Taking after their father, Master Vittorio Mussolini, 14, and Master Bruno Mussolini, 12, have tackled journalism as their first big job. At Rome they publish La Penna del Ragazzi (The Boys' Pen), weekly.
With his boy's pen Master Bruno dashed off a short story, "The Vessel of the Dead." Hair raising, it resembles (except for lack of sex motive) Il Duce's own lurid serial The Cardinal's Mistress,* penned while he was helping to edit a Socialist sheet.
Master Vittorio last year completed a gripping novel, The Blackhand, which dealt with combats in New York between the U. S. Coast Guard and blackhanders. Now older and wiser, he pens improving editorials, weighty leading articles.
" . . . Journalism is life," he pontificated last week in No. 16 of the weekly. ". . . This new number, which makes a step ahead ... is a great journalistic advance on all our previous issues. . . . There are 5,000 high-school students in Rome alone, and it is right that they should have their own organ. . . . Therefore you should help us."
For the best set of guesses by high-school students as to which Italian football team will win which games, Master Vittorio will award prizes. He is his own movie reviewer, conducts a stamp collectors column, prints jokes and puzzles.
In Shanghai, China, big Sister Edda, Countess Ciano, is the wife of the Italian Consul General. In Milan, doughty Uncle Arnaldo Mussolini edits the family paper, Il Popolo d'ltalia. Also in Milan, little Sister Anna Maria teethes.
"I Knew Mussolini When. . . ."
Fresh from a "conversation," not a quoting "interview' with Dictator Benito Mussolini, a U. S. journalist wrote as follows in a letter received last week:
"This time, meeting Mussolini was like being granted an audience by a King. . . . He looked tired and worn. His clothes were wrinkled and he needed a second shave. . . .
"Just ten years before we were both reporters on the same story. It was at Cannes during the famous Cannes Conference. He was covering the story for Popolo d'ltalia of Milan, of which he was then editor. I was manager of the Paris bureau and was covering it for the United Press. At that time Mussolini was practically unknown outside Italy. He scurried around with the rest of us with notebook and pencil, gathering items from Lloyd George, Briand and Lord Riddell. None of us paid him any attention. Certainly none could have foreseen that in a few years he would be one of the world's outstanding figures. He had already started organizing the Fascists, but little was known of the organization abroad.
"I recall once when we were gathered around Lord Riddell, who was British press liaison officer, a British correspondent asked Riddell what was the nature of the new organization called Fascists in Italy. Riddell said: 'Oh, so far as I know, just a gang of roughs.' Mussolini was on the outskirts of the group and glared at Riddell. Someone jogged Riddell's arm and whispered that the chief of the Fascists was there. Riddell looked disconcerted and added: 'But I suppose they are all right in their way.'