Parties & Paunches

Many would be the jobs lost, the careers ruined, were U. S. Democratic Party Leader Franklin Delano Roosevelt to ape Italian Fascist Party Leader Benito Mussolini in prescribing gymnastic tests for his party henchmen. Doubtful it is that sickly, 64-year-old Speaker William Bankhead of the House of Representatives, could pass a rope-skipping examination; that suffering Harry L. Hopkins, Federal relief administrator, would survive a pole-vaulting test; that Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley would fare well with the broad jump, or that bald, short House Majority Leader Sam Rayburn could throw a discus very far.

To horseback-riding, fencing, airplane-piloting, swimming, skiing Leader Mussolini, the traditional politician's ample paunch is evidence of a decadence not to be tolerated in his Party. Il Duce's news-organ Il Popolo d'Italia laid the law down recently: "Excessively fat members are undesirable in the Party ranks. . . . Their hearts, minds, nerves and muscles are all Fascist, but their bellies, no!" To Rome last week were ordered 45 special secretaries and inspectors of the Fascist Party. In the Forum Mussolini, with Il Duce watching, with pantherlike Fascist Secretary Achille Starace leading, the testees swam, jumped through blazing hoops, leaped from springboards over hedges of bayonets, tanks and armored cars. Casualties: Falls on bayonet points for two secretaries, a scorching for another, a chest injury for an inspector who landed on a tank.

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