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Ciano Career. Old hands at Statecraft consider that the young Count has had their metier's most meteoric career. His vigorous father Count Costanzo Ciano, Admiral and longtime Minister of Communications, was one of Italy's most conspicuous naval heroes of the War. In Fascism's early days Father Ciano was the first Italian of national prominence to join struggling Editor Benito Mussolini and become a Fascist. Son Galeazzo was a Fascist zealot before he was out of his teens. After a law degree at the University of Rome, he became theatre and book reviewer on Nuovo Paese, the first Fascist newspaper in Rome, fought a duel with a Communist whom he gravely wounded, later signed the fellow up as a Fascist.
In 1925, three years after the March on Rome, Count Galeazzo decided to take examinations for the diplomatic service, which he barely passed. Then began his formative training. After routine duty in South America, he went to Peiping where he served under one of Italy's great masters of diplomacy, Daniele Vare, the Minister to China and an eminent student of its lore. During this time Admiral Ciano, with the astuteness of an old campaigner, was on watch in Rome and when he found that Premier Mussolini was about to solve the "Roman Question" by making a treaty with Pope Pius XI, got Son Galeazzo recalled from China just in time to squeeze him into the Italian Embassy to the Holy See as First Secretary.
The good job he did there was the turning point of young Count Ciano's life and he went on the upgrade with a passionate courtship of Edda Mussolini which was over in a few weeks. Soon after the wedding, bride and bridegroom sailed for Shanghai. There, presently, she had a son
Fabrizio, still called in the family "Little Chink.'' Count Ciano, as Italian Consul General in Shanghai, became President of the League of Nations Commission which inquired into Japan's bombardment of Shanghai at a time when "Little Chink" was a babe of five months. Promoted to Minister to China, the Count was sent to the London Economic Conference and. before President Roosevelt wrecked it, Ciano obscurely obtained the Conference's only achievement, an adjustment of Italy's Boxer Rebellion indemnity claims on China to the satisfaction of the Great Powers.
Back in Rome, the Cianos started cutting a social swath and Edda surprised the British colony with the "English" she had learned from U. S. Marine officers' wives in Shanghai. One of the Countess' expressions was "oakie doak." Her husband at this time became Il Capo del Officia Stampa del Capo del Governo (The Head of the Press Office of the Head of the Government), later was given the rank of Minister for Press & Propaganda. He never could understand why foreign correspondents do not write with the same pro-Fascist zeal which came naturally to him when he was himself a reporter on the Rome Tribuna.