BELGIUM: Shots at H. R. H,?

The black-gowned judge of the Brabant Court of Assizes sat in his Brussels courthouse last week to try one Fernando de Rosa charged with attempting to assassinate Crown Prince Umberto of Italy during H. R. H.'s visite de fiancallies to his present wife Princess Mane Jose of Belgium last year (TIME, Nov. 4).

During the visit, while sound cameras buzzed expectantly, Prince Umberto had arrived at the tomb of Belgium's Unknown Soldier to lay a wreath. Pistol Man de Rosa wiggled his way through surrounding guards, fired two ineffectual shots, was immediately knocked senseless. Almost as though he had expected the shots, Prince Umberto coolly proceeded with his wreath laying. The affair looked strange to reporters when it occurred. Last week as the trial progressed, it looked stranger still.

On a table before the judges were the exhibits in the case: books, anti-Fascist pamphlets belonging to de Rosa, and the ridiculous little nickel-plated pistol which he had fired. Prisoner de Rosa, 22, stood in the dock. Blond, pink-cheeked, he wore an expensive grey suit, had employed his year in jail by growing enormously fat.

A rumor which Europe's political gossips insistently repeated last week was that fat Fernando had not really tried to kill Prince Umberto at all. Fernando de Rosa is obviously, admittedly an antiFascist, might have logically shot a Fascist prince, but many an Italian has heard that no one loathes Benito Mussolini more wholeheartedly than slender aristocratic Crown Prince Umberto. Thus the shooting might conceivably have been a fake, staged by friends of H. R. H. to increase his popularity in Italy before his wedding. Fat Fernando did his best to deny all such rumors on the witness stand last week.

"I wanted to kill the Prince," said he, "because I knew he was a Fascist* and I thought the attempt would draw attention to unhappy Italy. I thought it would be an intellectual murder. There was such a crowd around the Prince that I fired the first shot in the air. I hoped that in the resulting confusion I could get a clear view of the Prince and be able to kill him with a well-aimed shot. The second shot I missed. Suddenly my hat blew off, I felt so ridiculous that I threw my gun away."

A Colonel Ketelle, eyewitness, testified that this was so.

Whether or not anti-Fascist Fernando attempted in good faith to shoot H. R. H., he was defended in good faith last week by none other than fiery anti-Fascist Francesco Nitti, fugitive onetime Prime Minister of Italy, commonly referred to by Fascist editors as "Nitti the Pig."

"I met young de Rosa in Paris," said Signore Nitti, while fat Fernando blushed modestly among his chins, "and he impressed me as an honest, moderate, loyal and well-educated young man. When I read the details of his act of last October I was convinced that his intention was not to kill but to attract public attention to the deplorable state of affairs in Italy. . . . Everywhere men of different beliefs and shades of opinion are allowed to assemble except in Italy. Deprived of liberty and hearing lots of talk about violence, what shall youth do?"