It was lèse majesté for the Italian consul, Amadeo Barletta, to break the tobacco monopoly of the Dominican Republic's Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. It was lèse majesté against Benito Mussolini, a greater dictator than Trujillo, when Trujillo clapped Barletta into jail and confiscated his tobacco company on dubious charges of an assassination plot (TIME, May 13). Last week a third and greater act of lèse majesté was in the making, as Mussolini moved to get his consul out of jail.
The third would have been against the...
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