Austria-Hungary, after the War--a province wherein the Mosconi were granted lands and certain Hungarian titles in the 16th Century.

Further "rotation" of the Mussolini Cabinet, last week, resulted in the appointment of another feudal scion, Professor-Deputy Alessandro Martelli to be Minister of National Economy.

Professor Martelli's predecessor, Signor Giuseppe Belluzzo was "rotated" over to be Minister of Public Instruction, while the former incumbent of that post, Signor Pietro Fedele, was sacked.

Signor Belluzzo was in Sardinia on a tour of inspection last week, when informed by cable, of his "rotation" and peremptorily ordered to return to Rome. Count Volpi left his office in the Ministry of Finance for the last time without a word to subordinates.

* Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister of the Interior, of War, of Marine, of Aviation, of Corporations.