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"New Protector of Islam!" With Dictator Mussolini to Libya last week on his first visit since 1926 traveled among other Italian Cabinet members Minister for Press Dino Alfieri, and every dispatch was thoroughly censored. Significantly passed by this Fascist censorship was New York Herald Tribune Correspondent John T. Whitaker's immediate observation that Libya is "a colony ridiculed, even in Italy, as a 'sandpile.' "
This tart remark did not vex Dictator Mussolini for the reason that Libya in his mind, as he showed clearly in his acts and words last week, is important only from a strategic point of view. In the new Italian Empire's naval, military, aeronautic and political relations with Great Britain and the Islamic world it is vitally important.
Italy has not the money to match Britain's sudden $7,500,000,000 rearmament play on the European board, but the Mediterranean off Sicily is still narrow, and Italian operations from Libya, from the recently strongly fortified Italian island of Pantelleria, and from Italy itself can attempt with some prospect of success to cut, in these "narrow seas," the important British direct sea lane to India via the Suez Canal. The 500,000 Mohammedans in Libya are a lever handy to Il Duce for stirring up anti-British agitation in India, Palestine and other British lands heavily Mohammedan. During the Sanctions period this kind of Italian propaganda scored to such an extent that in Rome some of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's most earnest protests through the British Ambassador were about this, rather than about the wrongs and sufferings of Ethiopia. Finally, during the Sanctions period, Governor Italo Balbo— rushed work on several Libyan highways from which Italian troops massed for months at points menacing British positions in Egypt and the Sudan. It was a serious matter for Britain last week that, as the Italian fleet bringing Il Duce neared Tobruk (which is only 60 miles from Egypt), the 500,000 Mohammedans of Libya were plentifully supplied with a Balbo proclamation in which their governor exhorted: "Hail and give cordial greetings to the Grand Protector of Islam . . . His Excellency Benito Mussolini . . . the Defender of the Prestige of Rome which is the Common Mother of All Mediterranean Peoples!" "Not One Cent for Tribute!" Awed natives, peering seaward & skyward, saw a shining fleet of fast Italian cruisers, none over seven years old, and as Italian bombers roared aloft the natives counted 100 war birds of the new Grand Protector of Islam.
Mohammedan reporters, permitted in Libya to wear the red fez banned in Turkey, found themselves the very people Benito Mussolini seemed most anxious to meet, handshake and take with him on his tour. Apparently Il Duce feared no such bomb as recently wounded his Viceroy to Ethiopia (TIME, March 1), for last week the Dictator, head thrown back, took several strutting walks along the fringe of great Mohammedan crowds which duly raised frantic cheers.