No Disarmament!

Like soldiers, like ramrods, members of the newly elected 100% Fascist Parliament stood at attention before King Vittorio Emanuele III in the Chamber of Deputies last week, waiting to take their oaths of office. Each deputy was resplendent in dress suit and white gloves. "Gentlemen!" boomed Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, "His Majesty the King invites you to be seated!" They sat. He read the oath of office. He began to call the roll. Like clockwork, as each name was barked, a white-gloved hand shot up in the Fascist salute, and the deputy in question shouted "Giuro!" ("I swear!"). Straight down the roll to "M" read Il Duce, never moving a muscle until he came to his own name. "Mussolini!"--his right hand shot up like all the rest. "Giuro!"--he swore allegiance to king and country. Perched on the enormous throne sat tiny King Vittorio Emanuele, looking even smaller than usual under a terrific damask canopy surmounted by a vast crown. When he rose to deliver the "speech from the throne"--that is to say, Mussolini's declaration of policy--the voice of His Majesty rang loud and clear. As everyone had expected, the speech urged upon the deputies as their supreme duty ratification of the enabling legislation for the treaty and concordat recognizing Pope Pius XI as a temporal sovereign (TIME, Feb. 18). Apart from that, Vittorio Emanuele touched upon only one topic of general interest, disarmament.

"Noble enterprises in this direction have been attempted." said the King. "My Government has already made clear what their viewpoint is. But disarmament has remained to this day merely a generous aspiration, contradicted by continuous arming on land, on sea, and in the air.

"This legislature will collaborate in the future, as previous legislatures have done in the past, to secure the application of all measures suggested by my Government to render our armed forces ever more efficient."