Signor Mussolini's Speech in the Senate The Lateran Treaty passed
through the Italian Senate last Saturday in -the approved- " totalitarian" manner, the actual number of dissentient votes being under double figures. Signor Mussolini was at pains to soothe the sus- ceptibilities of his Roman Catholic countrymen, and he permitted himself the boutade—" The King has' not become an acolyte of the Pope, nor his the Pope become private* chaplain to the King." When seeking to justify the Fascist doctrine that the education of the child is the concern of the State not of the family, he used words Which are profoundly distressing to all workers in the cause of peace and international co-operation. Taking his stand on the "realities of life" he compared the nations to ' " fierce wolves," 'whose attachment to the common purpose of Geneva was Sheer hypoeriay. In such a world, he said, a Warlike and virile education was the necessary basis of citizenship. Even if international co-operation were not quite as much a reality to-day as the old senseless rivalry, there is no excuse in the twentieth century for still looking upon human beings as so much cannon fodder.
• *
Previous page
