King Vittorio Emanuele broke precedent and "scotched" rumor when he last week invited Premier Benito Mussolini to spent a holiday on his estates at San Rossore. Never before has a Premier been invited to stay with an Italian King as a personal guest. And stilled were the wagging tongues that spoke of a growing estrangement between the First Minister and his Monarch. Later, it was announced that King and Premier will in August review the Italian home fleet from the royal yacht Savoia.
According to an unusually well-informed person who is persona grata at the Quirinal, who has the Pope's ear and who has sources of information denied even to Premier Mussolini—according to this great unnamed mystery man whose ways are more incomprehensible than those of the cats in Trajan's Forum, the Queen makes cheese for the King.
Prince Gelasio Caetani, onetime Italian Ambassador to the U. S., was nominated by Premier Mussolini to be President of the Italian Red Cross in the stead of il Senatore Circalo, who resigned after the completion of his second term of office.
Deputy Giovanni Conti and Signor Curseio Suckert pricked each other's faces with swords until blood blinded them and physicians stopped the duel. The first gentleman had objected to an article which the second gentleman had written. The fight followed a recent reaction against sword-duelling which was called a "silly survival of Romanticism."
Two weeks ago a football match—a summer sport in Italy—was to have been held at Turin to decide the championship of Northern Italy. Unfortunately, the contending teams from Genoa and Bologna and their supporters arrived simultaneously in the city and a riot was with difficulty prevented. The game was postponed for two days. Meantime, feeling ran high, higher, most high. Insults became deadly, deadlier, most deadly. Threats became bloody, bloodier, most bloody. The Prefect, alarmed, said there would be no game this year in Turin.