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In propaganda neither Edda nor Galeazzo saw much future. When Il Duce got ready to start a war, they did, however, see that Count Ciano as an aviator dropped the first bombs, and was the first Italian to alight in Addis Ababa. He and the Dictator's two bombing sons did so well at making headlines for themselves that Father Mussolini ordered that they never be mentioned again in this connection, lest they get swelled heads. Ciano, according to brother aviators, is an in different pilot, but recklessly brave. He eats more spaghetti, prepared with copious melted butter and cheese, than Edda thinks good for his figure. He seldom downs a cocktail, which Italians consider fattening, takes a glass or two of wine at every meal. When Father-in-law Mussolini went on what amounted to a fruit diet, so did Son-in-law Ciano, but his gastronomic passion at present is for fish.
In Rome he drives a roaring Alfa-Romeo five-passenger sedan and Edda's friends go to him when they want a traffic ticket torn up. At 6:30 p.m. each day Foreign Minister Count Ciano stands before Dictator Mussolini for high-pressure contact on world affairs, then goes directly home to dinner or to one of the dazzling Roman social functions Edda likes. As soon as Italy and Germany began getting together on the question of helping the Spanish Whites (TIME, Aug. 24), a trip to Berlin loomed and young Count Ciano buckled down to study German furiously. To him languages come easily and Italy's Foreign Minister was all set last week to converse with Dictator Adolf Hitler in the only language that statesman knows.
Ciano 6 Hitler-A diplomat can seldom do anything in the glare of publicity which he has not previously arranged in private, and last week Baron von Neurath and Count Ciano merely went over in Berlin the understandings to which Italy and Germany have come in recent weeks, more or less secretly. A special sleeping-car train then took them to Berchtesgaden, whence they drove to the chalet Haus Wachenfeld, the Bavarian snuggery of Der Führer. Corporal Hitler, in a plain brown tunic with a large swastika just above the left elbow, saluted General Ciano who returned the salute. They talked for four hours. Simultaneously in Rome congratulatory messages poured in upon King Vittorio Emanuele III and Queen Elena, for the day marked their 40th wedding anniversary.
It was Saturday, and Adolf Hitler is famed for springing what Nazis call his "Saturday surprises." Abruptly Der Führer sprang a public announcement of the first of five points of agreement secretly reached between Germany and Italy. "The Führer and Chancellor," he disclosed, "has informed the royal Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count Ciano . . . that the Reich Government has decided formally to recognize the Italian Empire in Ethiopia."*