"Banzai!"

Nothing which ex-Soldier Adolf Hitler is being shown in Italy this week by ex- Soldier Benito Mussolini outranks in social significance the Province of Littoria, reclaimed since 1931 from the noxious swamplands of the Pontine Marshes by Italian ex-soldiers for themselves and their families. One morning last week, before the Germans should arrive in their pomp (see p. 16), Il Duce slipped behind the wheel of his little sports car, whizzed out of Rome to do at Pomezia (see map) a bit of informal work as a stonemason-- which used to be his trade.

Bronzed peasants of the Province of Littoria, every man an ex-soldier, shouted rustic greetings to the Dictator as he pulled up his car, jumped out. The local Bishop was waiting, for close collaboration of State & Church distinguishes the Mussolini dictatorship from others. A hollow cornerstone of what will be the Church of Pomezia was ready, Il Duce slipped in a parchment and some newly minted Italian coins of 1938, seized the trowel and slapped, spread mortar with the professional touch he has shown in cornerstoning other cities of Littoria (see map), namely Littoria, the capital of the Province, Sabaudia, Pontinia and Aprilia. "Ceremonies such as these require no speeches --for facts are more eloquent than words!" said the Dictator shortly, before climbing back behind the wheel of his car. Up went cheers in which the Italian peasants were joined by a delegation of Japanese university students who shrilled: "Banzai! May you live 10,000 years!"

This week the thorough German curiosity of Hitler about Littoria is causing Italians gladly to rehearse in detail the history of 2,500 years and more. Littoria is a stretch of land 15 mi. wide by 50 long lying between the Lepine Mountains, which drains down onto its bogs and the Tyrrhenian Sea. What is now Littoria was, before the days of Ancient Rome, an extremely fertile country whose natives, the Volsci, were adept at maintaining the ditches and drains they had built to turn these swamplands into fertile fields, with 24 rich cities. Unfortunately the Romans, then barbarians and innocent of their later culture, sacked the cities and killed off the Volsci. About 600 B. c. they were first smitten by dread malaria. Of these dire swamps wrote Vergil, Juvenal, Martial, Horace, Ovid and others, including Madame de Stael and more recently Gabriele D'Annunzio. Julius Caesar made elaborate plans for reclamation, Augustus and even Nero had vast labors performed, but in vain. The Catholic popes, notably that enlightened Medici, His Holiness Leo X, then took over the unequal struggle with the potent Pontine Marshes, and finally in 1918 the Italian Government made elaborate plans.

The March on Rome was in 1922, actual work of reclaiming the Pontine Marshes began in 1926, and in 1931 King Vittorio Emanuele III by royal decree vested 45,000 acres in the National War Veterans Association. Since then War Veteran Mussolini has let everyone in Italy know that Littoria is the pet project closest to his heart, although Italians are pursuing other large scale reclamation works in separate parts of the Kingdom. All these head up into Il Duce's much publicized "Battle of the Grain" which he won last year when Italians for the first time in modern history managed to hoist their wheat production above their consumption.

To the ex-soldiers, Littoria gives each family a two-story house (see cut, p. 77), necessary farm animals, and 15 years in which to pay up and own the place. The former absentee estate landlords whose agents kept a few tenant farmers cultivating such little of the soil as could be used, with mortality from malaria appallingly high, have been brushed aside by Fascism, which purchased the land at the State's own price. Some of the landlords squeal they have not been paid enough, others have unselfishly joined with Mussolini and the veterans' organization in helping the reclamation.

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